Editorial Comments: It appears that this committee did not treat Mr.Pudner respectfully. Just because committee members disagreed with him was no reason to be overbearing and rude. You invite us to speak, and then abuse us. You obviously don’t want the opposition to be heard anymore than you want us to have to bear listening to a few harmless phone messages every year around election time. Nothing like trying to silence the opposition and rob us of our free speech. That’s what this bill is really all about … silencing the little guy. Shame on Colapietro and General Law Committee! You’ve just shown us how little you like to listen. Here’s to open mouths and closed minds!

We're going to move on to Senate Bill 157, AN ACT PROHIBITING POLITICAL ROBO-CALLS, the first to sign up is John Pudner. Now John, you have signed up for no less than five bills

JOHN PUDNER: With your indulgence, can this testimony apply to all of them?

REP. STONE: You know what? It'd be my pleasure. And doesn't mean you want 15 minutes, does it? Fair enough. Go ahead.

JOHN PUDNER: Thank you. Mr. Chairman, thank you. My name is John Pudner, and I'm here on behalf of ccAdvertising, which makes phone calls that could be banned or curtailed under legislation aimed at stopping robo-calls.

In considering this legislation, I'd ask you to please put yourself in the position of one of your constituents, a community activist perhaps, who's concerned that a 200,000 square foot big box store is about to be put in the backyard.

The developer has all the money and connections needed to rezone property from agricultural to industrial.

One option my company has successfully offered dozens of groups of citizens in this position is to conduct an automated survey through ccAdvertising of all the voters in the area, which costs only pennies per home.

The survey enables the community group to compile a list of other people who agree with them, who can then join their group and come to a zoning hearing to let their First Amendment voices be heard.

As recently as last Wednesday, a survey we ran resulted in 300 people attending just such a township zoning hearing in Pennsylvania. I doubt that more than a few people would have come or known of the hearing based on the little legal notice in the newspaper.

The First Amendment was written to protect political speech, just like this. There can be legitimate arguments about whether or not certain speech, such as profanity or pornography has a political component. That's a gray area.

Political speech is not a gray area. Banning community activists from using robo-calls, fliers, automated surveys that we oversee, are political in nature, and stopping this speech is directly political. Speech is protected by the First Amendment.

You may ask, why not just cut off the First Amendment to people on the DNC list, do-not-call list.

First, we found that we typically have greater responses to our survey from people on the DNC list, my guess is because they aren't getting solicited to buy things all the time, and the occasional political survey is okay. We actually have higher participation.

If you take away this inexpensive option for candidates or other entities reaching voters, you're going to be in the future be left with legislators who are very wealthy or spend all their time fundraising to use more expensive modes of communication.

Now what do you say to the constituent who's tired of getting 12 recorded messages on their machine every time they turn them on? First suggestion would be to call obnoxious campaigns and tell them you're voting against the candidate if they keep doing this.

Second, I would recommend that legislators could amend several of the bills in front of you to require telemarketers to display the phone number on caller id.

And also repeat it in the script, with the guarantee that if anyone calls the number that appears, their name is taken off that vendor list forever, they can never make another survey call to that home.

This has passed muster in the courts, and I did just want to briefly touch on a couple of things that have not passed muster.

The Van Bergen v. Minnesota case that was mentioned, my client, ccAdvertising, has made several million calls since that went into effect.

The courts threw out the ability of that law to stop interstate calls, it only stops calls within the state, Minnesota to Minnesota. That case is actually being used to throw out the Indiana law, which we're confident will happen in June.

Both the Democratic National Committee and ccAdvertising are on that case, and the Indiana law, to give you history, was put in I believe 18 years ago, never enforced until the last couple of months.

And we're very confident it won't pass muster under the same Eighth Court Circuit court decision used to throw out the Minnesota components.

And lastly, I do not believe that it is ever upheld that the DNC list used to stop commercial calls can be used to stop political surveys. To my knowledge, that has never been upheld.

So I think you're on the verge of potentially passing something that will be quickly thrown out, and I do think there are ways to accomplish the same goal that would past constitutional muster. Thank you.

REP. STONE: Thank you, John. Could you get us a copy or a citation for that case which validated the proposal you laid out of having a number show up on your caller id, being able to call that number.

And also, if you have a copy of that legislation as well, you can give that to either Dan Duffy from OLR, or to Ken Scott, the Committee Clerk, that would be helpful. And Senator Colapietro, followed by Representative Mazurek have questions for you.

SEN. COLAPIETRO: I've got questions, and also statements. First of all, you said put yourself in your constituent's shoes. I did that, and I do that, and I didn't do robo-calls, and they don't want the robo-calls.

So it should pass muster, because it's not just an infringement of speech, you can speak all you want to, but don't call my house. And that's what my constituents are saying.

So I'm saying I'm not infringing on anybody, if you want to talk, you can talk all you want to. Just don't use the phone that I pay for in my house and I have to use.

You want it as a marketing tool, that's what everybody else wants. Well, buy your own phone, and make your own phone calls and pay for them, and just because they're cheap doesn't mean constituents can stand it. I can't stand it myself.

