Progressive Thinking

Phone companies are changing and copper phone lines are expensive to maintain. Modern technology is making copper lines obsolete. But Sen. Kathleen Vinehout wonders if state law should allow phone companies to dump their landline customers in the name of profit.

CHIPPEWA FALLS, WI - “I was furious,” said Cindy from Chippewa Falls. “I wouldn’t have stayed on the phone this long with this dinky cell phone.” She just found out state law allowed phone companies to dump their landline customers.

Cindy waited 40 minutes on her “dinky cell phone” to join a telephone town hall meeting with 7,373 other seniors.

AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons) hosted the town hall. I was the guest senator. We joined forces to promote my “Home Phone” bill – Senate Bill 240. The bill would return state law to pre-2011 language and protect phone customers from losing landlines.

Phone companies are changing. Modern technology may make copper phone lines obsolete. Copper lines are expensive to maintain. That is the industry’s side of the story. The last point – copper lines are expensive to maintain – is what led to Marge’s problem.

Marge lives in Maiden Rock surrounded by the hilly, rocky, rural bluffs. The phone line is aging and quality is poor. But cell phones don’t work unless Marge gets in the car and drives to the top of the bluff. When I met Marge last summer, she had been without her landline phone service for several weeks. At that time, the phone company refused to repair the line. We weren’t certain they would ever do the necessary repair.

Landline home phones are vital to the protection, security and social support of not only seniors but many of the residents in rural areas. Prior to 2011 Act 22, Wisconsin residents were assured of landline telephone service through “provider of last resort” obligations. This law required telephone companies to make basic voice service available to all residential customers within the area in which they operated.

Four years ago, when I fought to stop 2011 Act 22, I was told not to worry because a federal law would protect landline phones. Now, one of Wisconsin’s largest telecommunication providers petitioned the federal government to remove the federal regulation, putting Wisconsin citizens at risk.

The Wall Street Journal reported in 2014 telephone giants “are racing to replace their phone networks with new technology.” Further, the WSJ reported the “FCC decided to allow carriers to launch ‘experiments’ aimed at weaning people off old, circuit-switched phone networks…two carriers, with a total of more than 250 million customers, aren’t shy about their ultimate goal: turning off their old networks forever”.

In our town hall meeting, we heard from seniors who lived through harrowing experiences saved by their landline phone.

James from rural Hayward told us his neighbor would not be alive without the connection of her landline phone to “Life Alert”. Marilyn fell outside in the winter and broke her hip. She pushed the emergency button connected to her landline phone, which alerted emergency responders.

“I used to work for AT&T,” James told town hall participants. When he worked for the company, they were proud to guarantee phone service. “What’s happened?” he asked.

Doris from Cornell said a landline phone is a lifeline for her husband who has a heart condition. The machine that helps his heart beat is monitored through a signal that can only be transmitted over a landline phone. The signal goes to Pennsylvania and then back to a hospital in Eau Claire.

Another concerned participant explained that her 84-year-old Aunt wears a bracelet that connects her to emergency services. The cell phone company will not support the service needed to make her bracelet work. A landline phone is critical to allow her Aunt to stay safely at home.

Cindy from Jump River lives in a low area and said she cannot get any cell reception. She was worried about reaching emergency services. “I have my landline and I wouldn’t want to give it up.”

Helen Marks Dicks, AARP’s Associate State Director/Advocacy Director, asked seniors to call their elected representatives and “tell them why landline service is so important to them.” People should “ask their legislator to request a hearing on SB 240.” The bill is in the Senate Committee on Workforce Development, Public Works and Military Affairs chaired by Senator Roger Roth.

You can use the AARP hotline to call for action: 844-254-6876. Call now – while you still can!

Three months have passed since Governor Scott Walker said he would repay taxpayers for bills run up while he was running for President. Has he given himself a no-interest loan?

MADISON - Nearly three months have passed since Governor Walker ended his presidential campaign and the day he promised to repay state taxpayers for costs incurred during his presidential campaign. As homeowners and small businesses begin receiving their property tax bills, the outstanding debt racked up by Governor Walker’s presidential campaign has largely gone unpaid.

The most recent news accounts suggest he still owes Wisconsin taxpayers nearly $70,000 for expenses he charged to taxpayers during the first 6 months of 2015.

“Millions of Wisconsin homeowners and small business owners are in the process of paying their property tax bills while Governor Walker continues to ignore his responsibility to repay taxpayers for the costs they incurred for his presidential campaign,” said Senator Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay). “Essentially he is receiving a no interest loan from state taxpayers. It’s a sweetheart deal that he’s giving himself and it really does seem to straddle--if not cross--an ethical line.”

