Communications Act Overhaul Means Plenty of Outreach for House, Redl Says
Expect plenty of digging in on a Communications Act overhaul this year, House Commerce Committee Majority Chief Counsel David Redl said Thursday at a Minority Media and Telecommunications Council event on the topic hosted by Wiley Rein. House Republicans have said they want to hold hearings and issue white papers in 2014 and embark on legislation in 2015.
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"Cameras and microphones don’t always lead us to the best outcome,” Redl said, saying hearings don’t always lead to information in policy discussions. Hearings will be good for digging into a few specific in-depth issues, at a busy, election-year time when it’s “more important to be choosy about the issues we want to do a hearing on,” he said.
He described a broader scope of outreach, to individual companies, trade associations and public interest groups, done in a casual setting “where they can speak a little more freely.” The answers stakeholders give in those conversations differ from what stakeholders might give in white paper responses they know will be publicly posted, and those conversations can always involve industry officials who may not normally be trotted in front of hearings, he said. “We're smart enough to know we're not experts on every single comma and semicolon in the Communications Act.” Trade associations have already helped Congress by managing to “aggregate issues” that certain sectors have zeroed in on, he said. The subcommittee leadership was happy with the more than 100 responses to the first white paper earlier this year, a thematic paper that attracted thematic responses, most of which were on topic, Redl added.
The Communications Subcommittee plans many more white papers, on topics such as universal service and interconnection, Redl said. “We're going to keep getting more and more detailed on spectrum,” he said, expressing intentions for a “holistic” review that the subcommittee knows will take awhile. “That’s just the tip of the iceberg.” To call the scope a “broad swath” would be “the understatement of the year,” he said.
"The answer is really ‘no, we haven’t started drafting,'” Redl said. “Lots of flotsam and jetsam” in the act “could be addressed,” he said. Redl said there’s a “vast middle” with “bones of contentions” where the subcommittee will dig in. House Republicans have avoided the word “rewrite,” preferring the word “update,” Redl said.
"If it’s a comprehensive rewrite, then so be it,” but it’s too early to prejudge, Redl said. The lawmakers are trying to consider the economic impact of the changes they make, he said: “That’s part of the information gathering process we're in now.”
Updating the act seems “prudent," said Dick Wiley, a former FCC chairman and now head of the communications practice of Wiley Rein. He said the Telecommunications Act of 1996 “was successful in creating a competitive, national policy framework” designed to accelerate the deployment of advanced services and open markets to competition. But much has changed since then, he said.
"I have been very encouraged by the extent of the outreach and the fact that the committee is taking a very broad look and starting to look at the fundamentals to figure out what needs to be done,” said Anna-Maria Kovacs, visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Business and Public Policy, during a panel after Redl’s speech. She found it “encouraging” to hear committee staffers talk about recognition of economic consequences of legislation.
"I immediately get concerned” when there’s talk of an update to the act, said James Winston, executive director of the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters. He said minority ownership “took a big hit” following the 1996 act. Other items should be back on the table if there’s an update now, though, he said. Both Winston and Wiley praised the minority tax certificate, eliminated in the 1990s. “We all recognize that access to capital is the primary hurdle for minorities and women,” Wiley said.
Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld said he’s “very pleased to hear that the starting point for this is an update of the act” rather than an outright rewrite. Telecom is “one of the handful of things that are very different from other goods and services,” Feld said, pointing to “unique issues and concerns and values” that should be remembered in any telecom law changes. That compels having “a specialized agency,” too important to simply be part of the executive branch, Feld said of the FCC. (jhendel@warren-news.com)