Pai Hits Clyburn Dissent on Verizon Settlement as Partisan Flip-Flop; Clyburn Denies Change

consultant (see 1710170057). Clyburn criticized the commission for recovering only a fraction of the "$50 million in harm" and not imposing a penalty, particularly given lawmaker concerns about a lack of more USF resources for high-cost support. Pai said Verizon also forfeited any right to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in E-rate subsidies, and accused Clyburn of leaving key facts out of her dissent, including that the consent decree was negotiated by the Enforcement Bureau under the prior chairman, whose office briefed each commissioner’s office. "Commissioner Clyburn’s office expressed no concerns whatsoever about the agreement at that time -- and there is contemporaneous written evidence of this," he said in a statement Tuesday. "If the terms of a settlement that were just fine under a Democratic chair are now unacceptable under a Republican chair, FCC enforcement becomes little more than political caprice. I hope that that’s not the case going forward." A Clyburn spokesman emailed Wednesday: “It is curious that the Chairman claims that Commissioner Clyburn approved a document in 2016 that was not finalized until 2017. When she was presented with the text of the consent decree in 2017, she determined that she could not support the item as drafted. She negotiated in good faith, and was told that no modifications would be made to the consent decree.”