Hansen and State Representative Katrina Shankland (D-Stevens Point) introduced the Taxpayer Protection Act earlier this year that would require state elected officials running for federal office to report and swiftly reimburse taxpayers for campaign related travel expenses.

Said Hansen, “His lack of concern for taxpayers makes our case for why we need to pass the Taxpayer Protection Act, so this never happens again.”

“So far he hasn’t even repaid taxpayers what he owes for the first part of the year. And we don’t even know how much he owes from the remainder of his campaign. Given his million dollars of campaign debt who knows if taxpayers will ever see a full accounting of what he owes them much less receive full payment from him,” Hansen said.

Earlier this month Wisconsin homeowners and small businesses began receiving their property tax bills, many of them containing an increase. As they begin to pay those bills many might be wondering if it’s time for the Governor to pay his as well.

“At this point I think they should go back and add on interest and penalties to his entire bill", says Hansen. "Most taxpayers don’t get no-interest, sweetheart loans like he’s getting."

"If he is looking for guidance he could consult the state tax code and pay the interest rate and penalties that are added on to the bills of those people who fall behind on paying their taxes", concludes Hansen. "Perhaps that would provide some incentive for him to make good on his promise to repay taxpayers.”

***

Legislative Staffer Jay Wadd contributed to this story.

Guest columnist Senator Jon Erpenbach talks about the value of the Wisconsin Consumer Act in consumer credit transactions in Wisconsin.

MADISON - Maybe it is our strong work ethic because Wisconsin consumers expect to get what we pay for. From services and food monitored and regulated by the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) to the Consumer Act enforced by the Department of Justice, Wisconsin’s consumer laws are a model for many other states and remain one of the most comprehensive laws in the nation.

Nearly every purchase you make, every service you pay for, the gas we buy, the food we eat, the milk we drink and many more products and services are regulated by the laws of DATCP and the Department of Financial Institutions (DFI) including the Consumer Act. The strong values of our state are the framework of our consumer protection laws. Safety, remedy, inspection and the value of every purchase and monetary agreement in this state are important to the people that live here.

The Wisconsin Consumer Act is the state law that regulates consumer credit transactions and debt collection. Consumer credit transactions are transactions that include a finance charge or are payable in more than four installments. Examples of consumer credit transactions are loans, credit cards, credit sales, second mortgages and leases.

Not all credit transactions are covered by the WCA. Transactions not covered are those that are over $25,000, made to businesses or are secured by first lien real estate mortgages. The WCA also does not cover non-credit issues, such as those involving checking or savings accounts.

Major provisions of the WCA:

• Require detailed disclosures in credit contracts and advertisements
• Limit certain interest and non-interest charges assessed in credit transactions
• Provide a three day right to cancel certain contracts
• Require judicial process in certain repossessions
• Prohibit certain collection practices

DATCP also administers the Wisconsin No Call List laws. Every year violations of the “do not call” law top the list of consumer complaints.

If you believe that you have been wronged in a consumer transaction through a faulty product, lack of the service that was promised to you, or unfair practices in general you can file a complaint online at http://datcp.wi.gov/Consumer/Consumer_Complaints/?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1 or you can request a complaint be mailed to you by calling the Consumer Protection Hotline at 1-800-422-7128.

Good business practices are a core value in Wisconsin and our citizens expect that when they make a purchase or contract for a service they will receive quality. For more information on Wisconsin’s consumer protections law please contact my office at 888-549-0027 or 608-266-6670 or via email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Politicians are fond of saying government should be run like a business. The WEDC is proof of the folly in that philosophy. Business and government are totally different creatures, and they have separate purposes.

MADISON - To the greatest extent possible, government should stick to doing those things private businesses can’t or won’t do.

This rule gets broken all the time, almost always with less than favorable results.

Take Wisconsin’s approach to promoting job creation, for example. The state’s economic development agency has been a complete failure. No wonder. What you have in the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation is a bunch of state bureaucrats pretending to be investment bankers. Wannabe entrepreneurs who’ve sought private financing and had their projects turned down by investment banks, venture capitalists and angel investors are able to make a few well-placed political donations, get some strings pulled, and get financing from the WEDC courtesy of state taxpayers.

Here we have the public sector acting as the investor of last resort for enterprises that private sector financiers won’t touch. That’s not only proven to be a waste of taxpayer money, but a prime example of government getting involved where it does not belong.

Politicians are fond of saying government should be run like a business. The WEDC is proof of the folly in that philosophy. Business and government are totally different creatures, and they have separate purposes.

Successful private businesses have to be able to turn a profit. But not everything that is profitable has social value or promotes the common good. And not everything that is socially valuable or advances the public interest is profitable. Pornography is undeniably profitable and thrives in the private sector, but has questionable social value and is often associated with social ills. Likewise, it is hard to see how gambling makes us better people or strengthens our society but it is a lucrative business. The same can generally be said for sports, fashion and most television programming.

