Tennessee lawmakers have defeated a proposal to expand municipal broadband, with one state representative accusing fellow elected officials of caving to pressure from lobbyists. "It's a testament to the power of lobbying against this bill and not listening to our electorate," Rep. Kevin Brooks (R-Cleveland) told reporters after the vote, according to a Times Free Press article yesterday.

Brooks didn't name lobbyists for any specific companies but said, "I heard they hired 27 lawyers to fight."

Sen. Todd Gardenhire (R-Chattanooga) last month blamed AT&T for leading efforts to kill the bill. "We're talking about AT&T," Gardenhire said at the time. "They're the most powerful lobbying organization in this state by far."

AT&T publicly opposed the bill, saying that "taxpayer money should not be used to over-build or compete with the private sector." Tennessee House Speaker Beth Harwell (R-Nashville) has said she prefers "that the private sector take this over."

Comcast has also previously tried to prevent expansion of municipal broadband in Tennessee, having sued the Electric Power Board (EPB) of Chattanooga in 2008 to prevent it from building a fiber network. Comcast lost the suit, and EPB built its network.

EPB has been at the center of the most recent efforts to expand municipal broadband in the state. The utility petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to preempt a state law that prevents it from expanding outside its electric service area to adjacent towns that have poor Internet service, and the FCC agreed to do so despite opposition from state officials and AT&T. Tennessee sued the FCC to preserve its law that limits city-run broadband networks, and oral arguments in the case are scheduled to be heard tomorrow.

Not content to wait for the legal process to play out, Brooks and Gardenhire were pushing legislation that would remove the state-level restriction that prevents broadband-providing electric utilities from expanding outside their electric service area. But the proposal—and even an amendment that would have scaled it back to include just a pilot project involving EPB—failed Tuesday in a 5-3 vote by the state House Business and Utilities Subcommittee.

"On Tuesday at the state Capitol in Nashville, a platoon of lobbyists and executives, including AT&T Tennessee President Joelle Phillips, were present in the House hearing room or watching on a video screen as Brooks presented the bill and the amendment," the Times Free Press article said. Despite defeat in the current legislative session, proponents of expanding municipal broadband "vowed to return in 2017."

UPDATE: Comcast told Ars that it did not take a formal position on this bill or other similar ones in Tennessee "and does not lobby their passage or defeat." But Comcast clearly thinks the bill was a bad idea. "We have provided information on our investment and broadband infrastructure in Tennessee, and the factual experiences of municipal broadband efforts in communities across the country (many of which have left communities saddled in debt, or like Provo, where the infrastructure was sold to Google for $1 but the debt remains)," Comcast said.