Ari Fitzgerald

Mark Schneider

My well respected former FCC colleague, Ari Gitzgerald has released a well written spectrum policy survey paper he coauthored with Mark Schneider of Sidley Austin LLP. The Hogan Lovells website with the paper adds “with contributions from the following telecommunications lawyers at Hogan Lovells LLP: Michele Farquhar, a partner; and associates Mark Brennan, Chris Termini and Aaron George.” The 90 page paper is well footnoted and should be a useful resource for many. It was very gracious of the authors to make this paper public.

The paper was presented originally at the Practising Law Institute’s 29th Annual Telecommunications Policy & Regulation Institute publication in December 2011. Long time readers may recall that we have written about this event before in this blog. PLI is a nonprofit group that charges high (>$1000) prices for both attendance at its events and copies of the material presented. There is nothing wrong with this so far.

However, PLI events get ALL the “movers and shakers” from high FCC leadership, e.g. commissioners and bureau/office chiefs, who give presentations to the honchos of industry and K Street firms without making the same information available to the public. I have previously suggested to FCC that if these presentations are prepared with federal resources they should be made available to the public and if PLI is selling videos of the presentations, the FCC should demand copies of the presentations by FCC officials as a precondition for their presentations. Such videos should then be posted for the public within a few days of the PLI event.

On the FCC website I can only find the text of Comm. McDowell’s presentation for the 2011PLI telecom event and nothing for the other FCC presenters. There are, however, copies of Chmn. Kennard’s presentation in 1997 and 1999, Comm. Tate’s presentation in 2008, Chmn. Hundt in 1997, Comm. Copps in 2006, Former WTB Chief Muleta in 2003, etc. Thus there is precedent for making the presentations public, but no consistency.

Also, NTIA Chief Strickling made public his remarks at the 2011 PLI telecom event.

So if you want to hear public officials speak on telecom policy, you can sign up now for the 2012 PLI telecom event on December 6-7 for a mere $1,595.00 OR, FCC could adopt the policy advocated above that the presentations by public officials about the public business should be made public within a few days.

Meanwhile, kudos to Comm. McDowell and NTIA’s Strickling for making their presentations public along with Ari Fitzgerald and Mark Schneider for making their thorough review available to those of us who do not work for or have not hired a K Street law firm, e.g. the “99%”.

Tags: transparency at FCC, FCC Reform, FCC website