Rep. Jennings called meeting to order and introduced Mr. Vic 
Dobras.

Overview from Victor Dobras from Sprint.

Dobras:  Sprint is the second largest local telephone 
company in Minnesota.  We provide national and international 
long distance services.  This spring we’ll offer wireless 
digital personal communication services to customers within 
the Twin Cities market area.  We’ve also filed for authority 
to offer competitive local exchange service in territory 
presently served by other telephone companies.  I am here 
today to summarize Sprint’s position on the right of way 
issues such as before this committee.

First, Minnesota needs a consistent statewide policy on 
access to and use of rights of way.  It is vital that that 
policy be competitively neutral so that neither the 
incumbent telecommunications carrier nor a new entrant is 
disadvantaged by that policy; and competitive neutrality is 
in fact a federal requirement under the telecommunications 
act of 1996.  Second, Sprint believes in paying its fair 
share for access to rights of way.  Units of government 
should be compensated for the direct costs of administration 
of construction permits and the management of the location 
of facilities located within the right of way.  Third, 
current law requires telecommunications companies to restore 
rights of way to their original condition when construction 
is completed.  We supported language to that effect in 
Minnesota’s 1995 Telecommunications Act.  Finally, Sprint 
does not believe that access to rights of way should be 
treated as a supplemental revenue source.  Access or 
restrictions on access to rights of way for 
telecommunications providers will inevitably create higher 
prices for consumers and delay introduction of new services.  
That concludes my statement, a copy of the statement has 
been provided to members of the committee and with that I am 
available to answer any questions you may have.”

Jennings:  Questions of Vic.  (No questions)  Thank you very 
much Vic.

Jennings:  I am somewhat hesitant of getting too far into HF 
322 because to the members who are present this is a 
starting point this isn’t, I don’t think, what the final 
bill will look like.  I guess I could ask Michael to kinda 
briefly go over it and just tell folks where we’re starting 
from a starting point.  I’m not sure where Michael is right 
now.  We’ll find him.  

Haar:  My name is Burl Haar, Executive Secretary for the 
Public Utilities Commission.  With me today is Diane Wells, 
she is one of our senior telecommunications analysts.  She’s 
the analyst for the commission that worked on the case 
before the commission and she is going to give you an 
overview on the commission’s involvement on this issue.

Jennings:  Ms. Wells welcome to the committee.  Could you 
identify yourself for the tape please.

Wells:  Thank you Chair Jennings and members of the 
committee.  My name is Diane Wells and I am the 
telecommunications analyst for the public utilities 
commission.  As been indicated, the purpose of my testimony 
this morning is to explain how the public rights of way 
issue came before the commission and what actions the 
commission has taken.  Minn. Stat. 237.16 grants centralized 
exclusive control over the construction of telephone lines, 
exchanges and service delivery to the commission.  The 
statute provides that for the purpose of bringing about fair 
and reasonable competition for local exchange telephone 
services, the commission has the exclusive authority to 
authorize any person to construct telephone lines or 
exchanges or to otherwise furnish local service to 
subscribers in any municipality in this state and to 
prescribe the terms and conditions upon which constriction 
or service delivery may be carried on.  Most municipalities 
[or authorities] meanwhile retain authority over the 
location of telecommunications facilities and have a right 
to require the repair and restoration of streets, alleys and 
other public areas damaged by the installation or operation 
of telecommunications facilities.

The commission is familiar with several city’s ordinances 
that would require a telecommunications service provider to 
pay a franchise fee to a local unit of government or that 
base requirements on a provider’s use of the public right of 
way that apparently conflict with the commission’s 
authority.  This issue came before the commission in a 
petition filed by US West filed early last year.  
Historically, municipalities do not have authority to assess 
franchise fees on telephone companies. In 1915, the 
legislature took control of telephone companies away from 
municipalities and placed control of all telephone lines in 
the state road and warehouse commission, the predecessor to 
PUC.  In contrast, where municipalities do have authority to 
assess franchise fees, such as for gas, electric or cable 
television service, the laws are very clear investing 
municipalities with such authority.

Back in 1915 there were important reasons for establishing a 
single statewide authority over telephone service, including 
the assurance that there would be service throughout the 
state, that the networks of the various companies would all 
be interconnected and to avoid the possibility of 
conflicting requirements being imposed by the various 
municipalities.  Today, there remain important reasons for 
centralized regulations of telephone companies.  Both state 
and federal laws have passed and open the local market to 
competition.  The commission supports these policies and is 
convinced that inhibiting competition can only reduce 
Minnesota’s ability to compete in the national and global 
market place.

For competition to survive all potential market entrants 
must have ready and effective access to public rights of way 
on economical and nondiscriminatory terms.  They cannot face 
unnecessarily burdensome construction requirements.  They 
cannot face construction or permit fees exceeding the costs 
they impose.  Further, if all parts of the state are to 
benefit from competition, market entrants cannot face a 
hodgepodge of conflicting local requirements.  Access to 
public rights of way is crucial to the success of state and 
federal policy initiatives opening local telecommunications 
markets to competition and now is a particularly crucial 
time.  The commission believes it has exclusive jurisdiction 
over the construction of telephone lines, exchanges and 
service delivery.  Municipalities meanwhile retain authority 
over the location of telecommunication facilities and have a 
right to require the repair and restoration of streets, 
alleys and other public areas.  If the laws are changed to 
allow franchise fees on telecommunications providers, or to 
impose construction or permit requirements, it must be 
understood that those costs will be passed on to the end 
users through higher rates.  These costs will be passed on 
regardless of whether a company’s rates are set by the 
commission in a rate case or the rates are set in a 
competitive market.

The petition that US West filed last year requested that the 
commission initiate a proceeding to exercise the 
commission’s jurisdiction over public rights of way.  After 
soliciting and receiving comments from a large number of 
parties, including most of the organizations represented 
here today, the commission denied US West’s petition because 
the relief sought would be ineffective and potentially 
divisive.  The US West petition raised serious concerns 
about the scope of and relationship between the commission 
and municipal authority over the placement of 
telecommunications infrastructure.  US West requested that 
the commission initiate a rulemaking or a generic 
proceeding.  However, the commission has no authority to 
issue orders or promulgate rules binding on municipalities.  
The municipalities would correctly view any commission order 
or rules as purely advisory.  This did not appear to be an 
efficient use of the commission’s or other parties 
resources.  The commission was also concerned that if it did 
issue an order or rules, telecommunications providers, which 
are subject to the commissions jurisdiction, could find 
themselves bound by a commission rule on one hand and an 
opposing, but presumably valid, municipal ordinance on the 
other.

In the end, the commission directed all telecommunications 
providers to notify the commission upon encountering any 
local ordinances that they believed conflicted with the 
commission’s statutory authority.  One example, is the 
ordinance in the city of Redwood Falls.  US West and Redwood 
Falls litigated their dispute before the Minnesota Court of 
Appeals and the commission filed a brief jointly with the 
Department of Public Service in that case.  Last week the 
court issued its decision finding that municipalities may 
not require franchise fee from a telephone company or 
require a telephone company to encase its lines in concrete.

The commission believes the authority of the commission and 
the municipalities is spelled out in chapter 237.16.  
However, the commission also recognizes the legitimate 
concerns of the municipalities as they are faced with the 
prospect of new telecommunications service providers seeking 
a location within the public rights of way to place 
facilities.  As you engage in a review of the issues before 
you and decide whether to clarify or modify any of the 
existing statutes, the commission would ask that you keep in 
mind two important factors:  the effect on the development 
of competition in the local telecommunications market, and 
second the effect on the rates for basic local telephone 
service.  Thank you and I would be happy to answer any 
questions.

Greiling: I am sorry if you said this before I came, but 
could you critique for me in Rep. Jenning’s bill the role 
that is spelled out for the PUC and if there is any position 
on that.

Wells:  We just received a copy of the bill this morning.  
Maybe Mr. Haar can address this, I don’t think we would have 
a problem in promulgating rules that are here.  It is a 
resource issue though I believe.  

Haar:  The only thing I would add is that the commission 
hasn’t had a chance to look at the bill or come to any 
position so I really can’t say what the commission’s 
position would be, but I certainly would second what Ms. 
Wells stated here.

Jennings:  Thank you very much.....Announces testimony of 
Leonard Krumm. (shows slides.)

Krumm:  My name is Leonard Krumm.  I’m a professional 
engineer registered with the State of Minnesota.  I’ve 
worked for the city of Mpls. for twenty seven years.  
Seventeen of those years as the sewer construction engineer.  
And as many of you know, we do our own construction so we 
are a consultant and a contractor within the city itself.  
I’m here today representing the City Engineers Association 
and a committee member on the utility task force.  We’ve 
been working together on the ordinance and the certain area 
standards here.

Most of these slides that I’m going to show you are taken in 
downtown Mpls.  However, they could have been in Redwood 
Falls, Redwing, Albert Lea, any city in the state.  I’ve got 
a model here of 3rd Ave. S. to explain to you exactly what 
our problem is and what we are addressing here.  We have 
three concerns.  We want to maintain the structural 
integrity of the surface of the street, eliminate the chuck 
holes, the joints, the patches, as right here where you can 
see.  Now in a utility, shown by this red line here, that’s 
a cut in a street.  End up coming in and making a 18 or 24 
inch cut and putting a ribbon repair in.  Now you heard a 
few minutes ago from one of the utility representatives that 
they make adequate repairs.  That is not a structural 
repair.  There isn’t an engineer in the state that will say 
that that repair will carry the load of the vehicles that 
its designed for.

What happens is you have the loading of the truck on this 
little panel here and this little panel there and the panels 
rock back and forth and there’s extra [        ] and I’ll 
show a [later], we’ll get into those.  Secondly, we want to 
provide access to all of our utilities.  The public [           
] utilities, the blue line, there’s a water line, with a 
utility line over the top of it, we can’t get down to that 
water line.  I’ll show you real examples, real life.  The 
green line is our sewer.  The sewer lines are always very 
deep.  All the other utilities are shallow and over the top 
and causes extreme conditions in trying to excavate around 
them.

This is an intersection in downtown Mpls. I’ve outlined each 
of the access covers to a chamber to a utility within the 
street.  As you can see, you can almost walk across the 
intersection on manholes there.  Now when you start to plan 
to put a utility in there you have to fight all these other 
utilities in the location there.  Again, they’re all colored 
coded to meet the one call system.  Green, sanitary sewer, 
blue water and stuff.  I want to draw your attention to all 
of the orange lines.  Each of those orange lines is a 
telecommunications line.  They well out proportion the rest 
of those in the street.  I’ve got the actual model right 
here of that intersection.  I can show it to you later if 
you wish.

But, as you look at these utilities, almost all of them are 
either running north, south, east, west, until you get to 
the orange ones, diagonal across the street, different 
angles.  This one here came down the street ran into utility 
serpentined out in the middle of the street, zigzagged 
around a couple more manholes, and back on down the street 
like that.  And you will see the photographs of that in a 
minute here.  Again, there’s the model right here that you 
have before you and what is happening there is that orange 
line weaving its way through there.  This dark green line 
happens to be a storm drain.  We could not open cut that 
street.  We had to put a pit down on one side of the street, 
and push the pipe under those utilities at considerable 
extra cost.  And this is what it looks like when you’re 
digging into that intersection.  You can’t get through 
there.  And that is real life.  It’s not the worst example 
on that block.

