West Virginia Leaders Want Full Review of Verizon Telecom Deal

West Virginia House Speaker Richard Thompson and 30 other members of the House of Delegates want a full review of the proposed sale of landlines by Verizon to Frontier Communications.

The elected officials called on the Public Service Commission to reject the "fast track" review Verizon and Frontier want and instead make sure that West Virginians can see how this deal will affect them. CWA is calling the sale bad news for workers, consumers and communities.

Verizon wants to sell its landlines to Frontier for $3.3 billion in cash plus another $5.3 billion in Frontier stock that will go to Verizon shareholders. The deal is structured so that Verizon can avoid paying taxes on the deal, using a tax loophole known as the reverse Morris Trust. 

So far, these deals haven't worked out so well for consumers. Fairpoint, the company that bought Verizon's lines in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont is on the rocks, Hawaiian Telecom, which bought Verizon's operations in 2005, filed for bankruptcy, as did Idearc, the Yellow Pages company that Verizon spun off.