Reforming Regulators: Does the FCC Need Saving? - Page 2

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin Source: Reuters

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The increasingly political, captive-to-industry FCC was the main target of a recent article by Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig, who called for abolishing the agency entirely, and replacing it with a new entity whose focus would be to spur innovation. The replacement agency would act as a safeguard against both excessive government regulation and predatory forces of markets that had become monopolies.

This morning's panelists generally agreed with several of Lessig's points, but as a practical matter, none seriously advocated the idea of disassembling the agency and building a new one in its stead.

Change in culture?

Severing all ties with the industry, as Cooper suggested, would not satisfy all of the FCC's critics.

Kennard, who resigned his post as FCC chair on Jan. 19, 2001, one day before Bush took the oath of office, said the FCC's current operations have taken a toll on morale at the agency and resulted in the departure of some top talent. He also joined others in recalling past eras at the FCC when the commissioners engaged in vigorous debate, and the staffers weren't afraid to chime in with an opinion.

Critics describe Martin's regime as one where voicing dissenting opinions can be professionally injurious, and that expert intelligence is often cherrypicked and liberally interpreted to contrive support for one of the chairman's plans, even as conflicting evidence is overlooked or pushed aside.

"We need an FCC that consciously wants to learn," said Jonathan Sallet, formerly a senior Commerce Department official in the in the Clinton administration who regularly advised Al Gore on telecommunications issues.

"We don't often think about governmental agencies in terms of learning," said Sallet, who is now a partner at the Glover Park Group, a D.C. public relations firm. "But at a time of technological change as swift as we're seeing now and at a time of such great uncertainty about the future, we need a government agency that wants to learn because no decision it makes today will automatically be the right decision tomorrow."

Critics would also like to see reforms in the way items are crafted before they come to vote. It is common for the FCC to call for public comment on an item it is considering. But once the comment period ends, the debate over the item's final form is only getting started, the panelists said. Most of the concessions and substantive changes are made in the final hours before the proposal comes to a vote, and the process is hardly transparent.

The panelists also identified the challenges the commission has had in moving forward with the more difficult and complex issues, such as reform to the Universal Service Fund.

Martin has said that he hoped to bring USF reform before the commission as chairman, but that the other commissioners were dragging their feet. USF reform, along with many of the other thorny issues the FCC faces, tend to get passed from one chairman to the next, Kathleen Abernathy, a former commissioner, said during the panel discussion.

"The harder it gets, the greater the likelihood that you get stalled," she said.