Surely you realize that local governments have been doing this in all sorts of industries. The give property tax abatements to WalMart or sales tax abatements

Surely you realize that local governments have been doing this in all sorts of industries. The give property tax abatements to WalMart or sales tax abatements for equipment deployed in a data center within their borders. This is nothing new. And like someone else mentioned, TWC and Comcast have had de-facto monopolies for the past 20-30 years. Cable companies are bound by a franchise agreement with the city. One of the things they agree to in that agreement is that they have non-exclusive access to the market via the public right-of-way. Also consider that one of the things cities will do is try to get ANYTHING that will bring jobs and industry/investment to their community. Growing the tax base is a prime directive of any city.