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To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (10532)	6/5/1999 6:57:00 PM
From: Rippletum	Respond to of 29970

The Portland case sets precedent that a local govt. franchisor has the right to contract no matter how ridiculous its demands are. Essentially, the court said go back and arrange a deal with T. The problem is that if T is unwilling to comply with the local govt. franchisor's demands it can simply say no we won't do that. At that point the local govt. has only the following options, have no broadband service for its constituents in which case the local representatives will be ultimately booted out of office, condemn the local lines owned by T and resell them to someone else, or cut a deal with T. The second option is too expensive, ergo T has the local govt's over a barrel. The first rule of negotiation is to be able to walk away, in this case the local govt's do not have that option. Portland's politicians made a monumental mistake, they should have waited until the lines were in and then renegotiated at renewal time although they would have had the same problem, the economic bargaining positions would have been different.