Another problem with the utility construction, and this 
happens to be our own water department, is traffic 
congestion.  We’ve taken two lanes of traffic going up 
towards the convention center out of service, reduced it 
down to one lane in each direction.  Had to move all the bus 
traffic over to two other streets.  Considerable 
inconvenience to both the motory and the pedestrian traffic.  
Three days after we finished that job, the water line, the 
service into this building broke.  Now the public put up 
with that congestion all summer long.  When that water 
service broke, again, we lost half the traffic and all the 
pedestrian movement through there.  They called city hall.  
Public works, the mayor and the council members.  “Can’t you 
fix the water mains right?”  Wasn’t even ours, it was a 
private connection owned by the property owner.  But you 
know who got the heat?  We did.

Now, this is a typical ribbon cut that the utility companies 
put in running down the street-  nice and straight.  And 
that’s like, they’d like you to believe that they do that.  
But still it’s not a structural repair.  In reality this is 
what really happens.  You can see this one fairly plain down 
the street diagonal across and then down the street.  What’s 
unique is they had to go around somebody else who came down 
the street like this and diagonal across like that.  They’ve 
got the street tore up over our water main.  We can’t even 
get into our our water main.  You can see all the other 
utilities there.  There is our water main, that blue line.  
Again, right in front of the US West building, installed in 
1995, came down the street there’s the chamber they’re going 
to.  They didn’t want to go into the chamber right there 
because they had some other utilities there, so they crossed 
over our storm drain and our water main and went out in the 
middle of the street and came in at an angle like this.  A 
great inconvenience to us later on.  Another one, it must 
have been Monday morning when they cut that trench, but 
that’s what happens in the street.  

Right next to the US West building again here.  Came down 
the street and instead of staying out here in a driving lane 
they cut our bus pad.  That bus pad was structurally 
designed to take the loading of the busses when they’re 
starting and stopping and turning movements there.  Again, I 
showed you on the model there, we put one wheel here and one 
wheel here, and you can’t distribute the load to the soils.  
Mpls. is got the best granular soils in the state its a 
contractors dream, it a beautiful gravel pit.  That’s the 
only thing that’s saving our streets from failing.  If that 
was on clay or some other softer soils would collapse.  Down 
here, went around the corner and they left that little 
panel, that’s gonna fail it’s only a matter of time.  This 
slide is on the other side of the US West building.  There 
are eleven different ages of pavement right here.  Sidewalk, 
curb, these panels here, joined right there with some other 
ones down the street.  Eleven different ages of pavement.  
Very difficult to maintain.

What happens when you put those ribbon cuts in, you get 
settlement, you can’t compact something that small.  When we 
do a street you’ve seen the equipment out there, it’s big 
equipment.  When you put those little trenches in you can’t 
compact it.  You get settlement right there, the water seeps 
in through those joints and you can go outside today and 
drive down any street and you know what water and freezing 
temperatures does to those joints.  It tears them apart.  
They look like, the deterioration here on the joints, it’s 
all edge conditions, all the edge conditions are failing.  
Some repairs last longer than the streets, some repairs fail 
before the street around it.  But they fail at a different 
rate.  Settlement, compaction, when you put a trench in 18” 
wide and dig deep down, everything sloughs in around it, 
eventually it caves in and they’re all little time bombs 
that are sitting out there.  Another settlement problem 
here, happens to be in a bus pad.  You can see where it 
settled down there, broken.  It went down four inches right 
there and that panel rocks back and forth.  One contractor 
thought that was an adequate barricade to protect 
pedestrians.  We don’t think so.  We do our own 
construction, I told you that.  We can’t even install our 
storm drains anymore.

Right here is a gas main and across right there, which is 
hard to see is another gas main.  They’re trying to put a 
pipe from this backhoe bucket into this manhole.  I’m going 
to take you back onto 3rd Ave. again and we’re going into go 
down into a sheeting pit that we had to put in because we 
couldn’t get down to our water main.  I took this slide and 
I brought it back and I looked at it after I saw our traffic 
detour here and somebody went out here and put scissors lift 
in here, moved our barricades and worked on their skyway.  
Traffic’s backed up all over the place, we’re getting calls 
and, so its not just the utility issue, its a right of way 
management issue here.  

Now we come back to that sheeting ditch, we’re looking 
straight down into the sheeting ditch.  To dig into these 
ditches here we have to take the surface off and dig down to 
find the utility, put a steel beam across dig down beside 
the utility line, slip boards underneath and then put these 
steel bands around it and tighten it so that when we dig 
down below it that line won’t collapse.  Take you down just 
a little bit deeper in there.  This is the utility line, 
these are the straps, here’s our water main.  We can’t get 
to um.  Again, another sheeting ditch, this time there are 
two telecommunications lines over the top of us.  Can’t get 
down to that water main again.  It’s all over the place.  We 
need some controls on this.  Something has to be done so 
that we can manage the right of way so everyone can use it.  
With that, I’ll turn it over to John Maczko.

Maczko.  (slide show) Thank you my name is John Maczko, I’m 
the civil engineer with the City of St. Paul.  For the past 
twelve years I’ve worked in the area of traffic operations 
and moving traffic and people safely.  And since 1993 at the 
Department of Public Works, the initiative of utility 
coordination and right of way management has been an issue 
in St. Paul.  I also sit on the task force of the city 
engineers association, which I’m representing today to deal 
with the issues that we’re talking about here.  (Counter 
328)

What we’re talking about really is historically public works 
departments have had the responsibility for managing the 
public right of way.  That’s who people turn to, we’re the 
people that dig in the streets we’re the ones who receive 
the phone calls if somethings out there that doesn’t make 
sense, the holes dug they call the public works to find out 
what’s happening.  We’re designated as quote “the stewards 
of the right of way.”  We’re watching it for our citizens to 
manage it effectively and cost efficiently.  Are the rights 
of way limited.  We say well how’s it limited.  We both know 
that its limited by property lines on both sides of the 
street.  It’s limited by the top by how high you can go up.  
Its also limited by depth by how far you can afford to dig 
down.  So it is contained to an area.  Everyone wants to get 
in and do it as cheaply and easily as possible.  Sewer and 
water public facilities happen to be the deepest ones, 
everyone goes in above us.  WE end up incurring the 
additional expenses if there’s not good coordination.  And 
that translates to our taxpayers.  

So what, [what’s where we get know,] prompting it now, 
deregulation in the industry.  In St. Paul, for instance, 
with 31 different utilities, that use the public right of 
way, not just telecommunications.  Everyone provides 
necessary public service and services that we depend on and 
we need to do that.  Since November in St. Paul alone, we’ve 
had requests from 9 different telecommunications companies 
that want to come into our area and dig up the [streets] and 
install their facilities.  On top of that the 
telecommunications agencies are challenging the public, 
cities authority in right of way management.  Until February 
most of that energies been challenged at the federal level, 
with the federal telecommunications act.  In 1996, the 
congress gave cities the right as the agencies to be 
responsible for managing their right of ways and left it at 
that point.  The focus now has shifted to the state level 
because it did not work at the federal level.

So what’s prompting our concern?  Obviously I talked about 
the limited space.  We as cities want competition.  We want 
competition in the industry.  But how can we best do this?  
I can give an example.  Basically what I have here is a four 
inch conduit.  Here I have four separate cables of fiber 
optic cables here.  Two little hair like strands in this 
cable will replace a piece of copper wide this size.  One of 
these cables here will replace fifteen cables this size, 
based on information that we’ve got from the industry.  So 
why, ok, there’s a big size difference.  This could be dug 
into and very easily and damaged with a shovel ok?  Digging 
through a cable this big with a shovel that’s copper is not 
going to be that easy.  But when we get into the limited 
space.  When we were reconstructing and designing the 
Wabasha bridge US West has facilities on the bridge and 
wanted to be accommodated.  We have many facilities that 
want to be on a bridge but there’s a limited space.  US West 
who is going to this technology wanted to replace ten of 
these conduits with 24.  That’s the space that they wanted 
on the bridge, is 24 of these conduits.  And when we asked 
why, her name in the public utilities filings as, we don’t 
have a right to ask that question.  Well if we’re supposed 
to encourage and want to help competition, we need to know 
what’s going on a right of way to help manage it.  We uh, we 
had orderly installations.  An example here, this is just 
facilities that meander through anywhere they want.  We 
wasted valuable right of way space, no depth, no grade in 
alignment, it just, it’s there, let’s trench it in and put 
it wherever it goes.  It wastes valuable space for everybody 
else that wants to use it and the citizens and businesses 
that want to get access to this stuff.  

Abandoned facilities.  Real easy, we run into them all the 
time.  It’s worth the business, it doesn’t matter whether 
its Redwood Falls, Timbuktu, Mpls, St. Paul, Redwood Falls, 
Redwing, we run into them.  The significant delays in the 
project.  We’ve had the fire department come out.  They pick 
a poor guy [   ] with a cut off saw to go down and cut the 
facility.  Because no one knows whose it is.  Significant 
cost delays and public safety issues.  And its not just 
cities that are concerned about this.  This is a letter here 
I had blocked the name off, its a telecommunications 
company.  It happens to be our local exchange provider in 
St. Paul.  This this get us [   ] wants to install their own 
conduit underneath Grand avenue.  To provide their own 
communications internally. Their right, although private 
customer cable have little impact on this company.  A 
proliferation of these cables, especially in the public way 
left great impact on future utilities placement, while city 
owned and privately owned.  It is doubtful this type of 
customer will become a subscriber of gopher state one call 
for all future facility location and a large amount of this 
type of facility placement could create additional record 
administration for many entities including St. Paul.  
Customer service could be disrupted when the lines are 
placed or repaired where streets have been allowed to cross 
and so on.  They’re concerned about it also.

We all think about the direct impacts about what’s 
happening, the cost to dig, the cost to work around it, the 
pipes, the new pavement that’s dug up that Leonard showed.  
Um, what about the decreased safety to workers that are 
having to work around this.  Again we are not talking just 
telecommunications we’re talking all utilities.  We’re 
talking about the indirect impact and those are the real 
taxes that the cities are subsidizing that are not being 
discussed and we don’t want to talk about it.  It is seem 
not to be talked about.  There’s issues such as 
inconvenience to the businesses.  The businesses that no 
longer have access while streets are disrupted and tore up.  
Increased congestion, increased delays, increased levels of 
air and noise pollution.  All of that, those, are costs that 
cities have to subsidize and their residents.

We come to the liability.  That’s a huge issue for cities.  
Telecommunications has changed.  We’re not looking at just a 
little copper cables to call your mother, grandmother, or 
someone across the state or across the city.  We’re not 
talking about a cable as I showed earlier where two strands 
of this cable replaces one four inch conduit.  One of these 
cables replaces fifteen of them.  Ok, lots of capacity.  And 
a trade publication on fiber optics right here.  They say 
that 33 tons of copper would be needed to transmit what a 
quarter pound of glass can transmit.  33 tons to a quarter 
pound.  

