WASHINGTON-House Commerce appropriations subcommittee Chairman Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) last week threatened to block a Federal Communications Commission budget bill and vowed not to fund the relocation of agency headquarters to the Portals.
Rogers, echoing sentiments of Senate appropriators, said he will not act on a fiscal 1999 appropriations bill until he receives assurances from FCC Chairman Bill Kennard that he has backed off a Clinton administration proposal to give free TV airtime to political candidates.
It is unclear whether Kennard’s concession to slow the momentum of the Clinton initiative, which would make Democrats more competitive with Republicans in fund raising for 2000 elections, will satisfy Rogers enough to move along the FCC’s $213 million budget request.
But even if the FCC budget bill advances, Rogers said he will not pay for the FCC to move to the Portals in light of Justice Department and congressional probes into the 20-year, $400 million lease negotiated between the General Services Administration and Portals developers.
“We can’t reward criminals with taxpayer dollars,” said Rogers.
Andrew Fishel, managing director of the FCC, told lawmakers the agency is currently paying an average of $25 per square foot for the 604,000 square feet of office space in downtown Washington, D.C. The Portals, in contrast, is going for $45 per square foot for the 535,000 square feet the FCC would occupy in a less attractive section of the nation’s capital. The FCC said it will not move to the Portals until security concerns are addressed.
Taxpayers have paid $7 million to date on the empty Portals building and will shell out $14 million total if the FCC moves in by July.
Nevertheless, the General Accounting Office-Congress’ investigative arm-said the FCC move to the Portals is in the best financial interests of taxpayers.
Justice and congressional investigators are looking into whether former Clinton-Gore campaign manager Peter Knight received an illegal $1 million payment for securing the Portals lease with Tennessee developer Franklin Haney, a long time friend of Vice President Al Gore.
Haney gave $230,000 to the Democratic Party in the 1996 election cycle.
“To me, it’s strange,” said Rogers. “It stinks. It smells to high heaven.”
Kennard said the FCC is willing to consolidate its nine offices in the Portals, although he conceded that if the FCC could get out of the deal the agency would choose to be in separate office buildings.
GSA has given $17 million of the $24 million being loaned to the FCC to relocate to the Portals. Kennard said he wants to move forward, but not without congressional backing.
“I don’t think the move makes much sense if we can’t get support of Congress to make it happen,” said Kennard. The FCC chief described the relationship between the FCC and GSA as “dysfunctional.”
Kennard also fielded questions on the controversial universal service plan to connect schools, libraries and rural health care facilities to the Internet by 2000.
Some GOP lawmakers believe the aggressive push to meet that goal is designed to coincide with the 2000 presidential campaign of Gore, a big proponent of the Internet plan.
Meanwhile, in response to questioning from Rep. Julian Dixon (D-Calif.), Kennard promised to resolve a complaint in the next two months that the FCC violated the 1997 budget act by licensing idle frequencies to a paging company instead of to a public safety agency in Southern California that had been seeking the 400 MHz channels for the past three years.
