who's also President Clinton's attorney, is not the only big name involved. There is now a gold-plated roster of former White House lawyers, former members of Congress, former political-party fundraisers and a who's who of high-powered lobbyists duking it out over cable access. So many millions are being spent that the New York Times recently called the dispute "the latest full-employment act for lawyers and lobbyists here and in many cities around the nation."
The Players
Arguing the case for AT&T in court next month will be David Carpenter, a telecommunications lawyer from Chicago-based Sidley & Austin (dossier), the firm that incorporated the Chicago Telephone Co. in 1881 and represented the company that would eventually become AT&T before, during and after the breakup.
Portland Deputy City Attorney Terence Thatcher and his hired counsel, Joseph Van Eaton (ETN), are expected to share their 20 minutes of argument time with a cadre of high-powered Washington attorneys who have been brought on to represent others with an interest in the case. Bruce Ennis, the appellate attorney who led the successful challenge to the Communications Decency Act before the Supreme Court, is representing the Oregon Internet Service Providers Association. Lloyd Cutler, who has served in five presidential administrations and was special counsel to President Carter in 1979 to 1980 and to President Clinton in 1994, is representing U S West. The two lawyers who won't be arguing in court but whom the masses might pay to see mudwrestle are Clinton lawyer Kendall and Brett M. Kavanaugh, a former aide to Independent Counsel Ken Starr, whose firm now represents GTE (GTK).
Lobbyists galore are also focused on the issue. The Bells' stable includes: Haley Barbour, former chairman of the Republican National Committee; Michael McCurry, former White House press secretary; and Susan Molinari, the former Republican congresswoman from Staten Island. The Bells don't necessarily want to increase regulation of cable so much as they want to eliminate restrictions on their own business to make it easier for them to offer high-speed Internet service to compete with AT&T. Lobbyists for AT&T and the cable industry include Vin Weber, the former Republican representative from Minnesota, and members of a lobbying firm founded by the late Dan Dutko, a Democratic fundraiser. When AT&T and the cable forces called an organizational meeting last December, more than 53 lobbyists showed up.
Former Al Gore top aide Gregory Simon, who's spearheading the anti-AT&T forces along with former Republican National Committee Chairman Richard Bond, says AT&T has gone so far as to hire firms simply to prevent them from working for the open-access side. Simon says he tried to hire Dutko, who had worked for AT&T's wireless division, but Dutko told him AT&T threatened to cut him off if he worked for AOL or the open-access forces.
The Case for AT&T at&t's brief questions "whether the city of Portland and each of the nation's 30,000 other local cable-television franchising authorities have jurisdiction to require cable systems to carry particular programming and to use particular transmission technologies."
Specifically, the brief argues that the city's open-access ordinance "would force a Portland cable system to act like a telephone company and to provide transmission facilities that would allow any Internet service provider to use that cable system to provide its own services."
AT&T says Congress, in the Communications Act, prohibited municipalities from taking such a measure because it would burden cable operators and subject them to conflicting requirements and "balkanize the nation's cable systems."
The FCC has filed a friend-of-the-court brief that, while it stops short of asking that the Portland decision be overturned, does request that the ruling be narrowed in scope, asserting that federal authorities have jurisdiction over such issues. In an unusual aside - one that doesn't necessarily help AT&T - the FCC questions the assumption by AT&T and Portland that cable broadband service is a "cable service" as defined by the Communications Act. "The commission has
