The Missouri House of Representatives has passed a bill prohibiting traffic ticket quotas—which ordinarily wouldn't be much of a tech news story, but this particular bill includes an entirely unrelated provision that would make it a lot harder for cities and towns to offer Internet service to their residents.

The traffic ticket bill was approved by the Missouri Senate without any municipal broadband provision. But when it got to the House, Republican legislator Lyndall Fraker proposed an amendment preventing cities and towns from competing against private Internet service providers unless they meet certain conditions or have a municipality-wide vote. The House approved the bill, including Fraker's amendment, on Monday.

Missouri is one of about 20 states that already have restrictions on municipal telecom services, but Fraker's proposal would make it more difficult for cities and towns to offer broadband. The amendment was described yesterday by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance's Community Broadband Networks project, which urged Missouri residents to contact the bill sponsors "and explain how you feel about amendments that do not relate to the substance of their bill."

Whether the final legislation includes the muni broadband provision depends on a conference committee composed of five lawmakers from each chamber. The Senate refused to greenlight the House's version yesterday, leading to the formation of the conference committee. Fraker is not on the conference committee, perhaps a good sign for municipal broadband advocates.

Fraker's amendment is based on a bill he proposed earlier in the legislative session. As we reported at the time, city or town Internet services would have to be approved by a majority of voters in the municipality unless certain conditions are met. No vote has to be held if fewer than 50 percent of residents have access to Internet service or if the municipal network will cost less than $1 million over five years. Before a vote could be held, municipal leaders would be required to complete a financial study on the proposed network.

AT&T, which supports the muni broadband restrictions, donated $62,500 to political committees in Missouri in September. Comcast and CenturyLink have also made donations to Missouri lawmakers.

Referendum requirements often result in the failure of muni Internet proposals because the process is time-consuming and costly. “Moreover, in most cases, the incumbent communications providers vastly outspend municipalities and dominate the local news through their control of the local cable system," James Baller, an attorney who works on municipal broadband issues, wrote in an FCC filing in 2014.

In our earlier story about Fraker's proposal, the lawmaker argued that “The only limit this bill puts on the local governments is asking the citizens to vote on investments of over one million dollars. Many feel government shouldn't compete with private companies unless the people of that government entity have good reason to.”

Fraker has received $3,450 from AT&T in his time as a lawmaker since 2011. He has also received $2,300 from CenturyLink and $1,500 from Comcast.

The traffic ticket quota bill, by the way, prohibits cities and towns or law enforcement agencies from enforcing policies that require or encourage employees to issue a certain number of traffic citations.