And as far as the other part, where you take the name off the list, let me tell you, you call back there, and they're going to hang up on you.

They kept me on the phone yesterday for over 20 minutes, and I put the phone down, and I could listen to it with the phone call, and you know what it said? It hung up on me, after the second time I called it.

So that doesn't work. It might work in your eyes, but it doesn't work in the reality. Robo-calls are nuisance calls, and they are continuing to be a nuisance.

Now they are trying to sell me, they're not selling me anything. They're going to give me a free dish. So I want them to drop it off at my porch if I'm not there and just go away, you know?

Nothing is free in this world, so they're using every gadget and gimmick they can possibly think of to use my phone to get to me to make a profit off of me. And I say that that is constitutional.

And it's aggravating the daylights out of me and my constituents are telling me that it aggravates them. And I didn't make robo-calls, political robo-calls either, and they're saying they don't want anybody calling them either because they're going to vote against them.

And I'm glad I didn't make them, but that's what they're saying. Everything you said, they're already saying. But let me tell you, it doesn't work when you call them back.

And I gave the Commissioner a few minutes ago, or an hour ago, the telephone numbers of Massachusetts and Connecticut. And if you don't want to speed in Connecticut, over 55 miles an hour, then don't come to Connecticut, because in Alabama maybe you can go 75.

Go ahead and go to Alabama and go 75, but you're in Connecticut and you're illegally doing something wrong. People in Connecticut don't want robo-calls. Trust me. I'm not the only one that's against it.

I wrote the no call list, so don't tell me about the muster, because I wrote it myself and negotiated it. So I think that people have a right to have privacy in their home.

And if they want their phone to be paid for by themselves, and they don't want you to call them, they should be an opt out, and your way doesn't work, it simply doesn't work.

REP. STONE: Thank you, Senator. Representative Mazurek.

REP. MAZUREK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It was very difficult to follow that. I don't mean following your point, Senator Colapietro, I mean, I just wanted to go back to your point about how someone could opt out.

Your recommendation is that somebody who does robo-calls would have to have their caller id number show, which means the consumer would have to have a caller id machine in their house, in order to opt out.

JOHN PUDNER: I'm sorry, and repeated in the script too, to protect against just that case you're talking about.

REP. MAZUREK: Okay, so they would repeat it in the script, and then they would have to turn around and call the robo-call, the campaign, and say I don't want to receive this.

But as you know, every year we have a multitude of candidates who are running, they change every year, and it would be a yearly thing.

How do you feel about having a do-not-call list, so that the consumer can say I don't want to receive any robo-calls from anyone under any circumstances, here's my number, and put it on the list?

JOHN PUDNER: Sure. I'm concerned there, because campaigns can be run to get people on lists. We've seen in some states, over half of the state is now on the commercial do-not-call list, which is great.

We, frankly, love it when people can't call and ask people to buy satellite dishes or anything else, because they're not being pestered, and by the time we run a survey they haven't been beaten up 20 times. My concern of DNC list is there are all kinds of ways to drive people toward it.

A direct mail vendor, who likes his form of free speech but doesn't really want to compete for campaign dollars with the phone vendor can send out a mail piece driving people to something like that, if you're talking an overall do-not-call list.

Radio can, TV can, anyone who wants, it becomes a competitive thing within the industry, and I guess the more important point, and I understand the sensitivity, people buy a phone and now it's being used to harass me, and this is where the First Amendment is tough.

I mean, you buy a TV, and I bet you most people would ask to ban negative political TV commercials, probably ban all TV commercials. You know, I bet they'd ask to ban on the radio.

These are all things we buy, and obviously the First Amendment can lead to some uncomfortable situations, where a lot of people are upset about what's happening.

I guess, we would certainly love to see enforcement from some of the fly by night people who are buying these robo-calls machines and just drilling out calls day after day and turning voters off.

We'd love to see strict enforcement and real punishment if they do not take someone off a list. That's something we work very hard to do, every call that comes into our office, to the ccAdvertising office is taken off that list.

And I guess what I'm proposing is, that works well for us, we get the names off, we'd love to make it industry wide, if you can do that with legislation.

And I guess the second half of that is I don't think any of these other approaches have passed muster, with all due respect. Obviously, there can be a first, but we're following a path on laws that have been thrown out.

And the best case you're looking at, following Minnesota model is a vendor in Connecticut can no longer make these calls. Well that's going to eliminate 2% of your calls.

Most of these things are done from somewhere else, and it'll take someone two seconds to farm them out to New York, instead of Connecticut.

REP. MAZUREK: Yeah, I'm very respectful of the First Amendment, certainly. But at the same time, I think that if I purchase a service, and I agree with Senator Colapietro.

If I purchase a phone, I certainly should be able to at least restrict what phone calls I'm willing to accept and which phone calls I'm not willing to accept at home.

And I think, I guess from my perspective, rather than just trying to outright ban certain phone calls in the state, I think it would probably be a better solution to at least let me opt out and say I don't want you calling my phone.

As a matter of fact, I want to put a sign on the front door and say I don't want you knocking. I think it's within my right, within my dynasty, my castle, to say I don't want these certain things to go forward. So I guess from my comments, that's it, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

REP. STONE: Thank you. Representative Johnston.

