WASHINGTON-As industry, congressional and administration officials struggled to craft a compromise on Pentagon spectrum priority legislation late last week, a new controversy erupted as the House telecommunications subcommittee voted to overhaul the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
Lawmakers, mindful of the coming August recess, scrambled to introduce new bills and complete work on others, including those funding the Federal Communications Commission and the rest of the government.
A big fight is shaping up between the House and Senate over a provision in the Senate Commerce appropriations bill enabling the FCC to retrieve licenses of bankrupt wireless firms. Top House telecom lawmakers oppose the bankruptcy measure.
In addition, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) this week is expected to introduce a new, pro-local antenna-siting bill.
The Leahy legislation, like earlier versions, is likely to return full jurisdiction of antenna siting to local authorities by removing a provision from the 1996 telecom act banning zoning boards from rejecting a tower for health reasons if a carrier has complied with federal radiofrequency radiation exposure guidelines.
The bill possibly will include at least two new wrinkles that could prove highly controversial.
DOD spectrum priority
As the week wound down, the wireless industry believed a House-Senate conference agreement on Department of Defense spectrum priority legislation was at hand. A compromise supported by House conferees, the administration and the wireless industry would have put a moratorium on further transfers of government spectrum to the private sector and require a comprehensive study of current and future spectrum needs of military, intelligence, civil space and other federal agencies.
But Senate conferees rejected the offer Thursday night and made a counter offer that lacked key elements of the industry/House-backed compromise.
Despite differences over DOD spectrum usage and Pentagon reimbursement for radio system relocation, lawmakers are hopeful of filing a conference report before Friday.
On a related front, work progressed on House and Senate DOD appropriations bills requiring the FCC to hold a 36-megahertz auction this year instead of after Jan. 1, 2001.
Elsewhere, legislation is in play to revamp NTIA and the Federal Communications Commission.
NTIA reorganization
Democrats criticized an NTIA reform bill passed last Thursday by the House telecom subcommittee.
The measure funds NTIA at $10.94 million in fiscal years 2001 and 2002, which matches its current appropriations level but is well below the $17.2 million in the administration’s budget request.
The bill also privatizes NTIA’s Institute for Telecommunication Sciences in Boulder, Colo.; reins in NTIA’s telecom infrastructure grant program; and calls for a comprehensive review of NTIA.
“We obviously have concerns with some of the language, but we are heartened by the subcommittee chairman’s willingness to work with us at the committee mark-up on a bipartisan bill,” said Larry Irving, chief of NTIA.
The House Commerce Committee could mark up the NTIA bill this week.
Colin Crowell, an aide to Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), said the subcommittee’s ranking Democrat is not happy with some of the policy changes in the bill and the process by which the GOP-led panel handled it.
“His concern is the process for developing the bill did not include any negotiations with Democrats. The bill, as proposed, is not a bipartisan consensus bill. The process was atypical,” said Crowell.
How far House telecommunications subcommittee Chairman Billy Tauzin (R-La.) is willing to go to assuage Democrats is unclear.
“It’s a fair budget that reflects the political realities of 1999. Everyone is being forced to do more with less, and NTIA is no exception,” said Ken Johnson, a Tauzin spokesman.
FCC reform
Tauzin, with significant industry input from Rep. Paul Gillmor (R-Ohio) and Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), are moving closer to introducing bills to reform the FCC.
Some ideas being floated include reducing the number of commissioners from five to three and abolishing existing bureaus, with new ones created to oversee service authorization, rule makings and waivers, enforcement and spectrum allocation.
FCC reform bills likely will be introduced this fall.
Tax certificate bill
McCain and Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), chairman of the communications subcommittee, said they plan to unveil a tax certificate bill this fall. The measure is designed to diversify ownership opportunities in the telecom industry.
FCC Chairman William Kennard has been shopping a broad-based tax certificate proposal on Capitol Hill in recent weeks. Congressional Republicans killed the FCC’s tax certificate program in 1995.
Wireless 911
The Senate is nearing a vote on wireless 911 legislation. The bill could hit the Senate floor before week’s end. If not, the vote will occur in September.
The legislation makes 911 the universal emergency wireless telephone number and gives wireless operators limited liability protection on par with landline carriers.
