Walden Warns Clyburn about Proposals to Expand USF
House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., urged FCC acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn to “tread carefully” as she considers any expansion of USF, according to a letter made public on Monday (http://1.usa.gov/12QWF57). Walden said Clyburn should seek to cap the overall fund at current levels in order to “provide families some certainty and minimize fluctuations in their monthly bills,” according to the letter. Walden said any expansion proposals should be referred to the Federal-State Joint Board on “whether to adopt expansion proposals and, if so, how to implement them within the cap.”
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The letter was released ahead of the commission’s Friday meeting, which will examine proposals to expand the USF schools and libraries program, more commonly known as E-rate (CD July 1 p1). Clyburn circulated an NPRM ahead of the meeting to consider President Barack Obama’s proposal to modernize the E-rate program to ensure that schools and libraries are connected through broadband of at least 100 Mbps with a target of 1 Gbps (CD June 7 p7).
Walden said he was “somewhat relieved” to hear E-rate modernization proposals would be paid for with savings from elsewhere in the fund but asked Clyburn for more details. “Are we talking about reducing spending from current levels or just rechanneling today’s runaway growth in another direction,” he wrote. “The best way to ensure savings are in fact savings and that the burden on citizens’ pocketbooks does not grow is to consider whether to fund new initiatives after setting a firm cap,” the letter said.
The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) endorsed Walden’s call to refer the USF proposals to the Universal Service Joint Board. “State and federal regulators, working together on this Joint Board, are best suited to examine when and if the fund should be expanded,” said NARUC President Philip Jones of Washington and NARUC Committee on Telecommunications Chair John Burke of Vermont in a joint news release. “Whatever the proposed change -- high-cost support, e-rate expansions, contribution reform, the definition of supported services, Lifeline reform, or other issues -- the Joint Board is an important vehicle giving State experts, with keen insights on the impact of program changes, crucial input into the process,” the news release said.
The original author of the E-rate program, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., did not comment on Walden’s letter. Rockefeller plans to chair a committee hearing to examine E-rate on Wednesday. Scheduled to testify at the hearing are Sheryl Abshire, chief technology officer at Louisiana’s Calcasieu Parish School System; Linda Lord, state librarian at the Maine State Library; Patrick Finn, senior vice president-public sector at Cisco Systems; and James Coulter, co-founder at TPG Capital.