The long-expected announcement that Federal Communications Commission chairman Reed Hundt has "left the building" brings to an end the reign of a man abnormally smitten with the kind of minutiae only a regulator could love. But having presided over the most complex and fast-paced regulatory maelstrom in telecommunications policy history, he leaves a mixed legacy and an unusual amount of chaos at the FCC.
In fact, Hundt's departure means that only one of the current four commissioners likely will remain standing a few months from now. Commissioner James Quello is retiring in a couple of months. And Commissioner Rachelle Chong got the cold shoulder from Congress, failing to win renomination. Her term ends this month.
With Hundt gone, that leaves only Commissioner Susan Ness - on whose vote Hundt could usually count - and some new blood to fill the seat of Commissioner Andrew Barrett, who left the agency late last year. Ness has been pining to fill Hundt's shoes, but many in Congress are reluctant to put a Hundt pal in the top spot after jousting with him over the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
In any event, all of this turnover will no doubt have implications for communications policy. For one thing, Hundt was notorious for a couple of personal campaigns he would launch into whenever a microphone appeared. One was wiring the schools to the ever-cliched "information superhighway." Another was squeezing as many "public interest" goodies out of television broadcasters as the First Amendment could bear.
And still another - and perhaps most dear to netizens - was his laissez-faire approach to cyberspace. Hundt helped head off a lobbying blitz by the telephone companies to make ISPs pay per-minute access charges, from which they have been exempt since the mid-'80s, and his attitude helped keep that issue out of a recent order reforming the access charge system. But the FCC is still collecting information on that topic and could later change its mind. With a new chairman and an almost completely new slate of commissioners, the future of that proceeding is anyone's guess.
But let's take a look at who's on deck. President Clinton has already nominated Harold Furchtgott-Roth, a Republican economist on the House Commerce Committee, to fill Barrett's Republican seat. Aside from a mercilessly grating name, Furchtgott-Roth has a reputation as a staunch critic of the 1992 Cable Act as a disaster of overregulation. He also has libertarian views when it comes to phone rates (he's skeptical that the city folk should subsidize the country folk, as is now the case). Naturally, his conservative approach hasn't been a hit with consumer groups or members of Congress from rural states. Although he's expected to win confirmation, most are expecting a grilling in Senate confirmation hearings.
The White House also has nominated FCC General Counsel Bill Kennard to be a commissioner, and his confirmation is expected to fly through the Senate. Kennard is a long-time FCC insider who many believe will bring a veteran's perspective. But as the top lawyer, he has also batted for Hundt in court battles with several industries and bears the battle scars of Hundt's conquests.
The top candidate for Chong's spot is Michael Powell, chief of staff in the Justice Department's antitrust division. And yes, he's General Colin Powell's son. Those combined credentials have already won over Senate Commerce Committee chairman Senator John McCain (R-Arizona), who was among the first to say publicly he wouldn't support Chong's bid for a second term and has been pushing for Powell ever since.
What about Hundt's spot? The conventional wisdom in Washington is that rising Washington lawyer Ralph Everett is the top choice. Now in private practice, Everett is a former chief counsel and staff director for the Commerce Committee. And he's a favorite of Senator Ernest Hollings (D-South Carolina), who headed that committee before the Republican blitz of 1994. And since the chairmanship has to go to a Democrat, Republicans in Congress have nothing to gain by needlessly irritating a colleague that someday could be back controlling committee assignments. So Everett appears the favorite.
The odd woman out of this equation is Kathleen Wallman, a razor-sharp lawyer who was chief of the FCC's Common Carrier Bureau (the phone experts) until late 1995 when she took a job as chief of staff of the White House's National Economic Counsel. She reportedly was eyeing the Chairman's post, but her perceived status as a Hundt protege as well as the lack of a big-name backer in Congress has left her flailing in the breeze.
The bottom line is that Hundt's departure comes at a fitting time. The entire FCC is undergoing a face-lift anyway. Just as it's impossible to tell what Supreme Court nominees will do once they got on the bench, it's perilous to predict how new FCC commissioners will vote. But if the current favorites all are confirmed, the FCC will have two Hundtesque commissioners (Ness and Kennard), one no-nonsense conservative (Furchtgott-Roth), an antitrust expert (Powell), and somewhat of a wild card (Everett).
As for Hundt, he said at a press conference Tuesday that he's off to write a book called You Say You Want A Revolution about the implementation of the 1996 telecom law. He also says he wants to finish writing a novel he said he has neglected since he took over at the FCC. Rumors have him eventually landing at Microsoft, where many feel he would be at home as an antitrust attorney and faithful supporter of all that is "wired" to computers. Perhaps fitting that he'll spend the next few months in front of keyboard typing himself into a book deal.
