Miguel Santiago

Miguel Santiago (born March 6, 1973) is an American politician who served in the California State Assembly from 2014 to 2024. Santiago is a Democrat who represented the 54th Assembly District, which encompasses parts of Downtown Los Angeles, along with East Hollywood, Boyle Heights, Montebello, Commerce, and Vernon.

Santiago was a member of the California Latino Legislative Caucus and the California Legislative Progressive Caucus. He served as chairman of the Communications and Conveyance Committee prior to his retirement. Prior to being elected to the Assembly in 2014, he was a member of the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees. He also served as District Director to former Assembly Speaker John Pérez.

Net Neutrality Bill Co-Authorship

Santiago co-authored S.B. 822 alongside Senator Scott Wiener, legislation that would strengthen net neutrality protections in California. Hours after being signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown, a Motion for Preliminary Injunction was filed by the Department of Justice. Both parties have agreed to wait until a separate court case in the D.C. Circuit Court is decided before moving on. As part of the agreement, the law is not currently being enforced and the injunction was withdrawn.

After passing the California Senate, S.B. 822 was amended by Miguel Santiago in June 2018. SB-822 would restore Obama-era rules that the Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission rolled back in December 2017. Santiago's amendments removed all provisions of the bill's net neutrality protections that were not in the text of the 2015 Open Internet Order, leaving in only those that were in the two-pages of rules. This prompted the bill's original sponsor, Senator Scott Wiener, to pull his support for his own bill and declare that it had been "hijacked" and that he was "not interested in passing a bill that is watered down so severely." The changes also included deleting a large section of definitions, which critics claim could make it more difficult for California's attorney general to prosecute violations of the legislation.

The amendments, published less than 12 hours before the hearing, were approved 8-0 by the Communications and Conveyance committee, which Santiago chairs, on June 20, 2018. That vote occurred before Wiener could argue against them and before any testimony. After the testimony, the amended bill was approved 8-2. Opponents of the amended version stated that Santiago's changes would create loopholes through which broadband providers could charge fees to content providers while exempting their own content from any data caps. Proponents of the changes contend that without them broadband providers would not be allowed to offer free mobile data that doesn't count against users' caps, harming consumers, and that net neutrality in general would discourage providers from improving their network infrastructure. However, Wiener said that despite the "strenuous disagreement here, [...] it’s not about campaign contributions" and that the telecoms "spent a lot of money in California targeting members with Twitter and Facebook ads, doing robo-calls to seniors telling them their bills are going to go up, that this bill is going to make your monthly payment go up. They flooded the capitol with lobbyists."

Electoral history