Planned Field Office Closures Draw Scrutiny

The FCC maintains the agency can uphold its commitment to the public to respond to problems with public safety communications even with closures of approximately half of its Enforcement Bureau field offices and layoffs of bureau field staff by nearly two-thirds as the agency faces doing more work with less money.

According to RadioWorld, NAB VP of Spectrum Policy Bob Weller believes the planned closures would leave the agency “inadequately prepared” to handle spectrum disputes.

Weller spent nine years in the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau Field Office operations. “I’ve had guns pointed at me,” he told RadioWorld recently. Fewer field offices and field agents could mean “disrupted emergency and AMBER alerts, unreliable police and fire communications and riskier air travel” among other “scary” possibilities, according to Weller, who worked in the bureau’s San Francisco Field Office and was also director of the Denver District Office.

The FCC has a different view. Under the proposal, “the commission would maintain its current commitment to respond to all public safety spectrum issues within one day, anywhere in the country, with the vast majority of the nation reachable within 4 to 6 hours,” according to an FCC spokesman. “If the proposal is adopted, the commission will meet its responsibilities while existing within today’s flat-line budget.”