Simi, Thousand Oaks Battle Cable Companies : Media: The two cities are using a new federal law to seek lower rates, but they have had limited success.

Armed with a new federal law and learning cable television law on the job, civil servants in Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks are taking on multimillion-dollar communication giants in a battle to lower monthly cable rates.

As Simi Valley’s deputy director of environmental services, Joe Hreha has added to his daily duty of solid waste code enforcement and animal control the task of policing what Comcast Cablevision charges its 28,000 customers.

And in Thousand Oaks, media services coordinator Caroline R. Milton said the city has created two positions to monitor the city’s cable providers.

But Hreha and Milton say despite the authority to regulate what cable companies can charge, they have had limited success rolling back cable rates.

They say they are going up against a bevy of high-priced attorneys, lobbyists and executives who have an intricate understanding of the ever-changing and Byzantine world of communication law.

“We feel sometimes that they have resources we can’t match,” Milton said. “Certainly the city is very limited in what it can do.”

Added Hreha: “It’s a big job. But it is a law we have been tasked to administer. We are doing that to the best of our ability.”

For nearly a year, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks officials have been trying to roll back rates for households that are wired for cable.

More than 90% of the homes in Thousand Oaks are served either by Ventura County Cablevision or Falcon Cablevision.

Cable company officials say the cities are overstepping their bounds in ordering unreasonable rate reductions.

“They are trying to tell the operator how to function,” said Jeff Carlson, Comcast’s area vice president. “These regulations are extraordinarily complex. And in particular, the smaller cities like Simi Valley have problems with the resources needed to interpret these rules.”

All three cable companies have resisted the cities’ efforts at every turn.

In Thousand Oaks, city officials recently ordered Falcon Cablevision and Ventura County Cablevision to cut their monthly bills. The cable companies are expected to appeal the city’s order to the Federal Communications Commission.

Until the appeals are heard, Thousand Oaks customers will continue to pay the rates objected to by the city.

The city contends that the two cable companies made errors in calculating their rates. Ventura County Cablevision President David LaRue readily agrees mistakes were made, but argues the rates should remain in effect because the company made just as many mistakes benefiting its customers as it did in the company’s favor.

“Filling out the rate forms is a little bit like doing your taxes--you have to be an expert on every line,” he said.

At the center of the dispute is the company’s equipment charges, including installation and reconnect fees.

But city officials said mistakes made in the company’s favor need to be corrected while mistakes made in the customers’ favor should remain in place.

“We went through the same drill last time around,” LaRue said. “And the FCC ruled in our favor.”

Falcon has been ordered to cut its basic monthly rate from $20 to $16.69. In response, Falcon said it needs to raise its rate to $23.16. Falcon serves 4,724 customers in Thousand Oaks.

Ventura County Cablevision has been ordered to reduce installation costs and other service fees by more than $20.

In Simi Valley, Comcast Cablevision has been ordered to roll back its monthly rates by 20 cents per customer. And just like its brethren in Thousand Oaks, Comcast has appealed its rollback order to the FCC, and residents will continue to pay the protested rates.

A quick decision is not expected on any of the appeals. The FCC has 7,000 such cases pending.

“And the FCC is issuing new rulings everyday that significantly change the law,” said Edward Shafer, a cable consultant hired by Thousand Oaks to help set the rates.

In 1993, the cities were given the authority to regulate a cable company’s basic tier, which are local broadcast channels. After receiving consumer complaints that cable companies, which have monopolies in most of the areas they serve, increased rates much faster than the rate of inflation, Congress enacted the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act.

Now city officials have 1,400 pages of regulations to wade through and daily changes in the law to digest as they set out to regulate the cable industry.

“The industry has a lot of experts,” Shafer said. “The cities don’t have a lot of money to keep sending lobbyists to Washington like the cable companies do.”

The law allows cities to cap the monthly bills of cable companies that do not have direct competition. In Ventura County, no two cable television companies go head-to-head.

But the companies are refusing to charge lower rates until the FCC hears their appeals.

“The cable companies are in deep denial over this,” said Milton, the Thousand Oaks media services coordinator.

Not so, counters LaRue. If anybody is in denial, it’s Thousand Oaks, he said.

“We deal with a lot of other franchising authorities--Camarillo, Moorpark and Ventura County,” LaRue said. “We usually work things out.”

To complicate matters, the Republicans on Capitol Hill in keeping with their “contract with America” are expected to introduce a sweeping communications law this summer. If the law passes, the cities’ ability to regulate the cable industry will be severely limited, Shafer said.

And deregulation of the industry could also render the cities’ authority moot. Telephone companies will soon be allowed to compete in the cable television industry. GTE has announced it will use Ventura County as a test market and offer cable television service to the county in the next three years.

Meanwhile, Ventura County Cablevision has enlisted the help of a Washington, D.C.-based law firm to fight Thousand Oaks’ rate rollback order. In the letter sent to city officials, the cable company has threatened to ask the FCC to decertify the city as a franchising authority for its “patently illegal rate order.”

Shafer dismisses the threat as saber rattling. But he concedes the company may have a point, given recent FCC rulings.

“It could go either way,” he said. “I wouldn’t bet money on the outcome.”