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Like a sinner who suddenly gets religion, Florida House Speaker Johnny Byrd now says the law that allowed a record phone rate hike should be repealed.
Passed last year with Byrd's support, the law gave the state's three dominant local carriers - Verizon, BellSouth and Sprint - a windfall of $355-million on the questionable assumption that it would stimulate competition. Soon after the companies rammed their self-written bill through the Legislature, however, they pursued and won a contradictory court case that forces competitors to pay more for access to local phone lines. The result: more profit but less competition for the state's phone bullies.
Calling the situation "too uncertain for my taste," Byrd told the Florida Times-Union that "(the Legislature) doesn't often try to repeal things, but in this case we need to go back to the drawing board."
Skeptical observers, of course, will note that Byrd had a change of heart after the rate hike proved to be extremely unpopular with voters, and at a time when he is badly trailing his Republican rivals in the primary to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Bob Graham. This wouldn't be the first time Byrd tried to use his office to promote his ambitions, nor is this effort any more likely to succeed than the others.
Byrd doesn't appear to have the backing of Gov. Jeb Bush or the state Senate, and even the "sheep" (as Byrd recently dubbed his underlings) in the House appear to be following another shepherd - the powerful phone lobby. That doesn't change the fact that Byrd's call for a repeal of the rate hike is the correct course of action.
The law never made sense for consumers, and now its premise can no longer be justified. Maybe higher rates would have lured more companies into providing residential phone service, but that point is irrelevant now. With their appellate court victory, Verizon and BellSouth squelched any notion of true competition (unless the U.S. Supreme Court overturns the decision). Few companies, if any, could afford to pay more for access to phone lines and still offer competitive wired service to homes and small offices. The industry tries to justify its actions by differentiating between retail and wholesale rates, but everyone knows who ends up paying the difference in both instances: phone customers.
So Byrd has made the correct call, and Gov. Bush and the Senate President Jim King should join him if they really care about state residents, especially the poor and retirees on fixed incomes.
As for the House speaker's change of heart, we borrow from the short story A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor. Byrd might have been a good legislator if he had been running for the Senate every minute of his political life.