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DEL.ICIO.USIn which we speculate about the many reasons a company might give away $2.3 million
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The first rule of charity is never look a $2.35 million gift horse in the mouth.
The second rule is that there’s no such thing as a $2.35 million gift horse.
AT&T today announced it would give that amount to three programs in Atlanta. The biggest hunk, $1 million each, would go to Piedmont Park and the Atlanta History Center. Millions more would come from an AT&T Foundation.
All well and good, so far. Nothing but green reassurances from a big corporation to the people of a big city, saying, “We care.”
Then again, according to the State Ethics Commission, AT&T has a small army of 45 lobbyists at the state Capitol. Who knew charity extended that far? Last week, they packed the pews at a House committee meeting to support the debut of H.B.227. The lead sponsor is state Rep. Jeff Lewis (R-White).
This bill, dubbed the Consumer Choice for Television Act, would allow AT&T to pipe video through its phone lines and into your home, providing much-needed competition to cable and dish companies - not to mention the manufacturers of rabbit ears.
But here’s the real money-saving part of the measure, at least for AT&T. Cable TV companies now must negotiate with each and every city and county in which they establish a franchise. That’s how public access channels are created.
AT&T wants to skip that time-consuming and expensive process by signing a single franchise agreement with the state of Georgia.
How much will this save the company? As much as $500 million, we’ve heard.
As it turns out, the only sand in this deal is coming from Atlanta’s arts community.
Early this year, Joe Bankoff, president of the Woodruff Arts Center, wrote a long memo to state Sen. David Shafer (R-Duluth) about the legislation. It’s been in circulation around the state Capitol for a month now.
“We know how supportive BellSouth has been of Georgia — it remains to be seen about the ‘new’ AT&T,” he wrote.
This legislation, Bankoff said, offers an opportunity. Federal regulations, he argued, permit the addition of a $1 per subscriber that would go toward the support of arts education in Georgia. That’s the way they do it in Texas — where AT&T is headquartered, he wrote.
It’d be worth $12 million, Bankoff said.
AT&T is against this. And as the legislation is being considered, it freely donates $2.35 million to Atlanta causes, to prove that cultural leaders need not worry about a prime donor disappearing. Curiously, so far as we can tell, no money went to the Woodruff Arts Center.
So do we call this artful politics? Or the politics of art?
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By BPJ
February 13, 2007 10:42 AM | Link to this
I’m not usually a fan of doing things “the Texas way,” but in this case I’ll make an exception.
By JHR
February 13, 2007 7:46 PM | Link to this
45 lobbyists looking out for ATT - who’s looking out for Georgians? Maybe that 500 million could be used to pay for Peachcare, or hospital trauma centers or a whole bunch of stuff. Or maybe it could actually come back to the taxpayers paying it!