FCC Hit by Wave of Retirements; Some Raise 'Brain Drain' Concerns

“This is where you got to settle in a little bit,” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said before he closed Thursday’s FCC meeting by reading a list of 28 recent FCC retirements for roughly 15 minutes, longer than the commissioners spent on any of the day’s agenda items.

At a post-meeting news conference, FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez said, “I am very concerned about the brain drain that you are seeing in these retirements and that we will be seeing in the upcoming months because of all the actions of this administration.” She added, “Yes, we also have very talented staff still with us, but it is going to affect our ability to do our jobs.”

At his own press conference, Carr said, “We’re not concerned about any brain drain ... I think transitions like this are natural times when people retire. There's nothing that's concerning or gives me pause, and we're still gonna be able to deliver results for the American people.” He added, “Our goal is to do it even more efficiently than ever before, and I'm confident that we've got all the right people that we need to deliver.”

William Knowles-Kellett, who heads the FCC chapter of the National Treasury Employees Union, said the large number of retirements announced at the meeting is likely in part connected with deadlines associated with Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA), an Office of Personnel Management policy that allows agencies to temporarily lower age and service requirements to encourage retirements when agencies are restructuring. OPM added VERA approval for agencies to its “Fork in the Road” resignation offer in January. Employees accepting the VERA offer at the FCC were required to announce their retirement in February, go on administrative leave and retire March 31.

FCC employees may also be feeling pressure from return-to-work requirements, staffers told us. Monday is the first day since 2020 when all the FCC’s full-time employees must work from the office, and it will be the first time ever they have all been required to report to FCC headquarters at 45 L St. NE. The agency moved to the facility in 2020, while pandemic-era telework policies were in full effect. “We’ve never been at this headquarters with everybody coming in,” an FCC employee said, adding that he expected the shift to lead to some hiccups. However, the employee added, “We have a place for everyone to sit."

The larger number of FCC employees working from the office in recent weeks has already strained the building’s parking garage and led to traffic backing up onto the street, one employee told us. On Monday, that employee is expecting “a nightmare on L Street.”

The retirees announced Thursday included many longtime and prominent agency officials, including David Strickland, former media adviser to Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, and 62-year FCC veteran Larry Olson of the Office of International Affairs. Two longtime Media Bureau officials, Bobby Baker and Gary Schonman, who together have handled virtually all political advertising matters at the FCC for decades, were also on Thursday’s list. Baker, who spent 50 years at the FCC and investigated televangelist Jim Bakker over his PTL Club show in 1979, announced his retirement in February. He said he likely would have retired at the end of 2025 anyway, but the tone of some of the emails to federal employees after the change in administration pushed him to do so earlier. Baker said his proudest achievement is that he and Schonman and just one other employee were able to handle all the broadcast political advertising issues in the entire country for a decade, a task that had previously taken 16 FCC staffers. “I mean, you talk about government efficiency!” he said.

Concerns have long been raised about losing experienced FCC employees, especially in engineering, Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld said in an email. “Congress' refusal to expand the funding of the agency was already making it difficult to recruit new talent and develop an expertise pipeline,” and “now things are worse,” he said. “To put it mildly, this is not a time when talented and dedicated people feel encouraged to come work for federal agencies.”

Industry officials have warned since before the Trump administration started that FCC engineers could flee the agency, and experienced electrical engineers are always in short supply. A former FCC staffer said “much of the nuts-and-bolts work at the FCC happens without much public fanfare, and these retirements could affect the ‘keep the trains running’ tasks.” Another FCC employee told us Thursday that while the FCC hadn’t yet seen the large losses of probationary employees and others that some agencies have absorbed, the agency is running “lean,” and large-scale staff reductions could affect its performance.

Feld warned that staffing issues will mean slower merger reviews and delays in completing rulemakings, equipment certification approvals, preparation for the World Radiocommunication Conference and “processing conflicting applications that require sophisticated analysis.”

New Street’s Blair Levin told us an FCC brain drain could have negative implications for communications companies. “There are certain functions, such as running auctions, analyzing spectrum interference issues and handling 911 evolution, where institutional memory and expertise are critical, and mistakes and delays can have economic consequences," he said. He joked that he looks forward to "having new folks include me in a Signal group chat, so I can have greater insight into what they are thinking.”

The FCC has already seen “too much downsizing over the years,” said former Commissioner Michael Copps. “With communications playing an ever-more critical role in our lives, sometimes not in a good way, it is a [disservice to] consumers and the public interest to further weaken the FCC’s ability to do the job it's supposed to do,” he said. “This is yet more brain drain that serves no good purpose.”

Joe Kane, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation's director-broadband and spectrum policy, said, “The FCC's important work requires capable staff to execute it,” but people “come and go from the agency all the time.” The FCC must build up the “technical spectrum expertise” needed to “find productive engineering solutions to increasingly common conflicts,” he said. The FCC “can't afford” to go into negotiations over the national spectrum strategy “short-handed."

Former Commissioner Robert McDowell said the FCC will manage. It’s always “unsettling when experienced and effective public servants retire,” and “sometimes we fear the specific departures of exceptionally talented folks,” he said in an email. McDowell cited in particular the departure of former Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Julius Knapp five years ago (see 2001220035).

“New blood always seems to arrive, and after each winter, there is a spring,” McDowell said. “The agency will continue to function."