In case you missed it, your elected representatives bowed to intense pressure from phone companies last week and voted to allow them to keep charging whatever they want to protect your privacy.
I'm talking, of course, about the up to $24 a year that millions of Californians are charged to keep their numbers out of the phone book and its electronic cousins.
A bill -- SB 1423, written by state Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) -- would have given land-line users the same courtesy already extended by law to those who use cellphones: to have your number unlisted free.
"Unlike every other service we pay phone companies for, this isn't a matter of convenience," Kuehl told me the other day. "It's about safety and peace of mind."
Too bad more of her legislative colleagues didn't see it that way.
Kuehl's bill failed to garner the 21 votes needed to pass in the Senate and make its way to the Assembly. The final tally was 16 senators for and 16 against, with eight brave souls not even voting.
Kuehl, who hits the term-limit wall in November, said she wouldn't be reintroducing the bill and that no one else in the Senate had stepped forward to champion the cause next year.
"That's it," she said.
To most consumers, this should have been a no-brainer. As I say, the California Public Utilities Code already stipulates that cellphone users can't be charged a cent for having their numbers unlisted.
The thinking there is that because each call can chew into your minutes, cellphone users shouldn't be penalized financially for keeping unwanted callers at bay.
Land lines may not charge for incoming calls, but what price do you put on your time? Not to mention the benefit of keeping away identity thieves, con artists, marketers, stalkers and others who stand to gain from ready access to your name and number.
Moreover, the California Constitution establishes an individual's right to privacy. It doesn't seem like much of a stretch to conclude that land lines merit the same privacy safeguards as cellphones -- at the same price.
The phone companies, however, came out with guns blazing. They declared that lawmakers shouldn't concern themselves with the fine points of their operations.
"In a competitive marketplace, the Legislature shouldn't be in the business of setting prices for features," said Jon Davies, a spokesman for Verizon Communications Inc. "They should let consumers decide which ones they want to pay for and which ones they don't."
