Walden Schedules Subcommittee Markup on FCC Reform, Not Spectrum
The House Communications Subcommittee plans to vote Nov. 16 on FCC process reform legislation, and won’t take up spectrum until after Thanksgiving at the earliest, Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., said at a press conference Wednesday. As expected (CD Nov 2 p8), Walden and Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., introduced two reform bills Wednesday in each the House and Senate. One FCC reform bill includes broad process changes first proposed in Walden’s draft bill from earlier this summer. A second bill would reduce the number and consolidate many of the reports the FCC is required to send to Congress.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
While FCC reform moves ahead, don’t expect a spectrum markup until the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction submits its deficit reduction proposal, Walden told reporters afterward. The super committee must submit a plan by Nov. 24 and Walden would like to have a markup by year-end if they don’t act, he said. “The longer they go, the tighter our schedule gets,” he said. “If they don’t, we will.” It’s an issue on the super committee’s “plate,” so there’s “no point” for Walden’s subcommittee to move a spectrum bill in the interim, Walden said. “We do sort of have an inside track” because House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., is on the super committee, he said.
Walden said he hopes to have Democratic support for the FCC reform bills when they go to markup, but he appeared uncertain how Democrats would vote. Walden is “hopeful” Congress can pass the bill this year, he said. However, even if the bill passes the House, the Senate companion could face difficulty because Democrats in control of that body have shown little interest in FCC process reform. Heller said he has the support of Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas. While he has not talked to Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., Heller said Hutchison and Rockefeller have a good working relationship and tend to agree more than not.
"The FCC works more for the FCC than they do for the industry” that they regulate, Heller said. Walden complained of a process that results in last-minute data dumps before orders are adopted. Last month, for example, “the FCC waited until the eleventh hour to introduce new materials into the record for the Universal Service Fund reforms.” There were 114 separate documents, he said. Walden acknowledged Chairman Julius Genachowski for making some FCC process improvements but said “only Congress can make sure that the reforms he has instituted transcend the time that he’s chairman."
The proposed reforms leave the public interest standard “fully in place,” even though they force the FCC to do cost-benefit analyses and demonstrate harm, Walden said. One major intention of the rules is to prevent the FCC from exploiting the standard, for example to force parties in a merger to agree to “voluntary” conditions that are not specific to the transaction, he said. That abuse of power happened when the FCC reviewed the Comcast/NBCUniversal deal, Walden said.
In the House, the broader bill is sponsored by Walden and co-sponsored by Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., is lead House sponsor of the bill to consolidate FCC reports and Walden is cosponsor. Heller introduced both bills in the Senate.
States praised the proposed FCC reforms. “Reforming the FCC will bring needed transparency and accessibility into the regulatory system,” said NARUC President Tony Clark. “While NARUC has not taken a specific position on all the reforms suggested, there are a few, like the so-called ’sunshine’ law reforms, we have long supported.” The sunshine provision of the legislation would allow more than two commissioners to meet behind closed doors. NARUC Telecom Chairman John Burke said the bill “will allow the several federal-State joint boards and conferences to run more efficiently."
But Free Press and Media Access Project condemned the bills. The proposals “seem more focused on protecting giant telecom companies from FCC oversight rather than protecting consumers,” Free Press political advisor Joel Kelsey said. “A real FCC reform bill would end the long history of agency capture by the industries it was meant to regulate, but the bills introduced today would instead hamstring the FCC and subject the agency to lawsuits at every turn.” MAP Policy Director Andy Schwartzman agreed: “This so-called ‘reform’ bill is meretricious mischief which arrives a few days too late for Halloween."
Also at the press conference, Walden explained a recent meeting with LightSquared, GPS companies and the FCC (CD Oct 31 p2). Walden “really wanted to drive down” to determine if there’s an “engineering solution” to GPS interference caused by the LightSquared network, he said. “What I wanted to get to is if you give up 10 megs in a guard band, does that solve it and can you engineer a filter for the other part of the GPS listening arena?” The “bigger issue” Walden wanted to know about was “how much spectrum is set aside to prevent interference among bands because receivers are not crafted as precisely as they could be?”