Starks Ready to Start Work as Commissioner Once Paperwork Cleared
New FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks might not wait for the federal shutdown to end before taking office. The Senate confirmed Starks to his first term as a commissioner this month (see 1901030042), after the closure started but when the FCC was mostly operational. Almost two weeks later, the agency apparently still doesn’t have paperwork back from the White House and the State Department that it needs for Starks to move up to the eighth floor.
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Starks is ready to go once paperwork is complete, lawyers close to the newly confirmed commissioner told us. He has remained in the building as a staffer to the Enforcement Bureau and was classified as an essential worker required to show up for work. Once Starks moves upstairs to the top floor, he won’t have staff initially, since that will have to wait for the end of the shutdown.
Starks can choose from three officials qualified to swear him in -- Chairman Ajit Pai, the chief human capital officer or the managing director, officials said. Once the paperwork is complete, Starks likely will be sworn in surrounded by his family in a small ceremony several days after.
The administration has been changing its shutdown rules to allow a growing number of staffers in other agencies to return to work, though without pay. The FCC is less likely to do so, former officials and industry lawyers said. The FCC didn’t comment. The partial shuttering started Dec. 22.
“The relationship between the executive branch proper and independent agencies like the SEC and FCC make such determinations more complicated,” said Andrew Schwartzman, from the Communications and Technology Law Clinic at the Georgetown’s Institute for Public Representation.
There continued to be no signs of progress toward reopening the FCC and other shuttered federal agencies Thursday. Congress adjourned Thursday, but both chambers plan to return Tuesday, recessing through only Martin Luther King Jr. Day instead of taking a week long break as previously planned. The House passed a continuing resolution Thursday to temporarily reopen the government through Feb. 28 without the funding for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border that President Donald Trump has insisted be included in a final bill. House Republicans later demanded a roll call vote on the measure, which Democrats set for Tuesday.
“Each day this shutdown drags on, innumerable costs ripple through the economy,” said Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Director-Broadband and Spectrum Policy Doug Brake. “Delays in 5G equipment is one of the big ones at the FCC, but I could imagine how it would slip through the cracks of an agency-by-agency review. Much better to find a way to end the shutdown altogether.”
Among the FCC staff still working are two preparing for this year’s World Radiocommunication Conference, industry officials said. They are Michael Mullinix, designated federal official to the WRC Advisory Council, and Dante Ibarra from the International Bureau.
“Grateful for the efforts of the @FCC field office employees who are continuing to do critical work during the partial federal #shutdown,” Pai tweeted Thursday. “During a call this afternoon with staff across the country, from Georgia to California, I thanked them for their service.”
Trump, meanwhile, escalated his dispute with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., over her effective postponement of his planned Jan. 29 State of the Union speech to Congress. Trump responded to Pelosi's postponement call by in turn canceling Pelosi's use of a military plane for an upcoming trip by members of Congress to Brussels and Afghanistan.