Congressional report: FCC chair abused power
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin ignored his responsibilities as head of the regulatory body and abused his power, according to a congressional report released Tuesday.
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin
(Credit: Federal Communications Commission)Over the course of his tenure, Martin manipulated and withheld information from the other FCC commissioners and from Congress, neglected his statutory responsibilities to produce certain information to Congress, and ignored evidence that certain national communications programs were being grossly mismanaged, according to the report issued by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, titled "Deception and Distrust: The Federal Communications Commission Under Chairman Kevin J. Martin." (PDF)
The committee launched a bipartisan investigation in January after hearing allegations of mismanagement from current and former FCC employees, telecommunications industry representatives, and other FCC commissioners.
Typically, a congressional committee would hold hearings to investigate such matters, but the report was issued in lieu of hearings because, the report says, "due to the climate of fear that pervades the FCC...we found that key witnesses were unwilling to testify or even to have their names become known."
"Our investigation confirmed a number of troubling allegations raised by individuals in and outside the FCC," said Bart Stupak (D-MI), chairman of the subcommittee on oversight and investigations. "It is my hope that this report will serve as a road map for a fair, open, and efficient FCC under new leadership in the next administration."
Some of Martin's actions have led to higher telecommunications prices for consumers, the report finds. The commission, it says, failed to provide proper oversight of the Telecommunications Relay Service Fund, which funds special services that allow people with hearing or speech disabilities to communicate with hearing people.
The fund is financed by contributions from interstate telecommunications companies, based on a percentage of their revenues. The companies pass the cost down to consumers, who typically pay 7 cents to 10 cents per month for the fund. The fund, which compensates telephone companies for administering the program, has grown to more than $800 million.
The chairman's office, the report says, ignored evidence consumers were overcharged and providers were overcompensated by as much as $100 million a year. The neglect of that information led to a windfall of millions of dollars for the largest TRS provider, Sorenson, which covers about 80 percent of the video relay services market.
The report recommends the FCC immediately conduct a full investigation and audit of the company. The FCC earlier hired a contractor to audit Sorenson, but the company denied the contractor access to the staff and systems necessary to conduct the audit.
The report also recommends the Government Accountability Office audit the entire TRS program, including the FCC's efforts to protect the integrity of the fund.
"The FCC's apparent failure to insist on auditing Sorenson's books indicates an abdication of its responsibility to administer and protect the integrity of the TRS Fund," the report reads.
The report also says Martin manipulated information given to his fellow commissioners and Congress. For instance, upon becoming chair in 2005, the report says, Martin ordered FCC staff to reverse the findings of a study, which initially said that "a la carte" cable programming would not benefit consumers. He also demoted the Media Bureau chief, who had been in charge of the study.
The reversal led to suspicion inside and out of the FCC that the study sent to Congress was not based on objective analysis, the committee report says.
Moreover, Martin's personnel management style, the report says, has led to a decline in morale and an environment of distrust at the FCC.
"Chairman Martin's heavy-handed, opaque, and non-collegial management style has created distrust, suspicion, and turmoil among the five current commissioners," it says.
Other allegations investigated by the House committee proved to be founded on inconclusive evidence, although the report recommended the committee further investigate some claims. For instance, the FCC allegedly threatened to suspend action on the Liberty Media-DirecTV acquisition that was pending before the commission until DirecTV added certain local stations to the White House's satellite service.
"After a year of investigation, the committee's primary criticism of the chairman is that he spent too much money to ensure that deaf Americans have equal access to communications services," FCC spokesman Robert Kenny said in response to the report. "The chairman makes no apologies for his commitment to serving deaf and disabled Americans and for fighting to lower exorbitantly high cable rates that consumers are forced to pay."
The report says Martin has taken steps since Congress began its investigation to make the commission more transparent, such as holding regular press conferences.
Stephanie Condon is a staff writer for CNET News focused on the intersection of technology and politics. She is based in Washington, D.C. E-mail Stephanie. 
For starters, good job on bringing this to light because a lot of us in the Internet/Communications business have seen the FCC take many questionable steps under Kevin Martin's reign.
There is another related issue the FCC has been ignoring now for probably 2 years now which is getting zero visibility and will probably affect the TV/Video On Demand marketplace soon. What I'm referring to here are bandwidth caps being implemented by the major ISP's, Comcast, AT&T, VZ and others.
