Internet Access Feud Leads 3rd Panelist to Quit

For the third time this week, a member of Mayor Richard Riordan’s Information Technology Commission has resigned after a bitter dispute with the mayor over how Los Angeles should approach the issue of high-speed Internet access.

Friday’s resignation of Commissioner Robert Duggan means that the five-member board no longer has a quorum, forcing an indefinite postponement of the question and emboldening members of the City Council who believe that Riordan’s zealousness has forced the resignations.

So dramatic was Duggan’s announcement that it overshadowed the long-awaited release of a report by the city’s Information Technology Agency on the same subject. The report’s conclusions echoed the mayor’s view that cable television companies, which have begun selling high-speed Internet access, should not be forced to open up their system to other Internet service providers.

That report--which also suggested revisiting that policy in the event that cable operators start to carve out monopolies--was scheduled to be taken up by the commission Monday. Duggan’s resignation, however, and the consequent lack of a quorum throw the entire subject into the kind of limbo that so often bogs down government in Los Angeles.

Late Friday, city officials were scrambling to figure out where the issue would head next. Riordan has the power to nominate commissioners for all three vacancies, but the City Council, which favors wider competition among Internet providers, can confirm or reject those nominations. The council also has the power to review the actions of city commissions, and it was widely expected to take up the matter after the technology panel had acted.

Now that the commission has disintegrated, however, it is not clear who should or can act next.

“This,” said one council member who is often supportive of the mayor, “is an unqualified mess.”

Riordan was not available for comment but said through a spokesman that he accepted the resignation of Duggan, one of the mayor’s original appointees to the commission.

The resignation, which is effective immediately, caps a week of mounting embarrassment for the Riordan administration. The mayor and his aides have tried for months to persuade their own commissioners to agree with Riordan’s view on limiting the number of firms offering high-speed access to the Internet. Failing to do that, the administration has watched the resignations come in rapid-fire succession, as the three commissioners have effectively voted with their feet against the mayor who put them in office.

Duggan’s resignation was not a surprise, since he is the third of three commissioners who has a view different from Riordan’s. Joyce Emerson, who strongly supported so-called open access to high-speed Internet connection via cable television hookups, quit Wednesday, two days after Alan Arkatov, who favored a compromise notion, announced his resignation.

But Duggan’s departure was compounded by another factor. Whereas Arkatov and Emerson left without comment, leaving others to explain their motives, Duggan went out with a blistering letter in which he challenged the mayor’s position and said that in the end he felt he had no option other than to quit.

Riordan’s view, according to the commissioner, fails to protect consumers and will lead to higher prices and inferior service. Although AT&T; prominently supports the same view that has been adopted by the mayor, Duggan dismissed the arguments in favor of it.

“The city should not . . . kowtow to the wishes of an industry seeking monopoly power at the expense of all Angelenos,” he wrote.

The open-access issue is one with huge financial implications for some of the nation’s biggest companies and one that could determine the future of Internet access in this area, as well as influence policy nationwide. As a result, many people are watching the political meltdown in Los Angeles. On Friday, some expressed surprise both at the substance of the report on the topic and the resignations.

George Kieffer, a partner at the law firm of Manatt Phelps & Phillips who is representing GTE on this issue, said the report failed to justify the recommendation against open access, the position his client favors.

“It’s a conclusion in search of a report,” he said. “The report has no connection with the wants and needs of L.A. consumers. No wonder the commissioners resigned.”