On the other hand, it can’t be plausibly disputed that such things as schools, libraries, parks, police and fire departments, sanitation crews, and military forces are valuable or even indispensable to our society, but none of them would exist if they had to be profitable.

Here is another place where Wisconsin has strayed from common sense. Educating all of our children, regardless of need or disability, is not profitable. The private sector can’t do it. The only sure way to run a school and turn a profit is to cherry-pick students who are easiest to teach and steer clear of those whose needs make them considerably more costly to educate. Wisconsin has chosen to favor schools that are not required to take all comers, rapidly expanding its private school voucher program and sharply increasing funding for voucher schools while cutting state aid for public schools that are mandated to accommodate all students no matter how expensive they are to serve.

Business and government are different creatures that serve separate purposes. Government cannot be run like a business because the public sector’s role in our society is so fundamentally different than the private sector’s. And businesses surely should not be expected to operate like the government. The private sector has its place, and its rules. So does the public sector.

To each its own.

Sen. Kathleen Vinehout writes about the latest phone scam effecting people across the state and provides information about where people can turn if they received such a call and how to register their phones for the Do Not Call List.

ALMA, WI - “I’ve been getting a lot of calls from blocked and private numbers,” Pat from rural Hixton told me. “We called the phone company and asked them to stop those calls, but I’m not sure what else we can do”. Pat told me many of the calls asked her to change her credit cards to a “better deal”.

Pat couldn’t remember the last time she signed up for Wisconsin’s No Call List. “It was a while ago,” she said.

The No Call List protects people from unwanted calls and texts. Frequently these calls come from telemarketing companies. Sometimes the calls are scammers trying to collect personal information to take advantage of the unwary.

Wisconsin’s Bureau of Consumer Protections staff work to protect people from unwanted calls, enforce laws and alert unsuspecting citizens to scams. The Bureau is housed in the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.

Getting all your phone numbers – including the cell phones of teens and college students – helps cut down on fraud and criminal activity. For those who use the Internet to make calls – called VoIP – you can also protect those numbers.

Big changes came to the No Call List last summer. My legislative colleagues and I passed a law to use the federal Do Not Call List as of August 2014. The big change is that once your phone number is registered, it is permanently on the federal Do Not Call List.

Before this legislative change, phone numbers registered with Wisconsin’s No Call List had to be renewed every two years. As I told Pat, two years goes by fast.

If your numbers were not on the No Call List last summer, the numbers are probably not on the federal Do No Call List now. If you’ve gotten a new number in the past year and a half, you definitely need to sign up now.

Getting your numbers protected is easy. You can do this on-line at https://www.donotcall.gov or call 1-888-382-1222 (TTY: 1-866-290-4236). Be sure to call from the number you want to protect.

You can check to make sure your phone numbers are registered by using the previously mentioned toll-free number or this link: https://www.donotcall.gov/confirm/conf.aspx.

Once your number is registered, telemarketers have 31 days to update their lists. If you receive an unwanted call after 31 days, you should file a complaint at the following link: https://mydatcp.wi.gov/Complaints/complaint/create/1443c589-da19-e511-af89-0050568c06ae

Several details of Pat’s story made me suspicious. For one, it is illegal in Wisconsin to use a blocked number for a telephone marketing call. It is also illegal to not disclose the number from which the telemarketer is calling. You can find more details about the rules at this link: http://datcp.wi.gov/uploads/Consumer/pdf/NoCall-TelemarketerFAQ287.pdf

Recently I received a call from a constituent who received intimidating calls from a person who said he was from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). After research, we discovered the IRS does not notify people of problems by phone. They will contact individuals in the form of an official letter. The IRS will only use the phone to address problems if you agree.

When I checked on credit card phone scams, I learned voice mailboxes across the country were being flooded with offers to lower interest rates. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigates credit card scams. Officials warn people who get robocalls offering lower interest rates to listen to the calls with “extreme skepticism” and delete the calls. The callers will charge a fee to find a lower interest rate, which is something you can do for free.

Be suspicious of any prerecorded call selling something. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. And remember, if you are on the Do Not Call List it’s illegal for a company to solicit your business through a robocall.

Remind your friends and family they should not provide personal or financial information over the phone.

If you or someone you know has been a victim of a credit card scam, report the incident. You can report all kinds of scams – including telemarketing, credit card, Internet shopping at 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357 or https://ftccomplaintassistant.gov/#crnt&panel1-1.

A little bit of skepticism goes a long way to protect ourselves. Enjoy the Holiday Season and be safe!