Baker to Leave NTIA; White House Replacement Expected Next Week
NTIA Acting Administrator Meredith Baker is leaving the agency overseeing the DTV converter box program to pursue other opportunities, she told Communications Daily Thursday. “I will stay on to ensure a smooth transition” with the White House nominee, Baker said, noting she had been thinking about leaving for several months. The White House is expected to name Neil Patel, assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney, to the job, several Hill and industry sources said. Patel did not return a call for comment.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
Patel’s expected appointment makes a third change in DTV transition leadership with less than a year to go before the spectrum change, startling many on Capitol Hill and industry who believed Baker was doing a good job. Baker joined NTIA in January 2004, and took over supervision of the converter box program when John Kneuer, who was appointed in 2006, left in November.
“Now that the DTV transition is in full swing, we need continuous, strong leadership,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. “I would be very disappointed to hear that the NTIA may lose its acting administrator just months after the previous administrator jumped ship,""Frankly, the acting administrator is doing a good job and it would be a loss to have her leave. I expect NTIA to be led by a competent, knowledgeable person who can speak frankly and react quickly to the numerous challenges ahead.”
“We appreciate Ms. Baker’s willingness to work with Congress to ensure the public is educated and the transition is smooth,” said House Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich. “Given ongoing concerns about the converter box coupon program, it is important that there be continuity of leadership at NTIA,” Dingell said, urging the appointment of a “well-qualified replacement who is knowledgeable about the transition and whose arrival will not cause any disruptions at this critical time in the transition.”
Several lawmakers’ offices involved in DTV oversight said they were disappointed Baker was leaving. Some industry officials reportedly tried to persuade the White House to retain Baker, but gave up after it appeared there was no way to turn around the decision.
Baker won high marks for her handling of the program from consumer electronics industry officials. “Meredith has done a terrific job of keeping this coupon program on track,” said LG Vice President John Taylor. “She'll really be missed.” Baker is “an incredible professional” who brought unique “energy” to the program, said Marc Pearl, executive director of the CE Retailers Coalition: “She reached out very energetically to various constituencies” early on in her brief tenure and made the program work.
Pearl said Patel could be a good choice to replace Baker because he has experience managing intra-agency programs. Pearl said he knows Patel from working with Cheney’s office on first responder issues and has found him to be “incredibly well placed to guide” Cheney’s first responder effort. One CE source who asked not to be identified said Patel, because of his knowledge of the executive branch, might be a good choice to promote high-level interagency cooperation on the DTV transition, much as FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein has sought in a Y2K-type DTV task force.
But many fear the disruption in leadership so close to the transition. “It’s clear that for all its rhetoric, the administration considers broadband deployment, the digital divide and the digital transition to be issues of tertiary concern, barely worth the attention of the administration,” said Media Access Project President Andrew Schwartzman. “It’s especially frustrating because there is a small, talented, hard-working staff at NTIA that is doing the best it can with limited resources,” Schwartzman said. “Absent somebody with political clout and an administration committed to accomplishing something, they're going to have a hard time getting their job done.”