GAO Faults FCC for Leaks to Industry
The FCC should talk about rulemakings to all parties at the same time, the Government Accountability Office said in a report faulting the agency for filling in corporate officials before making the same information public. The report issued Wednesday urged more “transparency in the rulemaking process.” The study focused on information obtained by lobbyists, though a Communications Daily report also was mentioned.
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The GAO report was sought by Rep. Edward Markey, D- Mass., chairman of the House Telecommunications Subcommittee. Markey said “the FCC has a duty to be above-board in developing and implementing its rules.” When “corporate insiders” have an inside track on critical communications issues “the public and consumers are at an inherent disadvantage,” he said.
Treating four rulemakings as case studies, GAO found “several stakeholders had access to nonpublic information” and “multiple stakeholders generally knew when the commission scheduled votes on proposed rules well before the FCC notified the public.” The rulemakings involved regulation of IP services, output power requirements for airport terminal use frequencies, distributed transmission systems, and protecting satellites from interference.
GAO said “stakeholders” reported getting information “from both FCC bureau staff and commissioner staff” on when votes were expected. One person “representing a large organization” reported getting calls from FCC staff revealing items scheduled for votes. Such insights let an organization line up first to meet with FCC officials before lobbying is halted, GAO said. Representatives of consumer and public interest groups “told us that they do not know when FCC is about to vote on a rulemaking or when it would be best to meet with FCC staff to make their arguments,” GAO said.
Public-interest advocates said the issues raised in the report show the FCC could communicate better with the public on agenda items and other rulemakings before they're set for votes. An industry lawyer agreed. Because the commission doesn’t publicize what it will vote on at meetings until it’s too late for further lobbying, public interest and industry groups can be left flat-footed about pending items, said a communications lawyer. That raises the question whether there should be a process for everyone to be alerted about items coming up for a vote in advance of the sunshine period ban on lobbying, said the lawyer.
“The way by which information is made public is a very haphazard process,” said Media Access Project President Andrew Schwartzman. He, like others we interviewed, hadn’t read the full GAO study. “This commission does as well as its predecessors in terms of transparency,” he added. Free Press favors any rule changes to “make it more likely that the public can participate meaningfully” in rulemakings, said Ben Scott, the policy director. The agency could publicize the full text of proposed orders before commissioners vote on them to give the public a chance to review them, he said. “The commission could always put out a further notice of proposed rulemaking and specify the rule that it plans to vote on.”