Questions Remain About Staff Reductions at FCC

Several industry officials said they're hearing that the Office of Engineering and Technology has lost 15% of its staff this year, based on what senior government officials have told them. That would exacerbate “a long-running problem of being understaffed because of the growing divergence between public and private sector pay for experienced engineers,” said a public interest lawyer. The Enforcement and Wireline bureaus are among other offices in the agency that have apparently lost large numbers of staff.

“I only know what the chairman has reported in terms of exact numbers,” Commissioner Anna Gomez said last week. “I know what I hear and what I’m watching,” she said. “I’m going to more retirement parties than I’ve gone to in a long time and the length of time and length of service that you are seeing from these folks who are leaving just shows you the amount of brain drain that we are going to experience.”

“This is going to continue month after month after month,” Gomez predicted. “It’s going to be very difficult going forward to continue to meet our statutory objectives.”

The cuts are “far deeper than one would think upon first blush,” said a senior regulatory lawyer. One indicator is “the number of retirement parties I have been to, but another is the number of email auto-replies I’m getting from staff who are no longer at the agency.”

Fletcher Heald’s Francisco Montero said in an email that “the processing of applications, especially assignment and transfer applications in the Audio Division, was already extremely slow and backlogged before the staff cuts, so I don’t know what it will be like going forward.” Montero said he’s telling clients to expect an assignment or transfer to take three to four months.

Former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said that in an increasingly complicated world the FCC needs more expertise, not less. “With more auctions coming, the threats AI will bring, more consolidations in both new and traditional media, mis- and dis-information, all the garbage floating around in space, the need to get more deeply involved in cyberspace, the commission needs to enhance its expertise and issue exposure rather than fritter it away,” Copps said in an email. Threats in the 21st Century “are not amenable to 19th Century ideologies.”

All those who left the FCC accepted the Trump administration’s “Fork in the Road” offering, took early retirement or otherwise chose to leave, Chairman Brendan Carr said last week (see 2505220056). The agency hasn't offered department-level details.

A 'Thoughtful' Approach

New Street’s Blair Levin, who was in charge of FCC workforce reductions when he was chief of staff at the start of the Clinton presidency, said in an interview that he was tasked with cutting staffing levels by 10%, or 180 employees. It took about a year and required significant investigation and many discussions before decisions were made, he said. “If you’re serious, it takes time.”

“I talked to a lot of institutional leaders,” asking “what’s essential? What’s important but maybe not essential?” Levin said. “You have to have a vision of where you want to be in five to 10 years, and then you have to see what’s essential for that and what’s not.” Many of the cuts under the Clinton administration were to Enforcement Bureau field offices, which brought complaints from Congress, Levin said. There are different ways to change the FCC: “The question is, do you do it in a thoughtful manner, or do you just do it with a chain saw not understanding at all what you’re doing?”

Levin said “the viciousness and cruelty” evidenced by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency in making cuts to other parts of the government is “just stunning.”

Gomez agreed that the current administration may not be paying enough attention to process. “The Fork in the Road [offer] had no process to it whatsoever,” she said. “It was simply 'do this or else.'” Many early retirements were probably motivated by pressure from the administration, she said, adding, “I hope it follows the legal processes instead of some made-up process, and I hope that whatever is done, it’s done with a scalpel and not a chain saw."

Improving Efficiency

Others defended the cuts, saying they believe Carr knows what he wants to accomplish.

The FCC is unlikely to be different from other parts of the Trump administration in demanding staffing reductions, said Phoenix Center Chief Economist George Ford. Cuts will reduce “deadweight” at the FCC, he said, also acknowledging that they will take a toll on expertise.

“As a former staffer, there’s plenty of room for staff reductions, at least in certain areas,” Ford said. “Constraints on staffing may help tighten up the agency’s focus, which would be beneficial … and I suspect Chairman Carr may be thinking along those lines,” he added: “A reduced staff should force the agency to be more judicious in their regulatory proclivities, which are increasingly partisan.”

“Carr is very focused on making the agency highly efficient,” said Kristian Stout, director-innovation policy at the International Center for Law & Economics. “My understanding is that any cuts would only be directed toward that end and would be shaped with the end of still being an expert-level agency capable of fulfilling its mandate.”