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 Fast and reliable wireless internet
service is increasingly important in everyday life. To that end, the Illinois
General Assembly has passed a bill that would restrict municipalities’ ability
to regulate the siting of equipment that facilitates wireless access.
But in an attempt to achieve greater access to wireless services, the bill
tightly restricts how local governments can regulate and charge for equipment
located on municipal property.
Senate Bill 1451, the “Small Wireless Facilities Deployment Act,” would limit
the ability of municipalities other than Chicago to impose requirements on
wireless service providers that wish to locate “small wireless facilities” –
communications equipment that takes up no more than 25 cubic feet (about the
size of a refrigerator) with antennae that can be contained within 6 cubic feet
(about the size of a mini-refrigerator) – on utility poles or other structures
in public rights of way or in industrial or commercial zones.
The bill restricts how local governments can regulate small wireless facilities
collocation, including by:
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Curtailing the kinds of
restrictions municipalities can impose on the “collocation” of small
wireless facilities
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Limiting the amount
municipalities can charge wireless service providers in collocation
application fees
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Mandating the required
decision-making process, setting the timeframe in which municipalities must
review and render decisions on completed applications to collocate small
wireless facilities, giving local governments 30 days to approve or deny an
application
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Laying out the circumstances
under which an application shall be “deemed approved”
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Setting forth the minimum
duration of small wireless facilities permits
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Capping the fees municipalities
can charge wireless providers to locate their equipment on municipal
property, such as utility poles and streetlamps
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Unsurprisingly, many
local leaders are balking at Springfield telling them how their
cities and counties must handle the collocation of wireless
communications equipment.
DuPage County Board
Chairman Dan Cronin said in a statement reported by the Daily
Herald, “In the past year, state lawmakers have already siphoned
more than $3.5 million of DuPage taxpayers’ money back to
Springfield to balance their budget. … Now lawmakers want to give
away our infrastructure, paid for and maintained by local
taxpayers.”
Aurora Mayor Richard C. Irvin said the proposed law “allows private
companies to have a monopoly over public infrastructure,” according
to the Daily Herald, and that public utility poles could become “an
eyesore” with many small wireless facilities affixed to them.
Naperville Mayor Steve Chirico said small is a misnomer and that the
antennas are “fairly large pieces of equipment” that could “change
the landscape of what our neighborhoods look like today.”
It is not clear yet whether this bill would achieve its purpose of
“ensur[ing] that public and private Illinois consumers … benefit
from these [wireless] services as soon as possible and … that
providers of wireless access have a fair and predictable process for
the deployment of small wireless facilities …”
But it is certain that many local leaders view this measure as the
heavy hand of state government stripping local governments of their
rightful authority over municipal property.
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