WASHINGTON-The Republican revolution two years ago that forced Democrats to relinquish control of Congress for the first time in 40 years may have produced one of the next top telecommunications policymakers on Capitol Hill.
Rick White is a 42-year-old freshman from Washington’s 1st District, home to the McCaw cellular empire that AT&T Corp. bought last year for $11.5 billion, Microsoft Corp., Western Wireless Corp. and, soon, Nextel Communications Inc. It’s a wireless version of Silicon Valley.
He is among the 73 energetic and true-believing freshman Republicans who came to Washington, D.C., after the 1994 midterm election to help House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., push through a series of bold political reforms embodied in the Contract with America.
White, who left Seattle’s biggest law firm after deciding he wanted to change the course of politics in his state, is one of only four House Republicans appointed as core conferees to the House-Senate conference on telecommunications reform.
Like his colleagues, who came to town to shrink government without making a career out of it, White realizes he’s there to deliver.
“I’m not an expert in telecommunications and, frankly, I don’t think that’s my job,” said White in an interview with RCR. “My job is not to figure out what the industry is going to look like in 10 years. It’s to establish some rules. Let the industry people themselves figure it out.”
That White won a seat on the highly coveted House Commerce Committee his first go-round is accomplishment enough. That he shares a seat next to GOP heavyweights like House Commerce Committee Chairman Thomas Bliley, R-Va., telecommunications subcommittee Chairman Jack Fields, R-Texas, and Mike Oxley, R-Ohio, on the conference committee is extraordinary. As core conferees, they oversee the entire bill.
The 30 other House conferees are limited to one or more sections of the legislation. The Senate has 11 conferees.
The conference committee, which is chaired by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Larry Pressler, R-S.D., began efforts late last month to reconcile House and Senate telecommunications bills. The landmark legislation would deregulate the telecommunications industry, allowing local telephone companies, long-distance carriers and cable TV operators to compete with each other. The wireless telecommunications industry was deregulated by 1993 legislation, but is looking for additional relief in this bill.
“The game plan is to have about a four-week conference and maybe get this to the floor and on the president’s desk by Thanksgiving,” White stated. “These bills really aren’t that far apart.”
The key, according to White, is moving ahead swiftly and not getting bogged down in the details of legislation that will overhaul the Communications Act of 1934.
“It’s been great fun to work on that bill because it’s more of a bipartisan bill than a lot of stuff we’re doing,” he said. “It’s just been gratifying to be able to be a part of it and as a freshman actually have some influence.”
White played a key role in negotiations between wireless carriers and resellers last summer when Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, was pushing a switched resale amendment during subcommittee and full committee markups of the telecommunications reform bill.
“Some people really were concerned that it wasn’t fair to make wireline companies resell their service and not make cellular companies do the same thing,” said White. “But as we started to get down and understand it a little bit,” he continued, “it’s really not an equivalent sort of situation. As we all discussed it and negotiations went on, people started to understand-I think even Joe probably recognizes it’s really not an equivalent situation-and that’s why the ultimate bill that came out of the House didn’t say anything about resale for cellular phone companies and I don’t think we’re going to see that in the bill.”
White is supportive of a provision in the House telecommunications bill to establish a national antenna site policy, a position that sits well with wireless business interests in his district but perhaps not with residents.
“On the island (Bainbridge) where I live,” explained White, “we have terrible service because we can’t agree where to put any of these cellular towers. People don’t like any development at all.”
While favoring a federal policy to govern the placement of 100,000 antennas for new personal communications services systems, White said land use and zoning issues should continue to be addressed at the local level. Though a comparable antenna siting measure is not in the Senate version, White expressed confidence the language will survive the conference and become law.
“My best prediction now is that this bill will accomplish most of the things we want it to, but I know that every time you pass a big piece of legislation for a big, complicated industry like this there always is going to be some consequences that people may not have anticipated,” he stated. “So we’ll probably have to fine-tune things in the future.”
