FCC Reform Act Passes House, Moves To Senate

As expected, the House Monday passed the FCC Process Reform Act of 2015 (H.R. 2583) by voice vote, according to multichannel.com.

The baseline bill, which passed the House with bipartisan support in the last Congress, gives the FCC a year to set minimum comment periods, establishes procedures for putting specific language of a proposed rule in notices of proposed rulemaking, and comes up with performance measures for evaluating the effectiveness of rules.

The bill includes three Democratic amendments that 1) "require a report on actions the Commission can take to improve the participation of small businesses in FCC proceedings, publication on the FCC’s website of the status of a quarterly progress report, and publication of any internal policies established or changed by the Chairman."

Tom Wheeler

“This bill is the product of a multi-year, bipartisan legislative process, bringing us to a place where we can at least begin to create a framework for more transparent and predictable rulemakings at the FCC,” said Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) of the bipartisan bill he helped motorman.  “Process reform isn’t about the actions of one party, or one chairman. This is about putting rules into place that will carry over from one administration to the next, creating consistency and certainty for the many that are subject to the commission’s rules.”

Following House passage of an FCC process reform bill Monday night, all five commissioners are slated to give testimony to Congress the following day, according to The Hill.

The House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Communications and Technology hearing Tuesday will likely touch on procedural concerns at the commission as well as policies like net neutrality, upcoming online video rules, and next year's spectrum auction. The committee has also recently called on the Government Accountability Office to probe the FCC's enforcement bureau strategy.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is expected to lead a defense of his agency, in this, his ninth time testifying before Congress this year -- a record. Among other things, he is expected to take issue with Congress's proposed budget cuts to the agency that could have "severe consequences."

Ajit Pai

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai is expected to take aim at the FCC's Enforcement Bureau in his prepared statement FCC oversight hearing.

According to his testimony, he said the Chairman of the parent Energy & Commerce Committee, Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and vice chair of the subcommittee, Bob Latta (R-Ohio), were right in to call for an investigation into how the Enforcement Bureau was being run.

"To be blunt, the FCC’s enforcement process has gone off the rails.  Instead of dispensing justice by applying the law to the facts, the Commission has focused on issuing headline-grabbing fines, regardless of the legality of its actions."

Those headlines include a $100 million fine against AT&T and a $1.4 million fine against Sprint and others.

According to multichannel.com, he said the fine amounts seem to be "plucked from thin air...Congress never intended the FCC to assert that a company has violated never-adopted rules, to ignore facts that get in the way of good press, or to calculate potential forfeitures so implausibly large that any rough justice penalty will do."