House Commerce Democrats Assert 'Traditional' FCC Oversight Role, Blast Pai Actions
The House Commerce Committee will “reassume its traditional role of oversight” over the FCC under its new Democratic leadership, Chairman Frank Pallone, N.J., and House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle, Pa., wrote FCC Chairman Ajit Pai Monday. Both Democratic leaders…
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have flagged more critical FCC oversight as a top House Commerce agenda for this Congress (see and 1811140055). The lawmakers criticized Pai for failing “on numerous occasions to provide Democratic members” of the committee “with responses to their inquiries” and “denied or delayed responding to legitimate information requests from the public about agency operations.” Those actions “have denied the public of a full and fair understanding of how the FCC under your leadership has arrived at public policy decisions,” Pallone and Doyle said. “Under your leadership, the FCC has failed repeatedly to act in the public interest and placed the interest of corporations over consumers.” The lawmakers sought information and documents by March 4 on the FCC’s current agenda, including its “workload and backlog,” and agency interactions with the public via consumer complaints and Freedom of Information Act requests. FCC staff followed up Friday on a requested briefing with House Commerce aides on the agency's investigation of wireless carrier location tracking practices that had been the subject of earlier Pallone criticism (see 1901310052), a committee spokesperson said. “Committee staff reiterated their serious concerns about the wireless carriers’ unauthorized disclosure of real-time location data and urged the FCC to swiftly and thoroughly carry out its investigation,” the spokesperson emailed. The FCC under Pai "has been the most transparent FCC in history with the Commission for the first time publicly releasing the drafts of meeting items three weeks before the Commission vote," its spokesperson emailed. Under Chairman Tom Wheeler, the representative said, the FCC "had to pass an Order before the public was allowed to see what was in it."