Watchdog Says FCC Employees Own Communications Stock

A nonpartisan government-watchdog group called on U.S. ethics officials to investigate whether the Federal Communications Commission complied with financial-conflict rules when it permitted several top officials to own stocks in apparent violation of the agency’s own rules.

The Wall Street Journal reports the group sent a letter sent Monday to the Office of Government Ethics, the federal agency that oversees ethics rules, the Campaign Legal Center said the FCC officials owned stocks in cable and telecommunications companies. 

Federal law bans FCC employees from owning stock in any company that is “significantly regulated” by the agency. 

The group also sent a letter to the FCC’s Office of Inspector General late last week asking investigators to review why ethics officials allowed seven FCC officials to collectively own thousands of dollars in stock in companies such as AT&T Inc., Comcast Corp. and International Business Machines Corp., according to public financial-disclosure forms filed by the employees.

“Despite this ban, the most recent financial disclosures publicly available show that ethics officials allowed multiple FCC employees to own stock in telecommunications and other companies that appear to fall under the prohibition,” wrote Kedric Payne, the group’s general counsel, and two other lawyers in a letter to the FCC’s acting inspector general.

The Campaign Legal Center is a two-decade-old nonprofit organization in Washington founded by a former Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission.  

The inspector general “should investigate whether the FCC’s ethics officials took appropriate action to enforce the ethics laws,” they wrote in a letter, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “These restrictions are meaningless if they are not enforced.”

An FCC spokeswoman said that the agency’s ethics officials believe that the individuals identified in the complaints “have taken all necessary steps in order to ensure they were and are in full compliance with all relevant ethics conflict of interest rules.”