Speed, we talked about speed.  They say in here that 
transmitting three episodes of your favorite television show 
could be done in one second across fiber.  It can’t even be 
attempted on copper.  The entire holding of the Library of 
Congress across fiber optic cable can be transmitted in two 
and one-half days.  Copper, the current technology with 
copper, it takes six hundred sixty years to transmit that.  
So why is it a liability?  AT&T, damage prevention safety 
seminar.  They go out and they tell contractors, they go out 
and tell cities.  Look at what you’re dealing with here.  If 
you hit one of these cables, you’re going to wipe out a 
business.  They maybe depending wholly on telecommunications 
for this source for receiving information.  You’re also 
talking about video procedures in here where a doctor at 
Ramsey is doing video surgery or instructing a doctor in 
Willmar.  Dig one of those cables up and interrupt that 
process and see what kind of problems and liability comes 
about.

And again, it wasn’t to long ago that we know about the 
fiber optic that was damaged up in the Fargo-Moorhead area.  
And the problems and the concerns of the businesses and the 
safety of the [        ], while that was vandalism that 
caused that cable to be disrupted, it was a cable, it was a 
cable that was disrupted.  A contractor could have dug the 
cable up and done a similar thing.  Ok?  Poor person, lots 
of liability in that.  And if our water main washes out 
whose going to be responsible for the damage?  So, we can 
talk about all of these things and move on, or as to how we 
move forward.  Here’s just, that’s a telecommunications 
cable in one of the suburbs.  It’s obviously more than a 
service to the house buried right below the grass.  It was 
hit with a shovel and just think it that was fiber optics 
with that many little strands of fiber coming out of there 
what would we be talking about.

So, in this process we’re all stake holders.  Its been 
shaped up [    ] the cites versus the telecommunications.  
Again, this is just not a telecommunications issue from the 
cities perspective.  It’s a utility right of way management 
issue.  Four [focuses]  There’s four of them.  There’s the 
municipalities, there’s the utilities, there’s the 
excavators themselves and there’s the citizens and 
businesses.  They’re all stakeholders in whatever happens 
with this right of way management.  The cities need to have 
a say in how this stuff is managed and we believe is in the 
best position to manage this.  Every city is different, has 
different age, different requirements and different 
standards of need on the number of facilities that come in.  
We need to guard against missed opportunities.   Those 
utilities that wander all over the place and take up the 
valuable right of way.

And we need to recover our costs, not only the direct costs 
of what it costs a day to administer a permit, but you can’t 
restore that street.  As much as you might think that you 
can restore that street to its original level you cannot 
construct it back to that original level and it will degrade 
the street life.  We’ve been working on that.  Utility 
providers they want orderly access to help maintain and keep 
their cost low.  They also have liability issues because 
they have to work around it.  So do excavators and of course 
the citizens and businesses are common throughout.  Whether 
it’s the ratepayer or the taxpayer.  We need to discernmane 
whose going to pay this.  Is it fair for the poor person who 
is not using this high tech technology currently is 
subsidizing all of this additional work and additional costs 
that go into working around these facilities when their not 
benefited from it themselves directly?

In closing, a public right of ways a limited resource with 
many users, current and future.  All parties need to work 
together to provide a safe economical network with minimal 
impact on other users and the public.  This can be 
accomplished by developing clear and fair guidelines and 
policies and working cooperatively.  The city engineers 
association, the League of Minnesota Cities, St. Paul, Mpls. 
and others have been working with industry for years.  We 
have current, ongoing discussions that are going on in 
working through our model ordinances and the standards to 
get things to work.  And we will continue to do that and 
continue to work through the problems that we have and 
addressing these issues.  Thank you.

Koppendrayer:  Mr. Chair, I have a question for the 
gentlemen that just finished.  If you were designing a new 
development, and with the fiber optic material that you have 
now.  Is there any consensus or any possibility, I imagine 
that you’ve explored this and talked about this, to put down 
a pipe, a tube, a whatever and then all communications 
companies run their cables in that same tube?  

Maczko:  Yes, and ironically that is similar to what Redwood 
Falls proposed, and it was ruled as being non-germane 
because the cities could only say where it goes not how it’s 
constructed.  But that’s the issue that we’re dealing with.

Koppendrayer:  But, Mr. Chair, I was talking about the city 
actually putting the tube in and then saying that is the 
right of way and everybody uses that one tube for a right of 
way.

Maczko:  We have that provision in our ordinance.  Its 
called a high intensity corridor.  We haven’t worked on the 
details.  Like we want to work with the industry and how to 
implement that.  But that’s a real, that’s been a 
consideration and the city did put that into the ordinance 
prior to the [  ]

?:  Mr. Chair, wouldn’t that also be a tremendous savings to 
the industry because in fact you could run those cables 
through that tube without digging up the street at all.

Maczko:  I would think as far as installation but I can’t 
speak for the industry and their costs.  It would be a 
tremendous benefit to the city and the right of way 
restoration and the use of the space though.  The industry 
would have to speak to their costs on that.  

Jennings:  We have Jerry Knickerbocker, Telephone 
Association coming up later.  Why don’t you hold that 
question for him and see if he can answer it.  ….  Rep. 
Kelso I think you have a question for Mr. Krumm.

Kelso:  Mr. Chair, gentleman, I guess in watching your 
presentation this morning if I were a builder or a developer 
and I wanted to be putting up something that had a high 
level or telecommunications needs I think I would be looking 
for a cornfield somewhere to put this in rather than 
downtown St. Paul.  I mean, seriously, it seems that the 
incentive to not be in a situation where you’re redeveloping 
and you’re trying to dig down to do this subterranean stuff 
that’s all under there is um, it would be an incentive to me 
to go somewhere other than the places where this stuff is 
already running.  Is this making any sense?

Krumm:  I think from a business location, the business is 
going to locate in, one of the concerns that they have and 
its become bigger and bigger is do they have access to the 
high speed networks.  That’s what the utilities are 
providing.  And the utilities are still telecommunications 
coming into St. Paul and wanting to put the facilities in.  
As I mentioned, we’ve had nine of them, that have come into 
downtown St. Paul alone and want to dig up the streets to 
put this fiber optic network in to be able to do this.  So 
as far as the business locating it is a concern is do they 
have access to a facilities, is it available.  We as cities 
want to make sure that it is available.  We want to make 
sure that people have choices.  And the best way to do that 
is by having a uniform right of way coordination system that 
we’ve been working for years to try and get into place and 
put into place so that everyone has that access.

Jennings:  Additional questions?

Krumm:  I have an additional comment.  We’ve allowed that.  
We work with the businesses that come in and try to do that.  
We help them locate, maybe go in jointly with another 
company.  So that it reduce their costs.  The ones that we 
don’t want, as an example last year the day after we put the 
wearing course on, that’s the top level of asphalt, somebody 
wanted to cut it open.  We want to avoid that.  We have a 
five year plan and a one year plan where we tell people the 
streets we’re cutting open so they can come in and put their 
facility in the ground and then we’ll cover the paving costs 
to put it back.  So we are working with them on that.  We’re 
trying to encourage that.  We want those businesses 
downtown.

Kelso:  Mr. Chairman, gentleman, I suppose this builder, 
this hypothetical builder, isn’t going to want to be in the 
cornfield because they’ll never get this.  Is that correct?

Krumm:  I guess that would be an industry, you know, issue 
as to whether they were going to provide the facilities out 
there or not.  [Obviously it is more costly for any amount 
of dollars, some of them might make the investment for it to 
happen], so I guess I wouldn’t say they wouldn’t go into the 
cornfield but I’m sure it’s going to be more costly then if 
you’re in a central urban core area.

Jennings:  Any other questions for these two men?  If not, 
I’ve got a couple, maybe.  The cuts that take place in the 
right of way.  How many, obviously, the city services, 
water, sewer and the [payments] municipal, gas, and 
electricity, how many of those rotten telecommunications 
utilities companies, how much does the good city water and 
sewer companies cuts?  I have no prejudice here but though.

Krumm?  But I’ll show you the ribbon cuts here.  And were 
making out, when we have that ribbon cut in the street.  If 
we put a water main and our sewer in now.  We start, we work 
with the utilities, sewer and water.  They have to replace 
this whole panel or the whole driving lane, we don’t allow 
this for our own utilities and we’re just trying to broaden 
the scope here.  We want to put back what was there 
originally.

Jennings:  So am I correct if the utility company makes a 
ribbon cut 18 inches your recommendation would be to replace 
the whole lane?

Krumm:  The structural panel that’s existing.  Uh, if its an 
asphalt street probably the whole lane.  If its concrete, 
then it would be the concrete panel.  Based on age, we’re 
saying 25 years, anything older than 25 years we would allow 
something like this because we’re going to be replacing the 
street.  Cities got over 6 billion dollars worth of 
infrastructure we’re putting 13 million back into capitol 
replacement.  That’s just a fraction of a percent of what we 
need just to maintain the infrastructure.  That’s why we 
have to go with the full panel.  

Jennings:  Let me try again, I asked, can you give me a 
percentage, is it 50-50, is it 70% telecommunications, is it 
90%? 

Krumm:  I can’t give you a percentage but I would guess 
about 75% telecommunications right now.  The sewer and water 
were put in before the streets were paved.  They’re old 
systems.  Storm drains a little bit newer systems with the 
sewer separation program in the last fifteen years its been 
done, but its just the last few years with the change in the 
industry that its, the problems magnified and really became 
evident.

Jennings:  So it’s your thought then that from the engineers 
association that of cuts taken place in right of ways, 
asphalt roads, concrete roads, that 75% is caused by 
telecommunications people.

Krumm:  I don’t want to say 75%.  I would say a majority of 
them, yes.  Even if you take out the gas and the electric 
because again, their systems are older, they’ve been in the 
street and they upgrade when we remove the surface.  They 
have that ability to do that. 

Jennings:  What happens, thank you.  Second question is, 
what happens when a water main breaks and blows out a 
section of telecommunication hardware, does a utility 
company charge you city for the destruction of that piece of 
cable or copper line caused by water blow out or?

Krumm:  We haven’t had that, we’re very fortunate.  There’re 
time bombs.  More worried about the hundred old year sewers 
starting to leak and the soils get piped away and the [] 
cave in.  Its a matter of time.  

Jennings:  Let me ask a third question that that leads me to 
.  (Counter 569)  When you’re going to repair a street and 
dig up a sewer replace it and all utilities are there, you 
notify utility companies.  What is their responsibility, do 
they have to come in and pull them out of the way for you or 
if you cut it its your problem, what happens there when you 
rebuild a road?

Krumm:  Well, On a new water line or sewer you’re looking 
at?

Jennings: Repair.

