The telephone tax, successfully defeated with the help of DSAM 2 years ago, has been resurrected by Michigan House Appropriations Committee Chair George Cushingberry (D-Detroit). The article below is courtesy of MIRS. Hit the read more link for the rest.

House Appropriations Committee Chair George CUSHINGBERRY (D-Detroit) told MIRS today that he's bringing back a 2007 proposal to put a tax on telephone lines, but this time he's adding a sweetener to bring the telephone companies on board.  

Instead of making his primary sale that a phone tax is needed to maintain public safety levels in Michigan, Cushingberry wants to link a phone tax to a plan that would reimburse utilities for their costs of moving lines during road construction. Currently, utilities are forced to eat this expense, but Cushingberry is considering tapping into some federal road funding money to compensate companies like AT&T to some extent.  

Cushingberry didn't say how large of a phone tax he's looking at and if he wants to link whatever revenue is collected solely to public safety, as he did in 2007. But he said the state needs revenue and the phone tax is an equitable way to do it.

In late 2007, Cushingberry floated a 55-cent-a-month phone tax, which would be applied to cell phone users for the first time. From the money collected, Cushingberry wanted to set aside $2 million for the DNA labs in Sterling Heights and the Upper Peninsula (See "Phone Tax Still Has Dial Tone?" 12/6/07).

As part of an earlier proposal, Cushingberry floated an 81-cent-a-month phone tax on all lines. That would have generated $70 million. That money, too, would have gone to the State Police crime lab and a laundry list of other public safety initiatives (See "Phone Tax Moves At 81 Cents," 9/12/07).

"We haven't had any substantive conversations on the subject so it's too early to speculate what our reaction might be," said AT&T Spokesman Joe STEELE.

It's no secret in town that AT&T, DTE, Consumers Energy and the state's other utilities want a piece of road money to reimburse them for the cost of moving their lines during road construction (See "Utilities Ask For Cut Of Stimulus Road Money," 3/24/09).

But the road-building lobby and the municipalities have opposed giving the utility companies any re-imbursements, arguing that any money given to the electric company is money not going into road construction.