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~~'~ <br />ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS <br />RESOLUTION <br />AGAINST HOUSE BILL 1587 <br />"THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT FAIR COMPETITION ACT" <br />WHEREAS, House Bill 1587, "The Local Government Fair Competition Act," has <br />been entered into the 2007 of the General Assembly of North Carolina, and has passed <br />from the House Public Utilities Committee to the House Finance Committee for <br />consideration; and <br />WHEREAS, the purpose of the deceptively titled House Bill 1587 is to greatly <br />hinder local governments in providing needed communications services, in particular <br />advanced high-speed broadband services, where such services are non-existent; and <br />WHEREAS, private companies, despite having received favorable regulatory and <br />tax treatment to enable broadband investment, have chosen to avoid the financial <br />commitment necessary to provide such top quality services, offering lesser quality, slow, <br />non-state-of-the-art infrastructure technologies that are not even available to all <br />residents; and <br />WHEREAS, while private companies declare top quality service is cost <br />prohibitive in our country and spare no expense in legislative lobbying campaigns <br />against private-public partnerships, the United States is rapidly losing ground to other <br />nations in per capita broadband deployment, access to high-capacity networks, cost per <br />unit of bandwidth, and growth of new broadband users; and <br />WHEREAS, U.S. broadband capability has fallen behind the United Kingdom, <br />Korea, France, Japan and Canada to name a few, and Japan has Internet access that <br />is at least 500 times faster than what is considered high-speed in the United States; and <br />WHEREAS, because broadband Internet is a new public utility necessary to <br />compete in the global economy of the 21St century, the deployment of true high-speed <br />broadband systems in all our communities is of vital importance to future economic <br />development, educational outreach, and community growth in North Carolina necessary <br />to replace lost textile, tobacco, furniture and manufacturing jobs; and <br />WHEREAS, the General Assembly has already established the 1) rules for <br />Public Enterprise (NCGS § 160A Article 16), 2) regulations through the Budget and <br />Fiscal Control Act (NCGS §159 Article, and 3) oversight by the Local Government <br />Commission (NCGS §Article 2) by which a local government must abide in order to <br />undertake providing an enterprise service to its community; and <br />