Krumm:  Repair.  Generally, what we’ll do is put in a 
sheeting ditch or a trench box we’ll keep it narrow and 
hopefully the utility isn’t in there.  If there’s 
connections running across the street and this is a gas and 
water we’ll cut and loop those as we go through.  We haven’t 
had the problem with crossing them as such.  If it was so 
congested we have relayed storm drains, water mains, and 
sanitary sewers in other locations just because we couldn’t 
[  ].  We’d close the old one off and relay to different 
location. 

Maczko:  I think some of this stuff, a lot of the questions, 
in fact all of those you mentioned, have been addressed and 
have been worked on through the city engineers association 
on the model ordinances and the ordinances that were adopted 
in Mpls and St. Paul.  To again provide incentives for 
people to get in when a streets dug up.  If two or three 
utilities want to go in together they can split the costs of 
the problems that are occurring.  The liability issues as to 
who moves and who works around each other are issues that 
are addressed and to be honest a lot of the stuff as to who 
moves   is already and has been, at least in the St. Paul 
ordinance, for many, many years.

Jennings:  Last question.  That is, should there be a state-
wide ordinance with some flexibility in there to what’s 
different in Mpls is obviously different than out in [   ] 
Minnesota.  But should it be a pretty much statewide 
ordinance so everybody’s playing off the set of rules, or 
should there be 800 different ordinances throughout the 
state?

Krumm:  We agree with the industry there shouldn’t be 800 
different ordinances and that’s why the city engineers 
association has teamed up with the league to come up with a 
model that could be used with some flexibility between the 
cities again to address their concerns, or their different 
needs or different areas.  But so the industry does know 
what’s expected, what’s going to happen and not have to play 
games in every different city they go into.

Maczko:  It’s part of that, but also drafting standards, you 
know you’re standards so everyone will be playing off the 
same play book.

Jennings:  Any more questions, I took up a lot of time and I 
apologize for that.  Thank you gentlemen.  Next up we have 
the City of Redwood Falls.  Jeff Weldon, city administrator. 
We’ve been kinda talking about you here, so here’s your 
chance to.  And there is copy in your packets of the ruling 
that the courts handed down.  

Jeff Walden testimony  (599 Counter) (618 side A ends)

Tape 1, side B.

Walden testimony continues.  (Hard to hear testimony.)

Mannz testimony:  (100 Counter) Redwood Falls city engineer, 
discusses model ordinance that was struck down.

Weldon:  Wrap-up.  Costs.  (290 Counter)

Knickerbocker:  Director Minnesota Telephone Association, 
testimony.  (358)  Minn. Stat 237.  Discusses handout sheet.  
Costs should be divided evenly.  Restoration policy.

Greiling:  (625)  You’ve kinda touched on my question 
already, but maybe you could go into a little more detail.  
I was going to ask, if you consider degradation to be blue 
sky cost or direct cost, and you referred to that study by 
the Department of Transportation that where restoration was 
done right and there’s no degradation costs.  I’d be 
interested in hearing more about that but also if it weren’t 
done right then you would agree that degradation would be a 
direct cost?

Knickerbocker:  Mr. Chairman, Rep. Greiling.  Yes, if things 
were not done right, there would be an impact and there 
would be a cost.  Now, the other thing that you otta keep in 
mind is that in most, at least its my understanding, in most 
cities there is a city inspection of the final work so that 
the city, so to speak, signed off on what they see.  Now 
that’s not saying that things can’t be done shotily and or 
things settle and so forth.  [  ]  but there is a city 
inspection in most cases and in the city of Mpls. for 
instance, the city employees do the final work.  But there 
is a study that was done in 1994 by the Dept. of 
Transportation which basically they tried to come up with 
trying to put some sort of figures on degradation like if 
you did a certain thing in the streets that took three years 
off the life [  ] five years or ten years.  And basically, 
they came to the conclusion that there was no way you can 
prove this.  Now maybe there might be some situations where, 
I don’t know, Mr. Chair, if you want me to get into this, 
but 

Jennings:  I think what we’ll do is get a copy for every 
committee member that wants one.  They can read it at their 
pleasure and study up on it.

Knickerbocker:  The other thing Mr. Chairman in this 
particular study, done for the Department of Transportation, 
[they said there’s no statistical data that can prove this.]  
There’s no critical data, evidence that these things happen 
and that it was worth this amount of money.  

Jennings:  All right Rep. Greiling follow up.

Greiling:  Mr. Chairman.  Maybe at some point, I’d be 
interested in once reading that if we still had questions if 
someone from the Department of Transportation could come in 
and speak to this committee.  

Jennings:  [  ]  MNDOT engineers might want to talk to the 
city engineers about it, I don’t know.  Rep. Kahn.

Kahn:  Mr. Chairman, I think I’m actually following up on 
the same question as Rep. Greiling.  Is that if we had, if 
there is a digging done and a cut is done and then that cut 
settles and the street has to be replaced so many years 
earlier so that obviously at additional cost, earlier means 
more frequently, would you consider that to be a direct 
cost?

Knickerbocker:  If it was the fault of the telephone company 
or?

Kahn:  (hard to hear)  Its not, fault is kinda a strong 
word.  I’m just saying that if you cut through, listening to 
what the city engineer said, if you put an asphalt ribbon 
down a concrete street or if there is a joint there that 
then develops a pot hole in the next year.  And some of 
this, we must now have more experience with seeing what kind 
of things work.  [ …cost.. ] that the asphalt ribbon is not 
acceptable even if inspected past there often at this level 
if it sinks and if it isn’t so that then the cost of those 
percentage costs that went on to deal with the fact that the 
street,… then some part of that includes everyone who does 
it.  I would think I agreed with everything you’ve talked 
about in terms of damage about how everyone [in the street 
otta have to pay for it].  But if there was some proportion 
of the cost assuming that the street had to be replaced or 
repaved, would you consider that a direct cost or would you 
consider that an indirect franchising [type of cost]?  

Knickerbocker:  Mr. Chairman, Rep. Kahn, as long, let me ask 
you this, I’ll put it this way, as long as you had a system 
that was fair (Side B of tape ends.)

Tape 2, side A.

Knickerbocker:  …I’m not sure how you can quantify it, take 
X number of years off the life of the street.  But if you 
had a system that treated everybody alike on a proportional 
basis as to the direct costs of replacing, that would be 
something that the telephone companies would be supportive 
of.  We’ve never had a problem, in terms of the direct 
costs.  Now when you start saying, someone will have to come 
up with some facts and figures or a way in which everybody 
nods their head and says yah that makes sense to me if you 
had a street that was 20 years old and you dig you ought to 
pay something for an earlier restoration.  But no company, 
or no segment of the industry should pay for anybody else’s 
proportion.

Kahn:  Mr. Chairman, again I think the argument is that if 
you’re digging in a street that’s 25, that’s 20 years old, 
and supposed to be replaced the next year then the temporary 
patch is ok, you’ve obviously added no cost to the, accept 
little cost to the cost of replacement.  However, if you’re 
digging in the street and we’ve just, and I just noticed, I 
don’t know whose doing it, but on University Ave. which has 
been closed and diverted for about a year that something big 
dug right in the middle of it, it was just opened, I think a 
couple, within a month or so and somethings already being 
dug up in this brand new paved street.  I have no idea, 
again, of who’s doing it but if you dig in, a in a brand new 
street, and you don’t replace it so that it looks brand new 
at the end of that and I’m not sure how you judge what that 
is, that’s obviously more expensive for the city.  So then 
the answer is should the person who dug a year later pay 
more than the person who dug a year earlier if you’re gonna 
pay and if you’re looking at the, if you’re looking at, 
seems to me that a percentage to everyone who digs that goes 
into a fund is more likely to have equitable, express it how 
you define equity.  Do you define equity as the replacement 
cost so that it makes a big difference as to whether you dug 
just before the street was going to be replaced or just 
after the new street was replaced or do you define equity as 
charging everyone the same?  Which then clearly makes, 
there’s no way you could make those two things equivalent.

Jennings?:  It gives us something to think about.

Knickerbocker?:  It does give the committee something to 
think about, or you change the definition of how you can 
dig.  Instead of not having, you don’t have ribbon cuts.  
Maybe you have a certain size in order to do well.  

Jennings:  Rep. Kahn, I’ve two more people who would like to 
talk and five minutes left, I would like to get those folks 
in if I could.  We will be getting into more depth on this 
I’m sure.  Rep. Anderson B.  Is it Hausman?

Hausman:  Thank you Mr. Chair, Mr. Knickerbocker, since my 
city was one of those testifying I have a sense I need to 
take issue with at least a couple of things in the vehemence 
in which they were expressed.  I thought that they laid out 
the problem rather well and I noted things you said along 
the way but there’s still the sense that cities are looking 
for ways to plug holes in their budgets.  What we saw up 
there was a pretty compelling statement of the problem and 
its just hard for me to see that there is that type of 
motivation there.  You, one or your quotes was it’s the 
telephone company’s fault and yet I, accept for the court 
case referenced, I thought they couched their problem in 
very broad terms they perhaps used communications but that 
is more broad and the question about what is the cost, 
somebody’s got to sit down and say what is the cost of all 
these things that cities require, as I read this, it’s hard 
for me to understand how they have, they are given any 
opportunity to require anything under the current situation 
but finally, I think the, my greatest confusion was your 
“where is this explosion of expansion”  Any my, I guess my 
question to you is do we wait for an explosion.  I think 
what they argue for is the opportunity for good management.  
And I think we’d all agree good management always wants to 
be proactive than reactive.  And they don’t wait for a day 
of explosion, they wait, they anticipate that and hope to 
plan for it.  And so it seems to me we had some cities that 
laid out a rather good case and I was surprised with the 
with the strong word of judgment against them.

Jennings:  Mr. Knickerbocker.

Knickerbocker:  Mr. Chairman, its well, I don’t know if that 
was necessarily a question?  But Rep. Hausman was saying, I 
think, if I can paraphrase that she thinks there’s problem 
out there and she thinks we ought to act and the city 
engineers have presented a management need.  My points were 
that there is no documentation that you have a problem of X 
magnitude and therefore, we should do something about it.  
The fact that you want to be proactive is fine and I think 
that the kind of suggestions that the engineers have made 
don’t preclude things that the telephone industry is 
interested in doing as well.  It’s in everybodies best 
interest to keep costs as low as possible to have uniformity 
to types of service that’s provided everywhere in the metro. 
area as well as everywhere in the state.  That there be no 
barriers put down in terms of competition or new services 
being provided so we’re interested in uniformity we’re 
interested in seeing that problems hopefully can be 
addressed before they are created.  But we’ll have a 
difference over what’s a direct cost.  As I said we have no 
problem in maintaining the present posture which is, you 
know, you think that the current statute is not adequate 
enough to allow municipalities to recover their direct 
costs.  We don’t disagree with the concept but we have 
disagreements maybe over how the language ought to be added 
to do what you want to do.  Many of these costs, or the 
potential costs, that I cited you could make the case, are 
indirect costs.  The city or the city engineer might make 
the case, they’re direct costs, so someplace we have sort 
some of these things out.

Jennings:  Rep. Housman, you have 30 seconds.

