Brnovich right on robocalls

Mark Brnovich got a lot of grief for not joining 45 other attorneys general on a letter urging telephone companies to provide customers with the capability of blocking robocalls.

Brnovich, however, did the right thing and, based on the explanation given by his spokesman, for the right reasons.

Although rapidly losing sight of it, our country was based on boundaries: between the branches of government, between the federal and state governments, and between the public and private sectors.

What precipitated the letter was a recent ruling by the Federal Communications Commission that telephone companies could offer a service to block unwanted calls. The AGs wrote a letter strongly urging the companies to provide the service.

So, what's wrong with the AGs importuning the companies to do something customers might want? Well, a suggestion from someone who can put you out of business, or cause you an infinite degree of regulatory hurt and hassle, isn't really a suggestion. It's political intimidation.

According to spokesman Ryan Anderson, Brnovich didn't believe that it was the role of the attorney general to be advising companies as to which lawful products they should or should not be offering. And that's right.

There were some inferences that Brnovich was doing the bidding of dark-money groups by protecting their robocall capabilities. Please.

Brnovich is a libertarian-minded fellow with a strong sense of the proper limitations of his office. He has less political calculation and guile than any attorney general in my experience, which dates back to Bruce Babbitt in the 1970s.

I call that refreshing.

Reach Robb at robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com.