REP. JOHNSTON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. John, is this, I've got a survey in front of me, survey of 15 Connecticut Legislators' constituency to identify voters who oppose anti robo-call legislation? Is that a survey that was done by your company?

JOHN PUDNER: Sorry, I didn't know the procedure. I did go over to tell the Clerk's office that, when the previous speaker was asked to please let them know that that was a survey that ccAdvertising did, and yes.

And the point I want to stress here is we don't like guys who do anonymous calls. We identify who calls are done by, etc, happy to give--

REP. JOHNSTON: But this was done by your company?

JOHN PUDNER: Yes, the company I'm representing, ccAdvertising, just to be technically correct, yes.

REP. JOHNSTON: Okay. And this is the correct copy of what they asked? It looks like there's three things that they tried to do, number one ask people if they wanted to protect free speech rights of grassroots campaigning.

JOHN PUDNER: Sure.

REP. JOHNSTON: So I'm sure that you probably had a pretty high respondent to that, I'm not sure many people would disagree with that. Number two, were interested in calling their Representative and Senator and asking them to vote for Senate Bill 212 in the Connecticut Senate.

JOHN PUDNER: That would be a typo, if it said for.

REP. JOHNSTON: Well, it said for. I'm not sure it is, because it says for, and then you go to number three, which says provided those who wanted to protect their grassroots free speech rights with the information they needed to accomplish their call their Senator or Representative goal.

So maybe I'm a little skeptical, but I think you asked number one, I think you wanted number two asked, and I'm not sure it mattered what their response was, because it doesn't look like their response prompted a call in either way.

And you went back on number three to the original question about protecting free speech rights, and asked them to call their Rep. So I mean, this is, unless I'm mistaken, if there's a typo, it seems like it's classic push polling.

And it illustrates, I think what many of us have found when we've called those same people who got this poll, that that's not what they believed in at all.

And it just probably hurts your case to be pleading for free speech rights here today, when it feels like this was almost a, I don't want to call it a brainwashing, but a misleading of the public. But I just wanted to make sure this was your company, and that these were the questions.

JOHN PUDNER: This is the company I'm representing, and the company is certainly happy to forward over the entire script. They do that, and we them to pick that up--

REP. JOHNSTON: I would be very interested if you could do that for me. Thank you very much, I appreciate it.

JOHN PUDNER: And I guess to answer the question, again, we wanted to stress by handing this out, and I'll be honest with you, a couple of people here said don't that out to everybody.

No, we want to hand this out. We want this to be, for example, first speech. We want you to know what was asked, we want you to be able to see the data, and yes, this isn't in any way attempted to be a gallop poll to get a sense of where people are on a bill.

It's an example of First Amendment advocacy making the case for why we think this legislation is not good as written, just as people will make the case the other way.

So please don't, don't want to in any way misrepresent that we wanted to sit in front of a classroom and say here are some percentages for you, but I just think this is part of free speech.

And as you said, if you had calls, and the second point I do want to make, there were several calls that came in while those calls were being made that said other surveys were being run on this issue.

So there are other questions that apparently were being asked by other vendors, which is why I will forward over the questions we were asking, and if they sound constant with your voters, you can be aware if that's theirs.

REP. JOHNSTON: Thank you very much. That would be helpful, and the responses back that I got, some of these exact words almost word for word were on there, which leads me to believe it's probably a direct result, and it was at the exact same dates that you've listed, so those calls were made.

But if you're aware of any of the other companies who were running those calls and you want to forward that information to us, we'd be glad to follow up with those companies and ask them the same information we've asked of you today. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

REP. STONE: Thank you, Shawn, Representative Johnston, excuse me. And first of all, it's rare, quite frankly, that we get the results of a survey that includes the questions asked, so to the extent that you've provided that, while there may be a typo.

I just, and regardless of the results, the extent that you've provided the information as to what was asked, I think it helps the Committee in evaluating the responses and the results achieved. So I personally want to thank you for that.

Lastly, there has been people that have talked to me about robo-calls in which the calls may, I believe there was testimony earlier, call is made to a home.

The resident picks up the phone, says I don't want to talk to you, hangs up the phone. And for the next three minutes, four minutes, that call is still happening and tying up their phone line. Do you have any comments on that?

I'm not suggesting your company engages in that practice, but do you have any suggestions on how the legislature, if at all, might address that situation?

JOHN PUDNER: I would love to see it addressed, because there are certainly fly by night companies, now cheap equipment has become readily available, and that's why you're seeing 15, 20 calls, as opposed to a couple of professionally done ones.

So anything that can discourage that, I mean our equipment is certainly set up to hang up immediately after a phone call has hung up. I've never heard of an example where our equipment, someone has hung up and come back on, I'm sure we would have gotten calls if that ever happened.

REP. STONE: So you would be supportive of a proposal, if that were to come to pass--

JOHN PUDNER: Absolutely.

REP. STONE: --that prohibited the practice of maintaining a connection, so to speak, after the person, okay. Anyone else have any comments or questions? Thank you very much, John, for your testimony.