Scott et al---the annual Council of State Governments meeting was held last 
week in Quebec City and one of the panel presentations during the week was on 
"Global E Commerce:State Roles.

The panel was moderated by the Conference of World Regions (Jmaes Gardner and 
Lucy Duncan).  Participants were: 
 
 Rep. Matthew Kisber--Tennesee  (he is also co chair of the NCSL task force 
on e commerce)
 
 Arthur Kerrigan---section chief of e commerce for the European Commission in 
Brussels

 David Cliche--Minister for Information Highway/Government of Quebec

 DAvid Hite--CEO of Veronex Technologies

 Todd Finch---President, Netscape/Canada

 Bernard McKay---Vice President, INTUIT


The government folks focused most of their discussions on the need to 
continue to be able to collect taxes on sales, but said they were not looking 
to increase those taxes--just to be able to make it easy to collect.  Kisber 
seemed  to be in the Governor Leavitt camp on e commerce solutions--he 
referenced Leavitt's proposals several times.  Cliche made some interesting 
statements about Quebec having all of it's government work being done via e 
mail by the end of 2001---anybody who wants to do business with the 
government will have to do it via e commerce.

THe private sector folks talked about the difficulty in dealing with 50 
different state rules and regulations in order to do their business and the 
need for uniformity and commonality.  Finch talked about the need for global 
governance of the internet rather than local or parochial which will only 
inhibit development of e commerce.  He also talked about if and when states 
or entities will start thinking about trying to tax information that is 
exchanged via e commerce and how this would be counterproductive.  McKay 
brought up the concept of government becoming a competitor with the private 
sector as e commerce changes the way we do business.

It was a fairly interesting discussion, but no real bombshells.

Scott--Kisber mentioned that there was going to be a meeting of the 
COngressional interent taxation committee next week in San Francisco (this is 
the Governor Gilmore group).  Are you attending that meeting?