Official with LightSquared Ties Will Head Auction Task Force
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski appointed Gary Epstein, a longtime telecom attorney with ties to LightSquared, to serve as co-leader of the commission’s Incentive Auction Task Force. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, instantly raised questions about the appointment. The move had raised some questions within the agency after it was unveiled internally last week, officials said. Epstein was originally slated to be appointed deputy chief of the Office of Strategic Planning. He ended up being named a special counsel to the chairman.
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In another personnel change at the commission, Public Safety Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett is leaving, to be replaced by David Furth, a deputy chief, on an acting basis. Ruth Milkman will continue to serve as the other co-leader of the auction task force.
Epstein has a long history on telecom issues, dating back to service as Common Carrier Bureau chief under former Chairman Mark Fowler during the Reagan administration. He spent more than 25 years at Latham & Watkins. In recent years, he worked on the DTV transition and is a member of the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee. Epstein, like Genachowski, also worked on the transition team for President Barack Obama.
The biography released by the FCC doesn’t mention Epstein’s service at SkyTerra, which became LightSquared, from March 2009 to May 2010, where he was executive vice president. Congressional Republicans already had some concerns about the relationship between the Obama administration and LightSquared. Jeff Carlisle, who also served on the transition team, is a current LightSquared executive.
"The FCC will need to make sure this employee is completely removed from any dealings with LightSquared,” Grassley said of the Epstein appointment. “The FCC should be transparent about any steps it takes to ensure recusal. Just as with the SEC, the FCC can build confidence in its decision-making by offering transparency about revolving door employees. Unfortunately, the FCC was not transparent about the steps it took to ensure the recusal of another employee who worked for a public relations firm that represented LightSquared, so I urge the FCC to let transparency prevail in this case."
Seton Motley, president of Less Government, was sharply critical of the announcement. “The FCC omitted SkyTerra from the Epstein resume they released upon his announcement as co-leader of their Incentive Auction Task Force,” Motley said in an e-mail. “All in the name of transparency, of course. If there is nothing to the LightSquared Crony … charges -- as the Administration has repeatedly asserted -- why the SkyTerra omission? Just another day in the life of the Opaque Administration."
Free State Foundation President Randolph May said he has known Epstein a long time and respects his ability and his integrity. “I think this view is widely shared, so I wouldn’t worry much about his prior associations impacting his judgment or effectiveness,” May said. “If I have any concern at all, it doesn’t relate to Gary personally, but rather to Chairman Genachowski’s seeming notion that he has to reach outside the commission to bring in new people to handle ‘big’ projects or proceedings. I think when this happens so much, it causes concern among the regular career staff."
"There certainly can’t be any doubt about his qualifications,” said Andrew Schwartzman, senior vice president of the Media Access Project. “The idea that his long career of leadership in the private bar is somehow besmirched by the fact that he worked for an earlier incarnation of what is now LightSquared is absurd. No wonder it is becoming harder to get people to go into public service."
Public Knowledge Legal Director Harold Feld also defended the appointment. “This is pretty far removed from anything Epstein would have touched at SkyTerra, and incentive auctions in no way even remotely bears on LightSquared,” Feld said by email. “There is no evidence of which I am aware that Epstein was involved in any of the arguments over interference and the Gateway Requirement which are what made LightSquared so contentious. A lot of talented people were involved in the effort to make commercial, terrestrial use of the L Band possible from the time the FCC started examining the possibility 10 years ago until today. It would be a big mistake, and cut off a major talent pool, to treat anyone who ever had anything to do with something related to LightSquared at any time as contaminated with LightSquared cooties."
Jeff Silva, analyst at Medley Global Advisors, said he doesn’t expect the appointment to prove too controversial. “As an historic aside, Epstein’s former boss -- ex-FCC Chairman Mark Fowler … argued way back in the 1980s for FCC spectrum auction authorization, only to be turned back by skeptical Democrats in Congress,” Silva said. “The irony, of course, is auctions were first authorized by the Democratic-controlled Congress in 1993 during the Clinton administration.”
Meanwhile, Barnett is leaving the FCC at the end of the month to return to the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, Genachowski said Tuesday. A retired rear admiral in the Navy, Barnett joined the FCC in July 2009 as chief of the bureau. Furth has been an FCC staffer since 1992 and is well known in the public safety community.