The hubris of the lobbyist
A Verizon lobbyist trying to prevent municipal broadband in West Virginia stormed out of a meeting because he didn’t get to write the legislation himself. Apparently, the legislators went behind his back and wrote their own legislation. The horror.
“You know all of our broadband providers are interested in it, and you secretly put out a bill to do this,” [Verizon lobbyist John Ruddick] said. “That is wrong.”
Committee Chairman John Unger, D-Berkeley, said he and others did consult with Verizon, Adelphia and other companies, but he made no apologies for not releasing the bill to them before it came out of his committee.
“The special interest groups think they ought to see the legislation before the legislators see it,” he said. “That’s where everybody’s got it backwards around here. They’ve got it backwards, because they think that the special interest group ought to draft the legislation and then show it to the Legislature, and that’s not the way it should be.”
