Lawyers representing 59 cities, including Austin, Houston, Dallas and San Antonio, on Wednesday asked an Austin district court judge to temporarily block a Texas law passed last year that cuts government fees for telecommunications and cable companies.

Senate Bill 1152, which took effect Sept. 1 and started to apply to payments starting Jan. 1, allows companies that offer both cable and phone services over the same lines to only pay the lesser of the two charges to local governments for using their rights-of-way. No physical change is required to add new uses of a line.

C. Robert Heath, one of the attorneys who represents the cities, said the law amounts to an unconstitutional gift of public resources to private corporations and said estimates show it would cost cities at least $100 million a year.

The cities argue that the Texas Constitution forbids cities, counties and other political subdivisions from giving away public money or things of value to private groups or individuals. The companies are not required to pass on savings to consumers because the state can’t regulate cable rates.

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“It’s like ‘buy one, get one free,’” Heath said. “So we’re saying, ‘No, no, you can’t do that. You’re giving away the use of the right-of-way.’”

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner had pushed legislators to oppose the measure and has said it cost the city about $17 million in annual revenue this year and has hurt its ability to offer services to residents.

“Given the fee would fluctuate with the number of cable customers, what is not changing is the significant impact this has had on our city budget,” Bill Kelly, Houston’s director of government relations, said Wednesday. “Anyone asking the cable companies why no one has lowered their bills?”

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City of San Antonio officials say the city’s revenue would fall by more than $7 million this year, and Dallas expects to be out about $9.3 million in revenue.

“We joined the lawsuit to protect public assets and the services they help fund,” said Jeff Coyle, San Antonio’s director of government and public affairs

Assistant attorney general Drew Harris, who represents the state, argued that the reduced fee is not the same as a gift, making the analogy of toll roads that charge per car, not per passenger. Harris added that Texas law says the state owns rights-of-way, meaning the cost of using them is a matter for the Legislature to decide.

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The cities are also ultimately seeking to strike down a 2017 law, Senate Bill 1004, which limited the fee cities charge for “small cell node” permits in public rights-of-way to $250. That law cost cities $800 million a year in fee revenue, according to an estimate from the nonpartisan Legislative Budget Board. A presiding judge denied a request for a temporary injunction of that law in February 2018.

In August 2017, the city of Austin sued in federal court over that law, but a judge ruled in the state’s favor in March of last year.

Sen. Kelly Hancock, who authored both bills and who has received more than $200,000 from telecom companies since 2006, on Wednesday defended the legislation. He, and the House companion bill’s author, state Rep. Dade Phelan, have noted that only one other state, Oregon, still charges both fees.

“The principle behind SB 1152 is simple: government needs to keep up with changing technology,” Hancock said.

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Charging two fees for a single line, he said, “just doesn't make sense, and frankly, getting rid of this duplicative tax on business should make telecom services a little less expensive for consumers, which is the end goal.”

Judge Lora Livingston did not say much to indicate the way she was leaning, but she did seem to reject the argument that only city governments are affected by the reduction in revenue.

“Cities are made up of individuals who live in them, so if the city is at a loss, so are the citizens who are members of that city,” Livingston said. “I don’t know that this ‘us and them’ scenario really makes any sense.”

Livingston won’t make a decision for at least another two weeks — the amount of time she gave the state to file a response to a late filing by the plantiffs — but emphasized before closing the urgency of reaching a final decision.

“One of the things I’m concerned about, frankly, is that if I grant a temporary injunction now, and then we go to trial six months from now or three months from now or whenever, and you get a different decision by a different judge, we’ll have caused mass confusion and concern by the companies, by the consumers, by the cities,” Livingston said.

“Either way, you need to have some finality to these issues, so that the consumer can understand what’s going on, the Legislature can decide what they may want to do next session, which is going to be a short, less-than-a-year away, and cities have a chance to plan budgets and get their respective houses in order, if you will.”