TRENTON – A Senate committee today released legislation Senator Shirley K. Turner and Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg sponsored to repeal the tax cable companies have been paying into a fund to support a program that was set up to provide financial assistance to senior citizens and customers with disabilities, but has instead been siphoned away to balance the budget.
Created in 2006 as part of the broad cable television reform law that opened up the state’s market to greater competition among providers, the CATV Universal Access Fund has collected a one-half of 1 percent tax from cable company revenues and was designed to benefit residents enrolled in the Pharmaceutical Assistance to the Aged and Disabled program.