I posted yesterday about a Wisconsin ALEC member just named chairman of the Public Service Commission by Scott Walker:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x765158Montgomery was named ALEC's Legislator of the Year in 2005 for similar legislation blocking municipal broadband networks.
I haven't been able to find any direct link yet between Avila and ALEC, but the organization tends to be secretive about its membership, and that will be even more likely in the future as ALEC gets more negative publicity.
Editing after doing some quick googling.
Yes, that legislation is from ALEC:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4097-snip-
In 2007, several cities and small towns in North Carolina began investigating the possibility of establishing municipal broadband service—due in large part to the number of rural communities who have no access to the service and who, according to local officials, are being deprived of economic opportunities as a result. Not long after these cities made their intentions known, the Fair Competition Act appeared in the state General Assembly (Independent Weekly, 6/13/07). One of the bill’s primary sponsors, Rep. Harold Brubaker (R.), is an active ALEC legislative member and served as the group’s national chair in 1994 (Washington Times, 8/4/94).
According to Paul Meyer, chief legislative council for the North Carolina League of Municipalities, the Fair Competition Act was part of a plan to hamstring municipalities in the broadband market, unleashed on the state by Time Warner Cable , AT&T, Verizon and Embarq Communications (now CenturyLink).
-snip-
In North Carolina, the Fair Competition Act died in 2008 (Independent Weekly, 6/18/08). Meyer says the telecommunications corporations repackaged and reintroduced several of the more stringent stipulations as the Level the Playing Field Act. Although that bill stalled out in 2009, Meyer says the corporate pressure is not off, adding that telecommunications companies have been pushing similar legislation across the country.
-snip-
As the article you linked to explains, the current NC bill is called the "Level Playing Field/Local Gov't Competition" act.