• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Portland Cell Phone Tax Grabs Out-of-State Opposition

Posted on: Tuesday, 16 August 2005, 21:00 CDT

Aug. 16--Clare from Southwest Portland objects to the city's proposed "huge new tax hike" on cell phones, and she faxed Portland Mayor Tom Potter to let him know.

So did Christi from Northeast Portland and Ryan from Southeast Portland.

Since last fall, Potter and Portland's four commissioners have received what looked like a landslide of local opposition to the city's proposed 5 percent tax on wireless phone company revenues -- more than 2,500 faxes, e-mails and phone calls from people in a tizzy about the tax.

But much of that public outcry was funneled through Washington, D.C., and a Web site paid for by the wireless industry's most influential trade group, CTIA-The Wireless Association. The group created and financed MyWireless.org, a nonprofit that bills itself as "America's wireless voice," to oppose taxes and regulation of the wireless industry. The group has registered Portland's tax opposition through newspaper ads, form letters, a public opinion poll and a phone bank.

MyWireless.org's executives and some consumers say the group provides an outlet for genuine no-more-taxes frustration. But a Portland official called the group's work a ploy to further the interests of wireless phone companies. Though MyWireless.org pegs itself a consumer advocacy group, no one on its steering committee specifically represents consumers.

David C. Olson, director of Portland's Office of Cable Communications and Franchise Management, characterized the opposition to Portland's cell phone tax as a movement "bought and paid for by the industry."

Those who follow the public relations industry say MyWireless.org uses tactics common among "Astroturf" groups, a term political junkies use for synthetic grass-roots opposition.

Sheldon Rampton, a watchdog of the public relations industry, said MyWireless.org uses conventional grass-roots techniques, supplemented with technology and cash.

"It creates a plastic, artificial imitation of democracy in place of real democracy," said Rampton, research director at the Center for Media and Democracy in Madison, Wis.

With Commissioner Randy Leonard's pushing, Portland has debated a new cell tax to plug city coffers for two years.

Commissioner Dan Saltzman now heads the department that regulates cell phones, and he gets to decide whether to bring the new tax up for a council vote. Saltzman, who is running for re-election next year, says his decision hinges, in part, on public opinion. He won't back a tax he thinks is destined for repeal at the ballot.

With MyWireless.org in the game, Saltzman says he has to carefully measure how genuine Portland's opposition is amid the blitz of phone calls.

Generating opposition

After Leonard boasted this spring that he had locked up the City Council votes to tax cell phones, Portland became a flash point for Mywireless.org.

The group put an advertisement in The Oregonian in June to let Portlanders know about the tax debate and to draw people to its Web site. Kimberly Kuo, MyWireless.org's executive director, said that an ad was expensive but that it gave her group credibility among the myriad causes floated on the Internet.

"It adds a great deal of legitimacy," she said.

Kuo, a former CTIA executive, said the organization is "meant to educate and engage consumers."

MyWireless.org has run campaigns to oppose taxes or regulation in California and Missouri. In Pennsylvania, the group says its Web site generated 40,000 e-mails asking the governor and state legislators to repeal a wireless phone tax.

MyWireless.org's Web site uses folksy language dotted with exclamation points, encouraging consumers to speak in a "clear and powerful voice" to protect a "world where powerful forces are trying to shackle that freedom with harmful regulations and heavy taxes."

Form letter by e-mail

The group's home page colors Oregon red for "hot state issues." Click on the state, and a window opens: "Oppose Portland's Utility Tax On Wireless! Click here to speakout!!"

A few clicks, type in your name and e-mail address, and the opposition letter is on its way to City Hall.

The group's form letters, vetted by focus groups and polling, are intended to evoke the tone of an average cell phone user. "We want this to be authentic," Kuo said.

The group's approach attracted Ryan Holman. The Southeast Portland man opened an e-mail from MyWireless.org alerting him to the tax debate at City Hall. He clicked to the group's Web site to write Potter.

"I urge you to oppose any effort to impose an unfair and excessive new utility tax on wireless service," his letter read.

Holman, who works 14-hour days for an erosion-control company, said he liked the form letter because "it helps me voice my opinion when I wouldn't normally have time to voice it."

Most Portland residents agree with Holman's opposition to the tax, according to MyWireless.org. The group claims poll results showing 59 percent of Portland residents against the tax.

Jason Williams, executive director of the Taxpayers Association of Oregon in Tigard, says Portland residents "feel like they're being overtaxed." Williams says his group was among a handful of local organizations that rallied its members against the cell tax.

Phone calls and faxes

MyWireless.org also employs telemarketers in a practice known as patch-through calling. In Portland, that helped prompt more than 600 phone calls to City Hall.

Christi C. McGee, director of grass-roots advocacy for MyWireless.org, said the telemarketers target people who've signed up as MyWireless.org's members and names culled from voter rolls. She didn't answer questions about how the group created its Portland list.

When calling people in Portland, telemarketers explained the tax and offered to patch people who were interested directly to City Hall.

"After 200, we stopped counting," said Jamaal Folsom, staff assistant to Commissioner Erik Sten.

Beverly Corr, a Saltzman aide, said many of the more than 200 callers to her office said they were told to call by someone, but "a lot of them didn't even know who it was."

At first, nobody in City Hall knew where the faxes came from.

Holman's fax and hundreds of others rolled into Potter's office with no obvious signs that MyWireless.org sent them. The tip-off came from a return fax number with a 202 area code. Potter's aides traced the number on the Internet to the CTIA, then to MyWireless.org.

The group's site makes little mention of CTIA, which is paying MyWireless.org's $16 million budget this year.

Saltzman -- the Portland elected official deciding whether the tax comes up for a vote -- says he's been surprised by the coordinated campaign to oppose the tax. He will consider all the messages prompted by MyWireless.org. "But it's not as significant as someone who sits down to compose an original letter," he said.

Leonard was more blunt. He said he hopes voters recognize that the people behind MyWireless.org "aren't from our state, don't care about our state."

-----

To see more of The Oregonian, or to subscribe the newspaper, go to http://www.oregonian.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

Source: The Oregonian

More News in this Category