Copps Calls for Revised FCC Mission, Stronger Focus on Public Interest

Opening lines of communication is the “first real step” of FCC reform, Copps said. The acting chairman said he has made strides in that direction, but would still like to see the end of the closed meeting rule, which restricts more than two commissioners from meeting behind the scenes. “If we were allowed to do that, we could manage a lot of traffic through that place, and get a lot of this backlog out of the way.”

Copps hopes to better corral and share FCC expertise with Congress, the president and the public, he said. “How better to inform the public policy dialogue than by having real experts gather the facts, tee up the options and their costs and benefits, and put ideas and papers out -- not something we have to vote on, but analyses and ideas that we share because we care and we want to inform the policy debate.”

The FCC “must also cultivate the virtue of predictability,” Copps said. “Nobody ever says FCC and predictability in the same sentence anymore.” To that end, the regulator should do its own research rather than rely on data collected by outside interests, he said. Better grounded proposals will be more sustainable in the courts of law, Congress and public opinion, he added.

Copps is wary of a full-on reorganization of the FCC, as some have suggested, he said. The FCC should go down that road only after weighing the benefits against disruption to the agency’s policy-making ability, and possible damage to staff morale, he said. Some of the government revamps witnessed by Copps have worked, he said, but “many more have been flops.”

Former Chairmen Talk Shop

The FCC can do much to improve its effectiveness as a regulator, former chairmen said on a panel following Copps. The agency should be run like a business, with a strategic plan broken down by quarter, said William Kennard. “The FCC has fallen into a pattern in recent years where you really don’t know when things are going to get decided,” he said. “As a result, people game that system.”

Copps is on the right track in encouraging communication with Congress and the public, former chairmen said. Maintaining an open, transparent relationship with Congress limits surprises, resulting in fewer angry letters from the Hill, said Richard Wiley. Kennard and Reed Hundt agreed. If the FCC doesn’t telegraph its plan, the agency can get into a mode of being reactive to legislators’ wants, rather than working with them, Kennard said. The FCC should also try to “marshal wisdom” in the industry, Wiley said. That’s where the answer to intercarrier compensation and other controversial issues will come, he said.

However, the ex-chairmen gave mixed reviews of public hearings. Broad public interest isn’t always represented at en banc hearings, which tend to attract more activist participants, Wiley said. Field hearings can be expensive and a “waste of time” for commissioners, Kennard said. However, the FCC should hold more factual hearings at its headquarters to supplement written comments, he said. Wiley agreed, noting more open discussion would help eighth-floor staff who don’t have time to read every written comment.

Hundt and Kennard called for a more proactive FCC. The U.S. is “in crisis,” Kennard said, and the FCC can’t afford to take a business-as-usual, “laissez-faire” attitude. While “regulation” used to be a “dirty word,” today the No. 1 question for agencies is “how deep and how broad” regulation should be, Hundt said. But Wiley cautioned that more regulation is not always the right answer. What’s needed isn’t necessarily “more government,” but rather “more intelligent government,” he said.

The FCC must revise -- and stick to -- its mission statement, Kennard said. The agency no longer has the “luxury” of neglecting its core goal of setting the right structure for the market, he said. For example, rather than waiting for mergers, the FCC should utilize wireless spectrum to encourage new entrants, he said. The FCC should promote regulatory parity across technologies, Hundt said. Phone and cable companies now offer the same services but don’t compete on a level playing field, he noted. Meanwhile, the commission hasn’t adapted broadcast regulation to new business models, “almost whistling in the graveyard” as more and more companies go bankrupt, he said. -- Adam Bender

FCBA Notebook…

Revamping the Universal Service Fund will be “absolutely essential” to broadband deployment efforts in rural areas, said Richard Wiley during the ex-chairmen panel. Economic stimulus money will fund broadband build out, but continued funding will be needed to keep networks going, he said. Reed Hundt agreed, saying it would be an “unparalleled tragedy” if the stimulus spending went to waste because of a broken subsidy system. But William Kennard hesitated to endorse Wiley’s statement, noting that a company’s costs drop significantly after completing construction. As the FCC looks at the Universal Service Fund, the agency should ensure that it doesn’t “gold plate” some rural carrier networks while neglecting those in need, he said.

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Rather than promote good policy, a hazily written public interest standard may permit bad FCC regulation, said Free State Foundation President Randolph May in a panel on the standard. The Communications Act requires the FCC to “prescribe such rules and regulations as may be necessary in the public interest to carry out the provisions” of the Act. The standard is “unconstitutional because it is so indeterminate” and “unintelligible,” May said. Congress should substitute a competition-based standard, or alternatively, the FCC should interpret the current standard to include a deregulatory presumption, he said. Gene Kimmelman, vice president of Consumers Union, disagreed, calling the standard a “safety valve” that gives the FCC regulatory flexibility. Limiting the standard to competition ignores other goals, such as diversity and localism, said Rick Chessen, FCC acting chief of staff. It could also limit the FCC from considering new interests like job production and regulatory parity, he said. Still, Chessen encouraged dialog on the issue, saying “these are questions that need to be asked.”

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Former FCC chiefs of staff agreed that doing their jobs well meant staying agile. Blair Levin, chief of staff to Reed Hundt, said his management style was based on NBA coach Phil Jackson’s triangle offense as practiced by Michael Jordan and the rest of the Chicago Bulls. “I'm not kidding about that,” he said. “The genius of that is if you build an offense that had people constantly shifting and constantly in motion, fundamentally on a triangle basis. A lot of what the chief of staff is doing is shifting [resources] depending on what the particular needs of the moment were.” Brian Fontes, chief of staff to Acting Chairman James Quello, said one of his most important jobs was making certain everyone on the commission was kept up to date on what was happening. “We tried to infuse the commission [with] a sense of openness with staff, a sense that each commissioner is one vote and each commissioner should be as important as the chairman,” Fontes said.