WASHINGTON-The Wireless Telecommunications Bureau of the Federal Communications
Commission is in the midst of a shakeup that began with the appointment last month of Thomas Sugrue as chief and
now appears headed toward a major overhaul resulting in a new management team and streamlined front
office.
Sources said at least one deputy bureau chief, Rosalind Allen, has been reassigned within the FCC.
Complicating the move is the fact Allen has a senior executive service, or SES, rating. Federal agencies, like the FCC,
have a limited number of SES slots. SES is the highest civil service managerial classification and carries with it a high-
level salary and tenure-like protections.
The fate of other WTB managers-Deputy Bureau Chief Gerald Vaughan
and Acting Deputy Chief Kathleen Ham-and others in the front office is less clear, sources said.
Vaughan appears
most safe, given his past association with Sugrue in the FCC’s Common Carrier Bureau. Vaughan has been acting chief
since the resignation of former WTB Chief Daniel Phythyon.
There is speculation Ham may be moved out of the
front office but remain with the wireless bureau. That may be true of the rest of the WTB front office as well. WTB
legal advisers and other officials would be moved to other policy positions within WTB, sources said. This would
substantially reduce the number of people assigned to the WTB front office.
The apparent shakeup looks to be an
attempt to answer criticism leveled at the WTB last year by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain (R-
Ariz.) at an oversight hearing. McCain criticized the bureau as being top heavy, saying the 16 people directly under the
WTB chief (several deputies, associate deputies, a senior engineer, a senior economist and several senior lawyers) had
produced only 15 items during the first six months of FCC Chairman William Kennard’s tenure.
Some legal
advisers may not be satisfied with their forthcoming reassignments. At least one, David Wye, has recused himself from
such issues as digital wiretap implementation. When an FCC staffer recuses himself from issues, it is usually an
indication the staffer is interviewing for a job outside of the FCC.
With congressional criticism of the WTB as a
backdrop, sources said Sugrue’s agreement to succeed the embattled Phythyon as bureau chief probably extended to
him the discretion to put together his own management team.
Sugrue, who takes over WTB on Jan. 19, declined to
comment. “Personnel issues are sensitive,” he said.
As such, speculation had been rampant that William
Maher, who served with Sugrue first at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and more
recently a Washington, D.C., communications law firm, would join Sugrue.
But Maher, who just became a name
partner in the law firm, told RCR last week he is not going to the FCC and that such a move was “never a
consideration.”
Another name bandied about for a top WTB post is Carol Mattey, chief of the policy and
program planning division of the FCC’s Common Carrier Bureau.
Mattey worked at NTIA at the same time Sugrue
was there. Mattey told RCR late Friday she is not making a move to WTB.
The WTB shakeup, which Kennard and
other top officials declined to confirm, follows a year-Kennard’s first as agency chief-that had the wireless bureau under
siege from the industry for insufficient deregulation and from Congress for at once having a top-heavy management
and massive backlog of pending license applications and rule makings.
McCain said he would address the matter in
oversight hearings this year.
If the shakeup and Kennard’s vow last week to streamline agency operations were
meant to pre-empt congressional oversight, a separate effort late last year to improve relations with Congress appears to
have backfired.
The initiative was outlined by top FCC lobbyist Sheryl Wilkerson in a Dec. 31 letter to key
members of Congress.
In it, Wilkerson floated the idea of a pilot program that would have FCC employees detailed
to House and Senate lawmakers for three months or less.
The letter was seen as curious by some on Capitol Hill
given the FCC’s backlog in many of its statutory responsibilities, including licensing and implementation of the
Telecommunications Act of 1996. Indeed, one source said the letter would not have seemed odd had there not been a
backlog. The WTB cleared up much of the licensing gridlock after hearing about being hammered by Congress last
year. But issues with implementation remain.
