“The customer comes first” is an adage that all of us in the customer service business attempt to live by. Unfortunately, in the recent debate on H2563, The Cable Fee Reduction Bill, customers ended up coming in last!

The effort to reduce taxes on cable customers and to limit the freebie services that cable companies have been forced to provide to a number of cities has been an ongoing effort by the cable industry to reign in the growing appetite of some cities who are looking to cable customers as the means to subsidize growing city budgets.

In the effort to defeat this legislation, the Arizona League of Cities and Towns attempted to use their normal strategy of using their “boots and badges” — police and fire — to suggest that if cable taxes were reduced, some of Arizona’s municipal streets would go unprotected. In truth, if the legislative proposal had been adopted, cable customers would have seen real reductions on their cable bills, while cities would have experienced a prospective loss of less than 1/10 of 1 per cent in their city budgets. Hardly the start of a public safety crisis!

Fortunately, a number of Arizona cities do understand that cable customers are also their constituents. Consequently some cities were focused on real issues, rather than using hours of city resources on lobbying against the cable customer. Unfortunately, outside groups like the Free Press in Northhampton, Mass., decided to weigh in on an Arizona issue inundating legislators with e-mails urging them to defeat this tax reduction as if they were Arizona voters. This is the same group that is advocating free radio spectrum be given to cities across the country!

Federal law has empowered the state of Arizona to decide how cable television is regulated. Arizona in its wisdom delegated that authority to local cities and towns. Some Arizona cities have taken that delegation as an opportunity not only to supplement their general fund on the backs of cable television customers, but to extract free services and direct cash payments in addition to the normal permit and construction fees from cable television providers as a condition of being allowed to use the rights of ways to provide service to residents.

No other user of the public rights of way finds themselves in the same predicament. Imagine a city demanding free phone service, electricity, or gas service in return for using that very same right of way! It would be unthinkable. Unfortunately, in the cable licensing process the city holds all the cards.

This legislative effort has been and will continue to be about equity. It is about equity for our use of the rights of way. The cable industry and its customers should not be treated as “second class citizens,” rather the same as other users of the rights of way, with the continued regulation, management, and permitting authority over everything the cable companies do in the public right of way, but without the inappropriate extraction of free services.

Most importantly it is about equity for our customers. Cable customers (who by the way cross all economic strata and all geographic locations) should be taxed like other video service customers. Cable customers, who are city constituents, shouldn’t be penalized. They deserve tax equity and we in the cable industry will continue to put our customer first as we move forward in the fight for cable fee reductions!

Susan Bitter Smith is executive director of the Arizona Cable Telecommuncations Association, a nonprofit trade association. Its Web site is www.azcta.org