A draft House bill on broadband stimulus spending would take away NTIA’s discretion to decide when to take back grants provided under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The draft bill by Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., also would speed delivery of reclaimed funds to the U.S. Treasury. But committee Democrats asked in a Democratic Commerce Committee staff memo circulated Wednesday among lobbyists why the bill is necessary.
Adam Bender
Adam Bender, Senior Editor, is the state and local telecommunications reporter for Communications Daily, where he also has covered Congress and the Federal Communications Commission. He has won awards for his Warren Communications News reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists, Specialized Information Publishers Association and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. Bender studied print journalism at American University and is the author of dystopian science-fiction novels. You can follow Bender at WatchAdam.blog and @WatchAdam on Twitter.
Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile urged lawmakers to focus on “substance” when deciding how best to build a national wireless broadband network for public safety. In a Monday briefing, the No. 3 and 4 carriers previewed a new white paper showing how spectrum sharing would meet public safety’s needs if the government auctions the 700 MHz D-block. The carriers say they would buy the spectrum and negotiate sharing arrangements with public safety. The companies’ effort met a setback earlier this month when President Barack Obama endorsed a direct reallocation of the D-block to public safety.
House Republicans are preparing a bill to increase oversight of the broadband stimulus program under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In a hearing notice circulated Thursday, Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., said he plans to circulate a draft bill before a hearing Thursday about Recovery Act broadband spending. The draft bill “would increase accountability for this spending to return unused or reclaimed broadband stimulus funds to the U.S. Treasury,” Walden said. The hearing is at 10 a.m., in Room 2322, Rayburn House Office Building. Also Thursday, the House Oversight Committee plans hearing on “regulatory impediments to job creation.” The hearing is 9:30 a.m. in HVC 210, Capitol Visitors Center. In December and January, the committee’s Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., sent NAB, USTelecom and other industry groups letters asking which current and proposed federal regulations would harm job growth. He plans to make the responses and his analysis public by Friday, he said last month (CD Jan 25 p8).
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bipartisan measure designed to speed up the patent system. The committee voted 15-0 on S-23. Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, voted present. The committee delayed a vote on a separate bill by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to extend until December 2013 three provisions of the Patriot Act scheduled to expire Feb. 28.
NTIA must soon convince a Congress concerned about federal spending to pay millions of dollars so the agency can conduct oversight of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s $4.7 billion Broadband Technology Opportunities Program. In December, the lame-duck Congress passed a continuing resolution increasing NTIA’s budget by about $20 million to $40.6 million, in part to pay for BTOP oversight. The resolution expires March 4. With one month to go and the GOP-controlled House looking for budget cuts, some fiscal conservatives are looking at NTIA.
Facebook’s plan to release users’ addresses and cellphone numbers to third parties is raising eyebrows on Capitol Hill. House Commerce Committee members Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Joe Barton, R-Texas, raised questions in a letter Wednesday to company CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “Facebook needs to protect the personal information of its users to ensure that Facebook doesn’t become Phonebook,” Markey said in a statement. The lawmakers asked Facebook to specify what information would be shared and whether any has been shared previously. They also asked why Facebook decided to suspend and then reactivate the sharing program and whether users opting in to sharing could later opt out. Markey and Barton asked for responses by Feb. 23. Facebook believes “there is tremendous value in giving people the freedom and control to take information they put on Facebook with them to other websites,” said a spokesman for the company. “We enable people to share this information only after they explicitly authorize individual applications to access it.” Facebook designed the system with “a number of privacy experts,” it said. “Following the rollout of this new feature, we heard some feedback and agree that there may be additional improvements we could make. Great people at the company are working on that and we look forward to sharing their progress soon.”
The Senate Select Committee on Ethics hired a lawyer for a “preliminary inquiry” regarding ethics allegations against Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member John Ensign, R-Nev., the ethics committee said Tuesday. It hired Carol Bruce, a congressional investigation attorney with K&L Gates. The panel didn’t describe the allegations against Ensign, but the senator previously was accused of covering up an affair with an aide. “The purpose of a preliminary inquiry is to determine whether there is substantial credible evidence that a violation within the Committee’s jurisdiction has occurred,” the ethics committee said. After that, it said the panel could dismiss the allegations, send a letter of admonition, “or, for more serious violations, [conduct] an adjudicatory review.” The panel “has assured Senator Ensign that their inquiry remains in the preliminary stage and that the appointment of a special counsel does not change the course of its inquiry,” said lawyer Robert Walker of Wiley Rein, representing Ensign in the matter. “Senator Ensign is confident that he complied with all ethics rules and laws, and he is hopeful that this appointment will lead to a more speedy resolution of this matter.” Ensign “will continue to cooperate with the committee’s inquiry,” added Walker.
The Senate Commerce Committee will have a hearing on public safety spectrum “very soon,” but no date has been set, said a Senate staffer. Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., told reporters Tuesday after a Democratic policy lunch in the Senate that he doesn’t know how quickly he can move the bill through the committee, “but it’s going to move. … It’s huge.” Rockefeller said he hasn’t talked with House Commerce Committee leaders about his bill. Last year Democrats and Republicans on the House committee supported a commercial auction of the D-block. “But look, the president wasn’t originally for” reallocation, and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski “originally was not for it,” Rockefeller said. Now “everybody’s for it,” and “it’s going to be a happy ending,” he added. Rockefeller said he met last week with auction supporter T-Mobile immediately before the White House endorsed reallocation. He didn’t relate what was said.
Another wireless bill to give the 700 MHz D-block to public safety is in the works, from Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, the Commerce Committee’s ranking member, a GOP committee staffer told us Friday. A White House endorsement late Thursday of D-block reallocation brought cheers from lawmakers with reallocation bills and silence from House Commerce Committee leaders who have supported a commercial auction.
House Commerce Committee leaders disagreed whether new regulatory reforms by President Barack Obama should apply to independent federal agencies like the FCC. At a House Commerce Oversight Subcommittee hearing Wednesday, an Office of Management and Budget official said current law prevented Obama from applying his recent executive order to independent agencies. Full Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., said he will pursue legislation so that no federal agency is exempt. But Ranking Member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said afterward that he has reservations.