Before iTunes, Netflix and Blockbuster took to the net, not one company brought to light that a small percentage of broadband users were hogging the bandwidth. Now that we have a growing VOD/Movie download marketplace, all of a sudden, people are abusing the unlimited bandwidth promised by providers.
All this suspiciously after each one has entered into the TV marketplace?
Imagine that.... Now we get to live with bandwidth caps to save us from bandwidth hogs?
I say it's a Red-Herring for what's really going on, blocking competitors from providing video on demand on the infrastructure we the consumers have paid to put in place just for this reason, choice!
Why isn't the FCC raising the Anti-Competitive flag on these guys for limiting consumer choice?
Regards,
Eric Caldwell
Web-JIVE.com
How dare they release any allegations of this magnitude prior to holding hearings on these issues. The reasons why hearings are not held are of no consequence, the hearings should have been held and those 'key witnesses' should have been called to the hearing whether they testify once they get there or not.
Prior to those hearings taking place, this is nothing but empty allegation and the members of this congressional committee should be ashamed of themselves for it. Their constituents should be further ashamed and be prepared to make that clear to their representatives.
How dare they? The rest of that sentence you omitted (yet is in the article) tells you exactly why.
Why isn't the FCC raising the Anti-Competitive flag on these guys for limiting consumer choice?"
Why aren't you asking the much more legitimate question of why these ISPs are/were offering a service they cannot provide (the mythical 'unlimited bandwidth'). Instead of being honest and forthright with customers about the quality of service they are being offered, and which they are paying for, ISPs have been outright lying to customers for the last decade regarding what they will really receive. Network download caps have one purpose only: prolong the timeframe that ISPs have to build up infrastructure and provide higher profit margins in the meantime by limiting usage to keep oversold networks running.
The customer is not to blame for 'hogging' bandwidth when they are attempting to use what they believe they have paid for (however they choose to use it, including peer-to-peer networks)... you are not 'hogging' what is YOURS if you use it for yourself. The companies providing a competing media delivery service are also not to blame and neither are the companies who got there first to offer a similar service... no conspiracy theories about companies maintaining dominance in the market floats here.
There is something else entirely to blame for our limited broadband adoption and infrastructure: inaccurate claims about what the ISP networks are capable of, leading to oversold and seriously aging infrastructure that cannot provide the service they claim to sell. The ISPs and network owners have dropped the ball on building adequate infrastructure, and have lied to the user about what they are being offered and how it will keep up with network usage increase, and that basically is the long and short of it.
If the truth about unsymmetric cable networks and what oversold end-point neighborhood networks meant we would have had much more interest in building infrastructure that could handle the needs for media delivery.
Also, more than 6 years ago I had friends in europe getting symmetric 6Mbps connections to their homes while today we still have a huge portion of the country without any DSL service at all (my parent's home is a mere 1800 feet from the local CO, but there is no DSL hardware there at all, in a California PacBell serviced area). Why? What we are using there is a broadband wireless solution, which is doing the job but has its own set of complications. There is no technical reason that DSL cannot be delivered to the area, it is only a profit margin issue.
I stick to my guns in that the last mile providers who have interests in TV broadcast are imposing caps to cap the competition.
Yes, and that was omitted from my quote for a specific purpose, because it is irrelevant. The 'culture of fear' should have no bearing on whether hearings are held... that is my point. What has been done here is equivalent to saying: 'ok people are afraid of asking about the truth so instead of finding out what the truth is we will just tell you what we think the truth is'. The point is this has REAL effect on political agendas, and the market for communications companies. Due to that real effect, a jump to conclusions is a 'very bad thing', and simply releasing a document full of such conclusions without the hearing and adequate due process is inexcusable.
The FCC allowed companies to knowingly cause interference to certain radio frequencies. Those who were affected were essentially told that they could not be correct because the companies that were allegedly causing the interference had done studies that showed otherwise. Given this, not much would surprise me.
really pointless to FORCE an entire country to throw out millions of analog TV sets and be Forced to obtain digital equipment for what good purpose ? So that the FCC could auction off the analog bandwidth for billions of dollars and make itself a ton of money while forcing the people of the country to purchase and upgrade their equipment to continue to watch over the air broadcasting.
Just seeing it at face value seems provides askance to thoroughly investigate the inner goings on of that decision making process...
- by bargidypoo December 12, 2008 12:54 AM PST
- Psh, Chairman Martin is my hero. Did he abuse his power? Only depends on from which direction you look. In the position of maintaining the interests of the nation, I'd say he, with few exceptions, has led the charge in the FCC to do things that benefit us all.
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