Hausman:  Well, because I got my question for Mr. Haar on 
these handouts and I’d loose it the next time, is there a 
possibility of my being able to quickly ask him.

Jennings:  For you, you betcha.

Hausman:  I’m going to ask it while he’s coming forward.  
The 1995 legislation, that I think is the heart of what got 
us into some of this, you know the commission has the 
exclusive authority and to prescribe the terms and 
conditions.  Did you seek that authority, or remind me what 
the background was.  Did you seek that that exclusive 
authority?

Haar:  Mr. Chair, Rep. Hausman:  No that was written, I 
believe into statute many, many years ago when the, 
(someone: 1915),  1915 right, when the statue was first 
created or granted the commission authority for statewide 
oversight of telecommunications matters.  That’s been on the 
books for quite awhile.

Hausman:  So what, was there a change in our recent 
legislation over the last few years that that’s at the heart 
of this debate in your opinion?

Haar:  Mr. Chair, Rep. Hausman.  No, if you’re referring to 
the telecommunications act of 95, there really wasn’t 
anything directly that went to this issue of right of way 
there, that dealt with allowing regulatory changes for 
purposes of promotion of competition where effective 
competition can occur.

Hausman: And then just one final question.  I don’t know who 
distributed this, It says right of way legislative issues, 
but my question to you is.  They talk about the conflict in 
statute of the PUC statewide exclusive authority vs. 
municipal.  Will HF.

Jennings:  Let me interrupt you real quickly, I passed that 
out, that comes from the working group that’s working on the 
right of ways with the cities.

Hausman:  So perhaps then, so in other words HF 322 may not 
address it yet but you’re still working on it.  Thank you.

Announcements.  Adjourned.

Tape 2, side A.  

Jennings:  Announces the HF 322 and that Mr. Bull, from 
house research, will do a walk through of the bill.

Mr. Bull:  Overview of bill.

Jennings:  General statement.  Everyone worked hard on bill.  
There were some unresolved issues that will be sent to a 
work group to work out some standards.  

Knickerbocker:  Gives his overall view of bill.

Franzen, League of Minnesota Cities:  League’s impression of 
bill.

Miller, Executive Director of League of Minnesota Cities:  
Additional comments on the bill.

Jennings: Calls for questions for the three speakers.  
Anderson B.

Anderson B.:  Thank you Mr. Chairman, It states in here 
something about a right of way permit.  Is there anything 
[conducted] or set by the local county government, local 
city government, to what the permit will

Jennings:  Mr. Anderson.  What we put in the bill is that we 
said they could recover their true and actual costs.  We 
have not set a number because it varies between what the 
permit cost is.  What we did do is if a person or company 
who’s taking out the permit feels its out of line, they have 
the option to appeal it, first of all to city council and if 
they don’t feel that is correct they then can appeal it to a 
mediation, arbitration committee.  It’s very hard now, I 
don’t know, its almost impossible to set an actual scale.  
So I guess it is, obviously the person pulling the permit or 
company pulling the permit feels its out of line, we’re 
gonna be going to arbitration.  So both sides loose, or both 
sides win in that case.  I think that’s why the best way to 
kinda let them work it out.

Anderson B.:  Did they feel comfortable with that Mr. Chair?  

Jennings:  I can answer, both both felt comfortable with 
that.

Speaker?  Mr. Chair, Rep. Anderson.  It’s a different way to 
try to solve those problems that crop up that are legitimate 
differences of opinion.  Both from a denial of a permit 
standpoint and also from the fees that might be asked [   ] 
process.  It’s a different way to try to resolve that.  But 
in the bill that section sunsets in 1999, so we will take a 
look and see how that works.  And if it doesn’t work, we’ll 
be happy to come back and add new language or a different 
way to resolve those kind of issues that crop up between 
telecommunication [ ] and municipalities [to be discussed].

Jennings:  Rep. Anderson, also if, that if there’s an issue 
that they believe as far as a standard about how deep they 
should go, that they shouldn’t case it in something, as far 
as the actual construction if they don’t, if the company 
putting it in feels that the cities out of line, done 
something wild, then they can take that to the city council, 
to the PUC, so we’re trying some new things here and I think 
we have to.  It was, it was, it was a couple of rough months 
of negotiation.  I will tell you both sides worked extremely 
hard for their side and there were some days where it was 
extremely frustrating, you kinda wanted to take their heads 
and go like that.  But they worked hard for their positions 
and in some cases we had to try something different cause we 
couldn’t do what we’re doing today.  But again, I think both 
sides feel comfortable.  As far as the mediation or 
arbitration, we sunseted that because it makes us come back 
and look at it again.  Rep. Kahn did you have your hand up.

Kahn:  Yes, Mr. Chairman, I know that this is a complicated 
issue and I just wanted to, there are kinda about three 
parts of philosophy that I want to make sure that I 
understand and I guess I would like your assurance, Mr. 
Chairman, since you’re also the author of the bill, that 
this is exactly what this bill is going to this direction 
and no further and no less I think in some places.  The 
first thing is that the understanding is that this 
legislation puts management of the rights of way under the 
local control and that local government will recover, is 
permitted to recover its actual costs.

Jennings:  I believe that it does that. 

Kahn:  Then the next thing is that we’ve really limited, I 
know, I remember those first slides of looking at what the 
streets of Mpls. look like and and so forth.  But as I 
understand that the way we’ve done this now, this bill is 
completely limited to telephone companies and it doesn’t 
regulate anyone else, cable, gas, electricity?

Jennings:  Rep. Kahn, that’s correct.  I think that we’d 
like to get into that, but this year we’re working on teles 
side.

Kahn:  OK.  And the final thing.  Which is the last thing 
that we had some discussion about to.  The Public Utilities 
commissions, the PUC commission’s authority to preempt local 
ordinances is only limited to the issue of statewide 
uniformity of construction standards?  That they don’t have 
any ability to preempt things like time of day and that sort 
of stuff?

Jennings:  That would be correct.  And as far as the money 
side again PUC does not get involved in that.  That was a 
very strong, hard feeling among the individuals that we 
couldn’t take the permit money issue to the PUC and so we 
created this mediation, what’s the correct name of it?  
Binding arbitration.  And the answer again is yes, I can let 
both or all three answer for themselves on this issue, I 
would agree with Rep. Kahn.

Kahn:  I guess that, I guess, this goes from here to the 
floor.

Jennings:  Rep. Kahn, let me add one more thing to, which I 
think is a fourth part of that stool.  That we didn’t want 
to turn the right of ways into a revenue making source for 
the cities and that is not, there is no, I mean, we could 
talk about assets, values so, there is no revenue making 
source.  So you get to recover the truer values and that’s 
were they’re at.  That was the fourth part of that thing.  
I’ve looked at two three, I see all the heads shaking yes 
and.  Rep. Anderson I.

Anderson I:  Mr. Chairman, I just want to know what your 
procedures going to be.  I’m hearing another committee 
meeting and there’s about four committee meetings going on, 
so I’d like to be present though however at the time

Jennings:  You let us know, I got an amendment to this bill 
having to do with railroad right of ways.  That would be 
more, this is not controversial at all that right of way is.  
And we will have you back to hear the discussion, I think I 
know what room you’re in.

Anderson I:  Room 200.

Jennings:  All right, we’ll come get you when we get to the 
vote.  Rep. Hilty.

Hilty:  Mr. Chair I think maybe I missed something at the 
beginning here.  Are we talking about the bill or the delete 
all amendment.

Jennings:  We’re talking about the delete all thing, delete 
all amendment which is labeled 322DE2.

Hilty:  OK.

Jennings:  Rep. Hausman.

Hausman:  Thank you Mr. Chair.  I have a question for Mr. 
Bull.  If you would explain the impact or effect of section 
5, not having the statutes in front of me.  Page 11, section 
5, lines 7, 8, and 9.  Just the effect of that language. 

Mr. Bull:  Mr. Chair, Rep. Hausman, there are, the three 
sections of Minn. law that you see cited there are the three 
sections that were in dispute with regard to the Redwood 
Falls case.  And the what is contemplated here is to ensure 
that those statutes as well as any other ordinance or 
regulation or rule to the contrary of what’s in this bill.  
That this should be the be all and end all with regard to 
the allocation of jurisdiction and authority over the public 
rights of way.  That’s the intent and I think the effect of 
that section.  

Jennings:  rep. Hausman, follow up.

Hausman:  Does that have any consequences not immediately 
obvious, I mean, I’m just try to picture how broad this 
superseding those sections.

Mr. Bull:  Mr. Chair.

Jennings: Mr. Bull

Mr. Bull:  Mr. Chair, Rep Hausman, its only effective in the 
event that there is, that one of these things cited here is 
inconsistent with the, with this legislation.  Narrowed to 
at least that extent.

Jennings:  And I would also add, and Mr. Bull can correct 
me.  This was not a mandate laid down in every city.  This 
is something they can use if they want to.  I would guess 
that probably in 90-95 % of the cities they’re going to do 
business the way they’re doing it today, especially in 
greater MN.  But if they want to use something that both 
sides have agreed to and stay out of litigation, here’s 
something they can use.  Other speech I’d make.  Rep. 
Vickerman.

Vickerman:  Thank you Mr. Chair.  I also want to thank you 
for working on this legislation.  I had this afternoon Jeff 
Weldon, the city administrator from Redwood Falls and Ron 
Mannz the city engineer were here, and I visited with them 
and they are very supportive of this and would like to see 
the committee pass this legislation, so I am speaking on 
behalf of them and urging your support of HF 322.  

Jennings:  Rep. Hilty.

Hilty:  Mr. Chair I realize that we have Mr. Bull in his 
explanatory mode.  There’s something that’s not clear to me.  
On page 2, subd. 2, lines 22-28.  

Jennings: Mr. Bull.

Mr. Bull:  There, in the negotiation of this bill, the 
application of the bill, there was the initial, the primary 
party, and they’re here today, were the cities negotiating 
with the telecommunications utilities and vice versa.  There 
were sort of a periphery of folks who either wanted to be 
involved or didn’t want to be involved, and in this case, 
the counties and towns wanted to be included but assured 
everyone that that didn’t, that including them didn’t expand 
their authority, their current authority over the rights of 
way.  There’s some, including the local government, the 
counties and towns, made some folks nervous, because we 
weren’t sure the effect of that and this language here is 
meant to sort of define the effect.  So they’re included, 
but its not meant to expand their authority, which was our 
assurance to the chair or to the author. 

Hilty:  Well, I guess this is what this says, but I still 
don’t understand how, I mean doesn’t this expand the 
authority of cities in some regards?  

Jennings:  Rep. Hilty, I would like Doug Franzen to take a 
shot at it first, go ahead.  He probably could do better 
than I could. 

