No, this wasn't with regard to merger approval, as far as I recall. This was a separate negotiation: State level tax breaks and other concessions, in return for the commitment to deploy "universal" high-speed Internet access throughout Illinois via their network, where "universal" was something in excess of 95% of the population with exclusions only for exceptional circumstances, e.g. extreme isolation. I seem to recall a percentage deployment they agreed to reach, over 95%, with discussion if not language about what might constitute the demographics of that bit that they would be allowed to fail to cover. "High-speed" was some not-too-aggressive throughput level commensurate with speeds in those days.
"Money for nothing" was my quip, regarding the company's apparent attitude. The company agreed to it all, then started lobbying to get out of their commitments under the deal -- while not giving up the tax breaks and other concessions they'd gained by making said commitments. The agreement bound them to do these things; they turned around and lobbied the Illinois legislature to "unbind" them, while leaving the rest in place.
Anecdotally, even in Chicagoland, they continued to drag their feet until the cable TV companies starting deploying wholesale. Depending on location, this often was some years later. Then, suddenly. the now-AT&T would get serious about their own deployment. Well, kind of serious: Technically, it often still sucked, by comparison.
This is, in my view, analogous to the failures of big ISP's, in various states, until they face competition, for instance by communities finally just rolling their own municipal and/or cooperative broadband. Then, these big ISP's go to the legislature of whatever state and cry (i.e. lobby), "Unfair competition!"
One has to keep telling these stories, so that maybe voters will pay enough attention to their state politics to vote out their elected officials who participate in these giveaways, that someone at sometime conveniently nicknamed "corporate welfare".
Maybe even vote in and support a state attorney general willing to initiate investigations and, where evidence of corruption can be found, send a few of those officials to jail.