There must have been a great gnashing of teeth in Chairman Wheeler’s office this morning as the FCC announced that it was pulling the Chairman’s latest modifications to the set-top box proposal from its voting agenda. This is surely but a bump in the road for the Chairman; he will undoubtedly press ever onward in his quest to “fix” a market that is flooded with competition and consumer choice. But, as we stop to take a breath for a moment while this latest FCC adventure is temporarily paused, there is a larger issue worth considering: the lack of transparency at the FCC.
Although the Commission has an unfortunate tradition of non-disclosure surrounding many of its regulatory proposals, the problem has seemingly been exacerbated by Chairman Wheeler’s aggressive agenda and his intransigence in the face of overwhelming and rigorous criticism.
Perhaps nowhere was this attitude more apparent than with his handling of the Open Internet Order, which was plagued with enough process problems to elicit a call for a delay of the Commission’s vote on the initial rules from Democratic Commissioner Rosenworcel, and a strong rebuke from the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee prior to the Commission’s vote on the final rules (which were not disclosed to the public until after the vote).
But the same cavalier dismissal of public and stakeholder input has plagued the Chairman’s beleaguered set-top box proposal, as well.
As Commissioner Pai noted before Congress in March:
The FCC continues to choose opacity over transparency. The decisions we make impact hundreds of millions of Americans and thousands of small businesses. And yet to the public, to Congress, and even to the Commissioners at the FCC, the agency’s work remains a black box.
Take this simple proposition: The public should be able to see what we’re voting on before we vote on it. That’s how Congress works, as you know. Anyone can look up any pending bill right now by going to congress.gov. And that’s how many state commissions work too. But not the FCC.
Exhibit A in Commissioner Pai’s lament was the set-top box proceeding:
Instead, the public gets to see only what the Chairman’s Office deigns to release, so controversial policy proposals can be (and typically are) hidden in a wave of media adulation. That happened just last month when the agency proposed changes to its set-top-box rules but tried to mislead content producers and the public about whether set-top box manufacturers would be permitted to insert their own advertisements into programming streams.
Now, although the Chairman’s initial proposal was eventually released, we have only a fact sheet and an op-ed by Chairman Wheeler on which to judge the purportedly substantial changes embodied in his latest version.
Even Democrats in Congress have recognized the process problems that have plagued this proceeding. As Senator Feinstein (D-CA) urged in a recent letter to Chairman Wheeler:
Given the significance of this proceeding, I ask that you make public the new proposal under consideration by the Commission, so that all interested stakeholders, members of Congress, copyright experts, and others can comment on the potential copyright implications of the new proposal before the Commission votes on it.
And as Senator Heller (R-NV) wrote in a letter to Chairman Wheeler this week:
I believe it is unacceptable that the FCC has not released the text of this proposal before Thursday’s vote. A three-page fact sheet does not provide enough details for Congress to conduct proper oversight of this rulemaking that will significantly impact both consumers and industry…. I encourage you to release the text immediately so that the American public has a full understanding of what is being considered by the Commission….
Of course, this isn’t a new problem at the FCC. In fact, before he supported Chairman Wheeler’s efforts to impose Open Internet rules without sufficient public disclosure, then-Senator Obama decried then-Chairman Martin’s efforts to enact new media ownership rules with insufficient process in 2007:
Repealing the cross ownership rules and retaining the rest of our existing regulations is not a proposal that has been put out for public comment; the proper process for vetting it is not in closed door meetings with lobbyists or in selective leaks to the New York Times.
Although such a proposal may pass the muster of a federal court, Congress and the public have the right to review any specific proposal and decide whether or not it constitutes sound policy. And the Commission has the responsibility to defend any new proposal in public discourse and debate.
And although you won’t find them complaining this time (because this time they want the excessive intervention that the NPRM seems to contemplate), regulatory advocates lamented just exactly this sort of secrecy at the Commission when Chairman Genachowski proposed his media ownership rules in 2012. At that time Free Press angrily wrote:
[T]he Commission still has not made public its actual media ownership order…. Furthermore, it’s disingenuous for the FCC to suggest that its process now is more transparent than the one former Chairman Martin used to adopt similar rules. Genachowski’s FCC has yet to publish any details of its final proposal, offering only vague snippets in press releases… despite the president’s instruction to rulemaking agencies to conduct any significant business in open meetings with opportunities for members of the public to have their voices heard.
As Free Press noted, President Obama did indeed instruct “agencies to conduct any significant business in open meetings with opportunities for members of the public to have their voices heard.” In his Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, his first executive action, the president urged that:
Public engagement enhances the Government’s effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society, and public officials benefit from having access to that dispersed knowledge. Executive departments and agencies should offer Americans increased opportunities to participate in policymaking and to provide their Government with the benefits of their collective expertise and information.
The resulting Open Government Directive calls on executive agencies to
take prompt steps to expand access to information by making it available online in open formats. With respect to information, the presumption shall be in favor of openness….
The FCC is not an “executive agency,” and so is not directly subject to the Directive. But the Chairman’s willingness to stray so far from basic principles of transparency is woefully inconsistent with the basic principles of good government and the ideals of heightened transparency claimed by this administration.