Franzen:  Mr. Chairman, representatives.  Chairman Jennings 
is adverse to litigation.  He likes to solve things short of 
lawsuits.  Currently there is litigation pending before Min. 
Sup. Ct.  And the argument in that litigation is, does the 
PUC or local unit of government have jurisdiction to 
regulate construction.  One thing this will do, one reason, 
I don’t know if its expanding or not but its clarifying what 
that is avoiding, a court decision that frankly nobody knows 
what it’s going to be.  At this point the district court 
found that the cities have the authority to manage the right 
of way.  The court of appeals found it was the PUC and 
nobody knows what the Sup. Ct is going to say.  Ask me, I 
have an opinion, my friend has another opinion.  But what 
this does, there’s is an uncertainty about the authority of 
cities and this clarifies that.  So I think this puts cities 
in a little unique, a little more unique position that 
counties and townships may not be in right now.  Is that 
responsive.

Jennings:  Rep. Hilty, does that help you in your position?

Hilty:  Perhaps.

Jennings:  Well clearly, I think that the bog, [pertinent] 
to the author, and I thing that in the end [   ]clearly the 
cities have the right to manage their right of ways.  And I 
believe that’s the correct thing to do.  Now, what I didn’t 
want, and Mr. Franzen is right, I have a difficult time 
going to court and spend taxpayers money because you got one 
side, and I just think It’s a waste of money but I 
understand, I got a brother who’s a lawyer and he gets very 
mad when I make these speeches.  So I’ll keep this short.  
He says I got to feed his kids to.  But I like to take a 
little bit away from him if I can.  So that’s the idea, it 
clarifies that the cities have the right to manage the right 
of way.  Counties and towns came in and said we think we 
want this to and I think it made a lot of sense to me and I 
think its clarification.  Again, I think in almost all 
cases, let’s say in 98% of the cases in MN most local units 
of government are not gong to use this legislation, they’re 
going to keep doing what they’re doing, which is a lessor 
degree, of what, especially major cities in the metro area 
need because just congestion, population and everything 
else.  But if they do want to do something, here’s the piece 
of legislation they have to follow, so everybody’s reading 
off of the same page and we stay out of court.  

Knickerbocker:  Maybe I can help on this just a second.  
(half way through side A.)  […]satisfied with the answer.  
The Redwood Falls case did more than more than[ …].  The 
appeals court basically said that the cities can’t charge a 
franchise fee and cities can’t enforce construction 
standards.  This bill changes that.  Cites can now impose 
installation and construction standards, which is part of 
the local management of the right of way.  It does not give 
cities the opportunity or the ability to charge a franchise 
fee which is the other part of that Redwood Falls case.  And 
I think if you stand back and look at it, I think your 
assessment is correct, it does give cities and counties some 
additional authority they don’t have at the present time as 
it relates to the management of right of way with 
telecommunications carriers.  But again, this is optional 
and it just sets up the steps by which a unit of government 
will go through if they want to go ahead and require permits 
and charge a fee for those permits for use of whatever right 
of way is under their control.

Jennings:  Rep. Hilty are we.  Let’s go to Rep Hausman and 
see if that helps.

Hausman:  I’m going to try once more, on section 5, Mr. 
Bull, the effect of that.  In other words if I understood 
your explanation correctly were those three sections, 
sections that Redwood Falls referenced in its case and this 
would make clear that in the future they couldn’t, no one, 
no city could reference those three sections as their, as 
they made their case. 

Jennings:  Mr. Bull.

Bull:  Rep. Hausman, yes.  To the extent that the league of 
cities and Redwood Falls, city of Redwood Falls relied on 
those sections they would not do so after this.  They would 
look to sections 237, 162 and 163 for that authority.  

Jennings:  Rep. Hausman, follow up.

Hausman:  I think that does it.

Jennings:  Folks, we got folks from the utility companies 
and the cities all agreeing on the bill.  It took two and a 
half months of hard work plus [    ] on their part.  Would 
anyone else like to ask any questions?

Anderson B:  In your opinion Mr. Chair, do feel this is 
going to help cities in their planning with the utilities, 
will this push them if they’re not already planning.  That 
this will maybe help them expedite in their planning for 
long range?

Jennings:  Rep. Anderson B. I think the answer is yes to 
that for a couple reasons.  One, we lay out a working group 
to work on a number of things that we couldn’t come to a 
resolution on, that is statewide standards, mapping was one 
of those issues.  In here degrade on roads, that there is a 
degrade when you cut into a road.  What it is, that’s going 
to take awhile to figure out.  There’s a whole bunch of, 
that’s all going to come back to us next year.  But just the 
fact that we can have you all reading off the same page is 
worth so much.  I think we are going to save our ratepayers 
we’re going to save our taxpayers in our cities and we’re 
going to save our city officials and even if some of us like 
the utility companies once and a while we’re going to save a 
headache to them to.  So I think it will do that.  It will 
also, demands that if there’s a system set up, so if a 
utility company comes in and say, “we’re thinking about some 
business in this road here when are you going to open this 
road up.”  So hopefully when they cut open a road people 
know when they come in do as much work as they can so they 
save cutting in roads.  There’s a lot more interaction among 
cities.

Anderson B:  Will the advisory task force be available to 
the cities in their planning?  

Jennings:  Well I think the cities will probably be heavily 
involved in that group, as well as the utility companies.  I 
think they’ll know each other real well.  They’ll be part of 
it.  Rep. Hilty.

Hilty:  Thank you Mr. Chair.  To go back to my question.  I 
guess I wasn’t entirely answered and maybe I can phrase it 
in a different way here.  Perhaps Mr. Bull you could explain 
to us what the second part of this sentence does.  Why can’t 
this just read, “local government unit also means any county 
or town” period.  

Jennings:  Mr. Bull.

Bull:  Rep. Hilty, in several previous versions it did.  
The, it was, in the negotiations over the bill the lack of 
clarity over what, since the counties weren’t primary 
negotiators, part of the negotiations it wasn’t entirely 
clear what their current authority is.  But to the extent 
that we work with them, they assured us that the language 
that we had that you heard Rep. Jennings, that the language 
that we were working off of did not and this is sort of, did 
not expand their authority, it, so its essentially comfort 
language Rep Hilty, for some people who were involved in the 
negotiations.  But everyone, both the counties and the 
townships and the cities and the telephone companies were, 
are comforted by the language.  

Jennings: Good.

Hilty.  Thank you.

Jennings:  Anymore questions of these three witnesses?  
Thank you. Ok.  We’re going to move the bill up, that is the 
amendment the delete everything amendment, H322DE2.  I have 
a little amendment to it which will be controversial.  
[controversial bills comment]  Mr. Bull would you like to 
walk us through?…(Comments about procedures, moving the 
amendment into the bill.)  That being the non-controversial, 
it took us 45 minutes to all get comfortable with.  All 
those in favor to put the delete everything amendment into 
the bill signal by saying “aye.”

Committee:  “Aye.”

Jennings:  Contrary.  Oh look at that I got a unanimous 
vote. Pretty neat, huh?  All right let’s talk about the 
amendment.  Mr. Bull would you like to walk us through. This 
comes as a result of this past summer.  I had some utility 
companies and some private people tell me that, well what it 
was, was a co-op electric company, was trying to cross a set 
of railroad tracks.  And he said do you know what’s going on 
out there?  And I said “no,” well what’s going on, and it 
used to be about 400 dollars to run your wires over railroad 
tracks.  You send in your permits and you got it.  Well and 
that used to be forever.  Now in the last year and a half, 
two years, the bill is somewhere between 2500 and 5000 
dollars and it’s good for ten years.  And there aint no 
where to go if you don’t like it, but don’t put you’re wires 
up.  So what this bill does is simply says, if you don’t 
agree with what the assessment is you get to go to the PUC 
and have a discussion and have them arbitrate it out and 
have a ruling.  Go out and figure out what assessments are 
because right now if you’re a private or a public utility 
trying to cross the railroad tracks you don’t have anywhere 
to go.  So I thought it would be appropriate to get things 
under control to have some discussion about this and have a 
place for the private folks and the utility companies to go.

(Further discussion on the railroad amendment.)

Sundberg:  Testimony in support of bill.

Sweeney:  Testimony in opposition of bill.

Janacek:  Testimony in opposition of bill.

(RR amendment is voted into the delete everything 
amendment.)

Jennings: Motion that HF 322 as amended, be recommended to 
pass and be sent to local and urban. 

Passed.  

Tape 1, side A.

(Counter 394)

Rest:  Recommends that bill pass.  Bill moved.

Jennings:  Madam Chair, members, thank you for hearing my 
bill this evening.  The bill comes to you from an awful lot 
of work done by the cities and the telephone associations.  
That’s who we were working with on this issue, they’ve 
worked very long and hard for the last two months.  When it 
left Regulated last week, we had everybody in front of the 
desk in agreement that being the cities and the telephone 
associations.  We had a couple small little issues that were 
a pain to work on.  As this process goes forward this is a 
very delicate balance, I will tell you at this point and 
time between the different groups.  It’s a subject, 
obviously it came about because of Redwood Falls and the 
right of way.  The basic principles that I believe we were 
working off of was that the cities have the operative right 
to manage their right of ways and control their right of 
ways.  Two, that we wanted to eventually work towards a 
statewide policy of standards so when they cross, when 
utility companies cross from city to city or from different 
locations that the things wouldn’t change that the same 
depth, same size, and everybody kinda knew where they were 
at.  And also that they truly, the cities have a true number 
that they need to collect for working as far as preparing 
the permit and examination.  And also where I was, this was 
not a revenue making tool.  That’s the four principles that 
I operated off of.  

I think we’ve achieved that in this bill.  We have left open 
some issues to be looked at over the intern, the next year.  
That is creating a statewide standards about the engineers 
and the players to come back with next year.  I think its 
gonna take probably a year to establish .  It has to be 
kinda a baseline, with enough flexibility with what works in 
Mpls., obviously different than out in Koochiching or Rice 
county.  But by the same token flexible enough.  So we’re 
working on that over the next twelve months.  Also we didn’t 
put any numbers in place for permits.  We left that open and 
what we did is we created a, an appeal process.  That says 
if, if you don’t like the numbers as far as the city gives 
you that you can appeal it [if that the utility company]  
you can appeal that to the city council, next regular 
meeting.  If you don’t like that result you then can take it 
to an arbitrator or, I forget what the proper name is, here 
it is, for mediation.  If you don’t like, on the other side, 
if you don’t like what the city has as far as the standards, 
as far as, you think it’s out of line, you think it’s to 
deep, to wide, encased in something, you can take that to 
the PUC.  And I think that’s a pretty good balance that we 
struck there, with the next year or two to kinda watch and 
see how it works.  And a Madam Chair, that’s it.  I note 
that there’s people here from telephone companies, 
telecommunications, as well as the cities themselves.  I 
think Mr. [   ] has been here since about 2:00 this 
afternoon when session started.  So if you’d like to hear 
from them that’d be fine.  I know you have some amendments.  
I know one is going to cause some problems.  We’ve been 
trying to work on that and this is very tricky, but clearly 
that’s an issue we should talk about, but whatever you’d 
like to do, how’d you like to do it would be fine with me.

Rest:  Rep. Jennings which of these amendments are not 
controversial?

Jennings:  I believe the cable one is noncontroversial.

