Expect to see draft changes to Oklahoma's USF statute by Oct. 18, OUSF Administrator Mark Argenbright told stakeholders at a virtual meeting Monday. Parties should file proposed language by Sept. 20 with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission Public Utilities Division, he said. Argenbright said he expects to convene an Oct. 26 meeting to discuss changes, which he would then present to commissioners possibly on Nov. 3.

Georgia Public Service Commission elections may proceed, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 2-1 decision Friday. The appeals court stayed a lower court’s decision stopping this year's PSC elections, saying electing PSC members on a statewide, at-large basis violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act (see 2208050030). “The district court’s permanent injunction, issued about three months before the scheduled election, appears to run counter to the Supreme Court’s teaching” in 2020’s Republican National Committee v. Democratic National Committee case, said the 11th Circuit majority including judges Adalberto Jordan and Robert Luck. The Supreme Court there said lower federal courts shouldn’t alter election rules shortly before an election. Judge Robin Rosenbaum dissented. “If everyone in the United States got to vote on who Georgia’s U.S. Senators would be, I don’t think anyone would think that the system was fair to Georgians,” she wrote. “But Georgia has that type of system for choosing who regulates public utilities.”

New York state settled with Message Communications over the company's involvement sending a robocall designed by Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman to intimidate Black voters in the 2020 election, Attorney General Letitia James (D) said Friday. Under a consent decree, the company will pay $50,000 in restitution to people who received calls trying to stop them from voting by mail. It agreed it won't knowingly repeat the offense and will adopt a policy prohibiting customers from using its service to violate elections, civil rights, consumer protection and anti-fraud laws. The FCC proposed a $5 million fine against Wohl and Burkman last year after an Enforcement Bureau investigation (see 2204220051 and 2108240082).

Funding public education was the “main motivation” for a Maryland digital ad tax and a ban on passing on the cost to consumers, the state said in a supplemental brief Friday at the U.S. District Court in Baltimore (case 1:21-cv-00410-LKG). “But in addressing this funding need, the legislature sought to achieve other objectives,” including “greater equity and fairness in taxation and the modernization of Maryland tax laws, not only to adapt to changes in the State’s economy but also to encourage taxed entities to change for the better.” The pass-through ban ensures the digital ad service providers pay the tax that will fund public education improvements, the state said. Judge Lydia Griggsby said at oral argument earlier this month the ban implicates speech but sought more briefs on state interest and other questions (see 2207130001). The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sees “no evidence of any substantial interest served by the pass-through prohibition, nor is there evidence that the pass-through prohibition is appropriately tailored to any such interest,” the plaintiff said in its brief. The chamber urged facial invalidation of the pass-through prohibition that it said is a “a content-based ban on speech” or, at minimum, “unconstitutionally overbroad.” Maryland disagreed it’s unconstitutional. “Directly imposing a charge by billing it constitutes commercial conduct that may be regulated, and even punished criminally, without implicating the First Amendment.” The law constrains a taxpayer’s speech only if it's integral to “the unlawful conduct of direct pass-through,” said the state: It wouldn’t "prevent a taxpayer from including on an invoice whatever message it wished to convey about the digital ad tax, including the amount of the taxpayer’s annual digital ad gross revenue tax estimated to be attributable to the invoiced transaction, or, indeed, any other subject.”

The West Virginia Public Service Commission would grant a petition to transfer T-Mobile wireless prepaid customers to Dish Network under a recommended decision Wednesday in case 22-0636-G-P. Administrative Law Judge Darren Olofson’s decision will become the commission’s order if no exceptions are filed in 15 days and the commission takes no action withing five days of that deadline. Staff earlier recommended approval (see 2208010038).

New York Public Service Commissioners cleared a revised Charter plan to implement audit recommendations through a unanimous vote on a consent agenda at a Thursday meeting. The audit report, released April 2021 in case 17-C-0757, said the company failed to adequately prepare for a 2017 workers’ strike (see 2104150041). Charter filed an implementation plan June 1, 2021, but PSC staff identified issues and worked with the company on a revised plan, an agency spokesperson said. Charter filed a revised plan June 9 this year. Commissioners approved the revised plan Thursday with modifications to address remaining staff concerns and to “more clearly define deliverables in the plan,” the PSC spokesperson said.

New Mexico launched a $123 million broadband grant program with money from the American Rescue Plan Act, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) said Wednesday. The Connect New Mexico Pilot Program will cover up to 75% of project costs for expanding networks in unserved and underserved areas, said the governor’s office: Local governments, tribal communities, schools, nonprofits, cooperatives and broadband service providers may apply. The pilot will precede the full Connect New Mexico program that requires administrative rulemaking, the office said. At least $70 million more state funding is coming for the next round expected in 2023, it said. The New Mexico Office of Broadband Access and Expansion released a notice of funding opportunity for the pilot Wednesday, and will accept applications on a rolling basis in three waves with Sept. 23, Dec. 9 and Feb. 27 deadlines.

Since the FCC rejected LTD Broadband for Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) support, the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission “will evaluate what future actions are appropriate” in its proceeding on whether it should revoke LTD’s previously granted ETC status in docket 22-221, a PUC spokesperson said Thursday. The FCC rejected LTD and Starlink’s RDOF Phase I auction long-form applications Wednesday (see 2208100050).

A state court rejected a Texas Public Utility Commission appeal of a trial court’s temporary injunction against the PUC for not fully funding Texas USF (TUSF). The 3rd Texas District Court of Appeals in Austin ruled Wednesday in favor of appellee AMA TechTel, a CLEC, for similar reasons that the court gave in a June 30 decision supporting Texas Telephone Association (TTA) and other RLECs in a similar case (see 2207010045). Earlier in the AMA case, the state appeals court required the PUC to pay the CLEC the full amount of state USF support it was owed since Dec. 1. "While the present case appears before us in a different procedural posture from that in TTA, the application of legal principles to the pleaded and undisputed facts is substantively the same and our analysis and holdings are largely dictated by that opinion,” Justice Thomas Baker wrote Wednesday. As in the June 30 opinion, state law and PUC regulations preclude the state commission from underfunding TUSF, said Baker: The PUC must pay monthly support amounts. Like the RLEC group, AMA sufficiently pleaded a Texas Administrative Procedure Act claim, he said. The court overruled the PUC's contention that AMA failed to exhaust administrative remedies before bringing the APA challenge. AMA sufficiently pleaded a viable regulatory takings claim and the trial court didn't abuse its discretion when it granted temporary injunctive relief to AMA, he said. "It was the PUC Parties’ decision to amend the Solix contract and refuse to fund the TUSF that altered the parties’ relationship,” so “the status quo is the relationship of the parties prior to the PUC Parties’ challenged actions,” wrote Baker. “We reject the premise implicit in the PUC Parties’ contention that a party may act unlawfully and then claim that the impacts of that unlawful behavior cannot be remedied or mitigated pending a trial on the merits.” Justices Melissa Goodwin and Gisela Triana, the judge who wrote the TTA decision, joined Baker in Wednesday’s opinion. Following the earlier court actions, Texas commissioners Aug. 1 raised the revenue-based TUSF surcharge to 24% from 3.3% (see 2207140060). The Texas PUC and AMA didn’t comment.

"It should not take over 10 months to process an uncontested withdrawal that has no customer impact,” T-Mobile's Sprint told the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission. The carrier, which filed an application Oct. 6 to discontinue CLEC and interexchange services (docket A-2021-3028993), said Tuesday it could go to court if the PUC doesn’t act by its Aug. 25 meeting. It noted 45 other state commissions already granted withdrawal. The commission didn’t comment Wednesday.