
D.C. to AT&T: All Your Unused Minutes Are Belong to Us - miked
http://reason.com/blog/2010/01/03/dc-to-att-all-your-unused-minu
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patio11
If you're surprised by this legal requirement, see here:
<http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/cc/20060127a1.asp>

This was almost a pain point for me when I thought of offering rebates the
first time ("Buy today and get 10% back"), since some states require unclaimed
rebates to be escheated. It turns out that the service I was thinking of using
(RebateDelivery) handles this nonsense for you.

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billymeltdown
From the original wire article:

> "AT&T's prepaid calling cards must be treated as unclaimed property under
> district law," the attorney general's office said in a statement.

More from the wire article:

> According to the attorney general's office, that sum, known in the industry
> as "breakage," represents some 5 to 20 percent of the total balances
> purchased by consumers who use the calling cards.

It's actually an interesting bit of case law insomuch as how the law applies
to modern technologies, and if it IS in fact the case that AT&T has to turn
the minutes over as unclaimed, a cash-strapped operation like D.C. would be
crazy to leave the money sitting on the table.

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jcnnghm
DC is only cash strapped because of gross mismanagement and systematic
corruption.

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rauljara
Not saying there isn't gross mismanagement and systematic corruption, but not
being a state also puts DC at a serious disadvantage. They don't have access
to state funds, or any government programs that only work through states
(though many government programs working through states do make a point of
including DC, not all do). Also, they lose out on a lot of corruption not
having senators at all. Senators regularly ship large amount of pork back to
their state. No senators, no pork.

A large city in your average state can get away with a lot more corruption and
mismanagement than DC could. They'd have state government, certain national
programs, and national representatives to fall back on. DC gets none of that.

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gojomo
On the other hand, given the amount of time they spend in the area, and their
dependency on the federal workforce in DC, to some degree _every_ other
Senator and Representative looks out for DC's interests. DC has plenty of de
facto power to get pork, even without the de jure representation.

~~~
thrdOriginal
Spending time in DC does not equate becoming a resident of DC, nor does it
posit in one a sense of ownership necessary to take care of DC. This is
especially true when the part of DC these senators et al live in is not
representative of DC as a whole: DC does a very good job of fencing off the
haves from the havenots (e.g. no metro stop in Georgetown).

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geuis
Link to the actual article
[http://us.mobile.reuters.com/mobile/m/AnyArticle/p.rdt?URL=h...](http://us.mobile.reuters.com/mobile/m/AnyArticle/p.rdt?URL=http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BU3NF20091231)