Rest:  Is not 

Jennings:  That is an issue for clarification.

Rest:  See, I need to have a page to make sure that Rep. 
Jennings has the amendments.  

Jennings:  Madam Chair, members, while that’s being passed 
out I can speak to it, its probably an issue probably 
better, possibly in the telecommunications bill but it is 
noncontroversial, it’s clarification there’s no opposition 
to the amendment.  And what that is

Rest:  We believe this is the HDA046.

Jennings:  Madam Chair, I don’t have it with me.  46?

Rest:  Yes.  Correct?

Jennings: Madam Chair that’s correct.  That is correct.

Rest:  So Rest moves HDA046.  And Rep. Jennings if you’d 
just explain that again briefly as you were beginning to.

Jennings:  Very quickly, in 1996, the federal government 
passed deregulation in telecommunications area.  In a few 
years you’re not going to be able to tell the difference 
between a Bell Telephone company and a cable company.  This 
just says that telephone companies, if they move into the 
cable arena they’ll pay the same price as the cable 
companies are.  Again, no, nobody disagrees with that 
clarification only.  I would call it technical in nature.  

Rest:  Anybody have any questions?

Marko:  Could you just expand just a little bit about that, 
that telephone companies and cable companies paying the 
same.  Are you saying that there will be, I’m wondering 
about the relationship to public access.

Jennings:  Sure.  Madam Chair, Rep. Marko.  The public cable 
television has to pay a, an access, they pay, I think it’s 
five percent franchise fee as well as they agree to do 
certain things for the public in that community, whether 
that’s time or access whatever the case may be.  Telephone 
companies in the future are going to be able to move in and 
service cable.  And so what the cities wanted and the cable 
companies wanted and the telephone companies agreed, that if 
telephone companies start servicing cable customers they 
have to live by the same rules that the cable companies do.

Rest:  This protects the (peg?) access requirement.

Jennings:  Yes, public education.

Marko:  Thank you.

Rest:  Rep. Knight.

Knight:  Thank you, Madam Chair, Rep. Jennings, along that, 
along those lines.  Would, for example, Rep. [Mann] and I 
represent a city where they actually have three different 
public access stations of clearly of US West or anyone else, 
you know, they’re honestly not going to offer studio time 
so, what would be the comparison or the equivalency of what 
cable stations are doing now because in some cases these 
telephone companies are not going to be able to do the same 
thing, it’s cost prohibitive?

Jennings:  Madam Chair, Rep. Knight, I believe what the city 
will do or whoever negotiates that franchise with them they 
will establish a number with that peg access as work.  And 
if, we use an example, the phone company, US West, wants to 
get into the cable company they’re gonna have to pay that 
number because their cable companies are.  

Knight?:  They don’t want to pay that number?  They won’t    
[  ] grant the license?

Rest:  We have the Rest motion to amend this file 322 by the 
HDA046 amendment.  All those in favor please say “aye.”

Members:  “aye.”  

Rest:  Opposed.  (none).

Jennings:  Madam Chair, I’d like to take  the A3 next 
please.

Rest:  The A3 amendment the authors amendment.  Rep. 
Jennings.

Jennings:  Madam Chair, members.  

Rest:  Is it an authors amendment?

Jennings:  Sure, it can be an authors amendment.

Rest:  Ok, then Rest moves that HF322 be amended by H322A3.  
Rep. Jennings.

Jennings:  Madam Chair, members.  [  ] a little bit here.  
We want counties and towns to operate again the same right 
of way structure we have.  We might have some problems with 
this, we’ve been working so its kinda on the run on this 
thing.  And we don’t necessarily want to give counties and 
townships more authority.  But clearly if they want to get 
into, this bill is an optional bill.  If you want to get in 
and regulate your right of ways, this is the program you 
use.  I would guess that probably 95% of the greater MN 
counties and cities, they’re going to keep doing exactly 
what they’re doing today.  Their not going to, this is not a 
mandate.  This is an optional.  So we’re telling the 
counties and cities here, that, which is the towns really 
that this is what you use if you want to get in and regulate 
the arenas.  Now there is some, I will tell you there is 
some will be some people speaking, probably with a little 
bit of uneasiness about this, they’re seeing this as giving 
the counties and towns a whole lot more authority than they 
have today I can let them speak to that.  I’m not sure if I 
see that or not but clearly, I think we want the counties 
and the towns working the same ways the cities do so again, 
everybody’s working off the same page so.  Might need a 
little bit of cleanup down the road but I think the 
intention is to make sure everybody’s reading off the same 
page.  

Rest: Ok, is there anyone who has a question about the 
amendment, or does anyone want to testify for or against it?  
questions?  Miss Marsh.

Marsh:  Thank you Madam Chair.  My name is Jennifer Marsh 
and I’m a policy analyst for the Association of Minnesota 
Counties.  I’m here just to say that the association is in 
support of this amendment and it simply includes counties 
and towns in the definition of local governments and, in 
terms of right of ways it just ensures consistency with the 
controlling statutes that we currently have in MN law, 
specifically that’s MN Stat. 222.37, subd. 1, and it’s a 
1996 law.  Clearly, counties, towns, and cities are all 
treated the same under that law and this is just a 
clarification, so 

Rest:  Any questions?  (Amendment passes.)

Jennings:  Madam Chair, members, A4 is the next amendment.  
This one’s probably the most controversial.

Rest:  And this is also my amendment, Rest moves H322A4.  
Rep. Jennings to you want to explain it or, if you would do 
that please.

Jennings:  Sure, Madam Chair, members, one of the issues 
that probably brought the right of way issue to head was a 
certain cities were moving very rapidly to pass ordinances 
to control their right of ways.  And I think that was the 
proper thing for them to do.  The problem is with each city, 
400 or some, or 800, 87 different counties.  We wind up with 
all these different ordinances and every time you crossed a 
boundary it changed.  So that was probably, the urgency why 
we did a right of way bill this year.  Somehow, what this 
amendment does is leaves in place the ordinances that cities 
have know.  If the utility company don’t agree with what 
they’re doing they can appeal it to their respective area as 
far as the PUC, as far as the ordinance is concerned.  That 
is not what we worked on or agreed to in the regulated 
industries.  It’s still an area of contention that needs to 
be worked on and I believe as we move forward with this 
bill.  I think, where I’m coming from as chief author, is 
that I want us to stay, one, stay out of litigation as much 
as possible and two, work toward next year, or as soon as we 
can, for at least a year, which will be the statewide 
standard in a group that [its going to].  We got a year of 
time here, the cities need something to work with in their 
right of ways and by the same token, utility companies have 
to make sure that they’re not getting hung up by a few 
cities.  So I haven’t quite got it figured out but this 
certainly puts in the direction that, what the cities have, 
that they can continue to use.  What I did in the bill, is I 
said back in November of last year and prior to is what you 
use, what that would have done is cut the ordinances of Mpls 
and St. Paul out of play clearly that’s a moment of tension, 
that’s why we’re at this committee.  Where the bill is now 
madam Chair is that I’m cutting out Mpls and St. Paul 
ordinances making them go back prior to passing those 
ordinances.  What you’re doing is letting those ordinances 
come back in, be in place until the statewide standards are 
passed.

Rest:  Right, that’s what I’m doing.  And I would like to 
hear from the League of MN Cities in support of my 
amendment.  

Miller:  Madam Chair, members of the committee, my name is 
Jim Miller and I’m the executive director of the League of 
MN Cities and indeed we are very much in support of that 
amendment.  Rep. Jennings has expressed the major concern 
for wanting to have the bill amended as was originally 
drafted.  We think given the two safeguards in the bill, the 
one the opportunity to go to binding arbitration and second 
to go to the PUC, depending on the issue involved.  That 
there are truly adequate safeguards to prevent the utility 
providers from being in anyway harmed during that interim 
period.  Let me also say though that it is extremely 
important I think that this provision be included because we 
are looking at almost two full construction seasons before 
we are likely to see the uniform standards that will occur 
as a result of this bill.  And we really do believe that 
with all of the interest in telecommunications at this 
point, two construction seasons virtually means that 
everything that’s going to be built may be built by then and 
we need to have some way of providing for orderly building 
of telecommunications services during that two year period.  
So we very much support the amendment.  

Rest:  Any questions for Mr. Miller.  Apparently people 
understand.  Is there anyone who would like to testify 
against the amendment?  Mr. Knickerbocker welcome to the 
committee, if you’d identify yourself please for the record.

Knickerbocker:  Madam Chair, my name is Jerry Knickerbocker.  
I’m here tonight on behalf of the Minnesota Telephone 
Association which is the trade association of 88 of the 92 
telephone companies in the state, representing over 99.9 of 
the access lines in this state.  I don’t have a copy of the 
amendment, but I’m assuming this is the language that 
strikes the last section.  

Rest:  It is the amendment that strikes the effective dates 
relative to the January 15th date 1998 date.

Knickerbocker:  Well, I think then, Madam Chair, members of 
the committee, as Rep. Jennings has indicated, this bill as 
had alot of different, different discussion and as one of 
the goals, as we started out was trying to get some uniform 
standards on a statewide basis and secondly define what 
actual costs were, so that the cities could recover their 
actual costs and that’s two things that the telephone 
companies in the state of MN support, a uniform standard.  
And municipalities being able to recover their actual costs.  
And in this bill there is a shifting of some powers and 
duties over to municipalities  from the PUC and also from 
what telephone companies had as their prerogative in terms 
of the permitting process.  And we’ve agreed to those 
things.  What this amendment does, as I read it, is it takes 
and I could be wrong, but I think I interpret it, it takes 
two cities that passed an ordnance, even though they knew 
that couldn’t do some of the things that were in their 
ordinance because of the Redwood Falls case being upheld by 
the Ct. of Appeals, they proceeded on and passed their 
ordinances anyway.  So we’re going to grandfather in some of 
those provisions as I read the amendment and ignore that 
fact and ignore the fact that the installation and 
construction standards, which they don’t have control over, 
they don’t have control over installation and construction 
standards because

Rest:  Who doesn’t, I’m sorry

Knickerbocker:  I’m sorry, the cities don’t.  That was one 
of those issues that was decided in the Redwood Falls case.  
We’re giving them that in this particular bill, because we 
all feel that that authority should rest at the local level.  
They’re best able to determine what the construction and 
installation standards should be.  But when you take out 
section 2, subd. 8, clauses 3 and 6, you take out the 
installation and construction standards, you take out the 
mapping requirements.  Those are issues that this advisory 
council or committee was going to look at.  

Rest:  Mr. Knickerbocker, I believe by the amendment it just 
changes the place in the bill where that’s referenced.  
Maybe I’m wrong.

Knickerbocker:  I don’t have that amendment.  I think you 
just struck the entire section.  

Rest:  As I understand it, what we did there was just move 
that language from one place to another and the language 
that was struck is, has to do with the effective dates.  

Knickerbocker:  I don’t have the amendment. Madam Chair.

Rest:  I thought we just gave it to you.

Knickerbocker:  Except for what’s here and and what you 
indicated to me in the morning was that this was striking 
section 2.

