FCC Republicans ID Commonalities With Local Government; Democrats Seek More FCC Work

Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Brendan Carr, both Republicans, focused on some shared opinions about the FCC's policies over the past two years, with Pai saying the overall relationship is good. Commissioner Mike O’Rielly was more critical of local concerns. He said such fears, raised at this week's annual NATOA conference (see 1909240055), are because technology is reducing some local authority. Carr noted tech changes often result in FCC regulatory updates.

Democratic Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Geoffrey Starks said their agency needs to increase efforts toward cooperation, saying it will accomplish more that way. Some FCC actions in this area have split on party lines, including the order adopted Aug. 1 clarifying and limiting what local franchise authorities can demand from cable providers. A 2018 order on speeding deployment of small cells for 5G also got a 3-2 vote (see 1803220027).

“Several dozen state and local officials” wrote the FCC to support that small-cells action, Carr said now. “A lot didn’t. There was not unanimity among state and local governments.” There’s “no doubt that the common denominator here is what’s good for our communities,” Carr said: “Reasonable minds can disagree” and sometimes parties have gone to court. “New technologies come out and we have to interpret" the law, Carr said. "There are cities that are going to push back, and litigate, and that’s really expected.”

O'Rielly was more pointed about NATOA concerns. "Technology is changing everyone’s role and particularly local government involvement and the NATOA folks specifically. I’m sorry their role is shrinking," he told us. "That makes folks upset." Some communities may "seek to maintain power that they don’t deserve" and the FCC addressed such issues, he added. "A few have entered into areas that they shouldn’t have, and that tends to spark some strong beliefs. We respect the statute and as technology changes, we try to adhere to that very strongly." Tech "is changing before their eyes, and there is nothing I can do about that," O'Rielly said about cities.

"The FCC would do best, to work with, rather than against, localities," Starks said. "Where we see a lot of localities here trying to empower themselves is by doing municipal broadband, and that, too, has been really choked out at the state level" or by other such preemption, he later said. "We are imposing structural changes, and that is" concerning to him. Rosenworcel said she's "a big believer in the proverb that if you want to go fast, you go by yourself, and if you want to go far, you go together."

Pai said that at the FCC "we work very well with state and local officials." He noted he had just visited such officials throughout the Great Plains. "We work extensively with folks across the country in a similar fashion," he said. "There are always conversations on a lot of issues with our state and local counterparts," Pai said. "Writ large, the relationship is a good one" between his agency and its local counterparts, Pai said: "We very much believe in it." The commission takes "input very seriously," he said of its Intergovernmental Advisory Committee.

"Local governments have the same mandate as the FCC," responded NATOA General Counsel Nancy Werner. That's "to act in the public interest," she emailed. "Cities, towns and counties are on the front lines of deploying and implementing new technologies. We typically see these new developments on the ground long before the Commission gets involved. Communities continue to work on deployments long after the Commission has moved on to the next thing. Meanwhile, the FCC accommodates the industry while stepping on local governments and ignoring consumers’ and communities’ concerns."

A coming draft order would return to state regulators the ability to decide which carriers can be designated eligible telecom carriers, Pai noted. 'We’ve empowered state commissions to be able to take the lead in the ETC process" under that coming item, Pai said. That's "something that was stripped from state officials" in the last presidential administration, he noted. All state commissioners we surveyed backed the coming ETC action (see 1908280013).

To Rosenworcel, her agency isn't "doing enough to work together" with locales. "The FCC has a lot of work to do." There's "a long history of local control in this country" and the agency has "got to respect local authority," she said, also citing the Constitution's 10th Amendment. "It is deep within the DNA of this country that we allow a degree of local control," Rosenworcel said: "The FCC has to figure out how to advance" local telecom infrastructure while working with communities.