Jennings:  Madam Chair, members, while we’re negotiating 
this outside chambers this afternoon what staff told me that 
the bill, as I explained earlier, what we’re intending to do 
was to allow those ordinances in place to stay in place for 
a short period of time until the statewide working group 
came up with a statewide standards.  And that’s what I 
assumed that amendment does.

Rest:  That is correct, but the mapping language that you 
referenced Mr. Knickerbocker, I’m on very delicate knowledge 
grounds here was struck on page 5, lines 21 and 22 but then 
included and moved to page 13 in the first line, replacing 
right of way so that it, says in terms of the general 
standards, this advisory task force will recommend a number 
of things, including the establishment of the GIS mapping 
systems.  So I think that issue was just a movement of the 
language unless I’m not understanding it completely, but 
the, what I understood the controversial part of this 
amendment was, from its supporters, was in line 17 of the 
amendment which is, references page 13, which is the 
deletion there of lines 19 to 24 which has to do with the 
issue that Rep. Jennings just mentioned about the temporary 
authority for those ordinances to continue into effect until 
January 15, 1998, rather than putting them aside until that 
time.  

Knickerbocker:  I think that is, Madam Chair, I think that 
is controversial.

Rest:  Yes.

Knickerbocker:  But I was also addressing the fact that you 
want, I think from the statewide standpoint, developing a 
statewide policy, this advisory group to deal with all of 
these issues, the installation, the construction standards, 
the installation standards, the mapping, liability all of 
those issues that are laid out in the bill and you want 
Mpls. and St. Paul to participate in developing those 
standards.  I’m sure they can bring alot of valuable 
information to the discussion, so why would we want to go 
ahead and allow Mpls and St. Paul out from underneath that 
planning process and grandfather in their two ordinances?  
Provisions of their two ordinances which are in violation of 
the some parts of the current state law?

Rest:  I’m going to ask Mr. Miller to come back up and 
respond to that.

Knickerbocker?:  I mean there are two issues, one is the 
date and what is it effective for, the other is 

Rest:  The one is just the moving of the language, rather 
than deleting it.  Just where was the better place for it.  
As I understand it.  Mr. Miller do you want to clarify that?

Miller:  Madam Chair, I will try to.  I believe your 
understanding is accurate, the reference to geographic 
information systems, was simply moved, as you noted from an 
earlier provision in the bill to line 1 of page 13 of the 
new draft.  And that then becomes one of the issues that the 
advisory committee that will be created by the legislation 
will be obligated to address as part of its review.  So in 
the first instance the amendments would not remove the 
requirement to examine GIS, it was simply intended to really 
clarify and I think, put in more appropriate section of the 
bill where that would go.  The more controversial 
discussion,  I think, again relates to the deletion of lines 
19-24 on page 13, that is the entirety of section 2, or 
subd. 2 of that section, section 9.  


Tape 1, side B.

Miller:  And let me clarify again, this is not intended to 
simply effect the cities of Mpls. and St. Paul.  This is 
intended to allow municipalities to deal with the request to 
use the right of way that are going to occur in this summer 
and the following summer, prior to the time that the 
legislature has the opportunity to review the findings of 
this advisory commission.  In some respects, no different 
than cities have done for, for years in managing their right 
of way.  I think it is imperative to have this section out 
of here however, because, right now as perhaps the committee 
is aware, we are in litigation over the Redwood Falls 
ordinance.  If that litigation results in, I think, in a 
determination that would very narrowly restrict the ability 
of cities to manage the right of way, there are serious 
questions about how far the limits may go, what 
opportunities cities have to control the use of right of way 
and again, we could be into two construction seasons before 
we have an opportunity to resolve that through the standards 
that will be developed by the advisory commission.  To Mr. 
Knickerbocker’s point about this being an opportunity for 
Mpls. and St. Paul to escape participating in those 
standards, I really don’t think that is the logical 
conclusion.  In the first place, during that period , while 
those standards are being formulated there is again the 
opportunity of any utility provider for redress either to 
binding arbitration or to the PUC if any of the standards 
are found in some way, that are being imposed, are found in 
some way to be unreasonable or beyond the scope of this 
litigation.  Secondly and perhaps more pragmatically, 
there’s no reason why Mpls. and St. Paul would not want to 
participate, I think, in the construction of standards that 
ultimately are going to affect work in their communities 
after the adoption of those standards.  So I don’t think 
it’s, it clearly is not intended to allow cities to escape 
their responsibilities in helping to develop these 
standards.  I think it really is the only practical solution 
to allowing cities to deal with the construction that’s 
going to occur in the coming two construction seasons.  But 
again with the opportunity for the utilities to have 
appropriate redress if they think that those restrictions or 
requirements are onerous and beyond the reasonable 
expectations of this legislation.  

Rest: Ok, I think we have the arguments in front of us and 
unless you’d like to offer anything further Mr. 
Knickerbocker.

Knickerbocker:  No madam Chair, nothing further in the sense 
that issues like installation and construction and standards 
and those issues are dealt with through the advisory 
committee and they will be done on a going forward basis.  
They should affect all municipalities alike and I think its 
a mistake to kinda grandfather in what St. Paul and Mpls. 
have done up to this particular point.  I think they should 
be under the same standards, the same rules as every other 
municipality in the state.  They should participate in 
developing those standards.  This takes, this bill, the way 
its drafted takes nothing away from the cities that they 
presently can’t do in terms of mapping requirements, in 
terms of  installation and construction standards setting 
those standards within the confines of the existing law.  
This takes nothing away from that.  And I think this attempt 
to get out from under the bill kinda violates the discussion 
and the tenor of the agreement or the concerns that were 
tried to be addressed by the telephone companies in the 
previous, previous discussions we’ve had of the bill.  Madam 
Chairman if this is, taken from the bill.  This will give 
our organization, association a reason and probably the 
direction to oppose the bill.

Rest:  I think we’ve clear about the differences of opinion 
over the impact of this amendment and there is a clear 
difference of opinion.  Rep. Jennings would you like to 
comment?

Jennings:  Well, Madam Chair, I think what you’ve heard is 
obviously probably the main sticking point of the bill right 
now and clearly when it left the regulated industries I 
think the cities were not entirely comfortable where they 
were and this is certainly part of the process to come 
forward to this committee and make their point.  I will tell 
you that if you allow this bill to go forward, this 
committee allows this bill to go forward and I hope they do, 
is I will continue to work with the people and also invite 
you madam chair to come in and try to encourage these two 
groups to get together before, before it gets a hearing on 
the floor and I think we can accomplish that because there’s 
great value to get a bill for all the players so I think we 
can accomplish that.  Maybe in the next week or two we can 
find that delicate balance, but it’s clearly isn’t where we 
weren’t yesterday and probably not where we’re going to be 
two or three weeks from now but I still think we need the 
bill and I think the other 95 % is in pretty dog gone good 
shape.

Rest:  Ok, I think its clear to us.  Any questions or 
comments from the members?  Ok we have Rest motion on 
H322A4.  All those in favor please say “aye.”

Members:  “aye.” 

Rest:  opposed.  “no.”

members:  “no.”

Rest:  Appears in doubt, all those in favor, please raise 
your hand.  All those opposed.  Eight in favor, eight 
opposed, the amendment does not  (discussion about another 
member voting yes, but the count has already been made.)

Knight:  Madam Chair, I have the feeling that at some point 
this could be resurrected so why do we forgo the formality 
and just reconsider, allow Rep. Wenzel to vote and

Rest:  Thank you that’s very generous of you, Rep. Knight, 
Rep Knight moves that the vote by which the amendment H322A4 
was defeated be reconsidered.  All those in favor please say 
“aye.”, etc.   The motion prevails.  We have the Rest motion 
for H322A4 before us, all those before us please say “aye.” 
etc.  The motion prevails.  

Jennings:  Madam Chair, I know the feeling I was in a 
committee meeting a few of us in regulated and its fun. I 
think it shows us that there is a little bit of work needed 
in this one area, but I think that you’re probably taking 
good lead in bringing it forward and [I think we can] reach 
that point

Rest:  There’s going to be some division about this issue 
clearly and I offered the motion for this amendment but it 
would be much better if the issue was resolved rather than 
be divided among us.  

Jennings:  Madam Chair, it is my desire to have the problem 
resolved with your help before it gets to the floor.  Thank 
you.

Rest:  We now have and can consider discussion on the bill 
and its, I know that there are some people who would like to 
testify on it and we would like that testimony but I also 
want to invite members to ask any questions of Rep. Jennings 
at this point... I’m going to take Rep. Dehler’s question 
first.

Dehler:  Thank you, during this whole process of talking 
about right of ways, was there anything being discussed that 
had to do with whether a, sometimes there’s a perception 
that a local municipality has the right of way but yet, 
doesn’t not yet necessarily have the legal right of way.  In 
other words there might be a county highway where the right 
of way is in the, legally in the bottom of the ditch, rather 
than up on the far slope.  Is there any discussion or is 
there anything in your bill that will cause municipalities 
to determine their right of ways legally prior to putting 
out a map that shows where perceived right of ways are on 
township roads?  Alot of times, the right of way is the, the 
driven surface and not everything else that’s imagined to be 
a roadway.

Jennings:  I’m sure, Rep. Dehler, I don’t think right a way, 
I think in there is the issue of mapping, what we’ve said in 
this bill is if the utility companies have some drawings 
they can turn them over to um.  But eventually, we’d like to 
start a statewide mapping system so we’d know exactly where 
it is.  So I think the answer is probably yes in about five 
years to your question.  But it’s not in this bill that 
tomorrow we could tell you, or when the bill is signed, 
exactly where the right of way is.  That’s going to take the 
course of time as we figure out the best way to do a mapping 
system is so we determine exactly where they are.  

Dehler:  Madam Chair,

Rest:  Rep Dehler.

Dehler:  I didn’t quite get the gist of what I was asking.

Jennings:  Oh, I’m sorry.

Dehler;  I’m asking is there anything in here that allows 
municipalities to assume right of way without paying for it?

Jennings:  Madam Chair, no.

Rest:  Any other comments for Rep. Jennings?  There is 
someone who would like to testify about the bill, against 
the bill 

Jennings:  Madam Chair, members, one other part of the bill 
that was attached to it, we had another bill that had to do 
with railroad right of way.  And I suspect that one of the 
testifiers wants to talk about.

Rest:  That’s correct.

Jennings:  As I see her in this room.  I have a bill 
attached to this bill and it became part of this bill.  It 
because part of this bill it has to do with railroad right 
of way.  Right now today, if a railroad company decides, and 
they do, what it used to be was approximately 400, 450 
dollars to run a permit, or say an electric company, in most 
cases, a cooperative one, string electric wire over the 
railroad. ....(Testimony continues on railroad amendment.  
Process to appeal to DPS.)

Janecek:  (Testifies against the bill section dealing with 
railroads, section 1.)

Knight:  (Question.)

Janecek:  (Response.)

Jennings: (Comment.)

Rest:  (Motion that HF322, as amended, be recommended to 
pass.  Motion prevails.)

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