Martin Withholding Documents in Ongoing House Probe

The FCC should fire Homeland Security Chief Derek Poarch for “routinely violating” government travel regulations by flying first-class, renting “premium-class vehicles” and inflating expenses, Stupak said. “Mr. Poarch reportedly scoffed at advice from FCC staff that he was violating travel recommendations,” the report said.

An FCC spokeswoman said the commission “expects all employees to follow proper travel procedures.” It wasn’t aware of any complaints until the committee’s report, so it’s premature to speculate on what action the commission may take, she said. Aides to all FCC members besides Martin declined to comment on the investigation or didn’t reply to messages.

House Commerce Committee Democrats said they released the report to give the incoming Obama administration a roadmap of “what not to do” when running the FCC, Stupak said. An advance copy was supplied to incoming House Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., he said. Commerce minority leaders reviewed the report, cooperated in the investigation and “didn’t give pushback,” Stupak said. “As the title indicates, this report was produced by the Energy & Commerce majority,” said House Telecom Subcommittee ranking member Cliff Stearns of Florida.

The report called Martin to task for failing to supply long-requested documents in a probe of the Telecommunication Relay Services Fund. The report chastised FCC Inspector General Kent Nilsson for having “such a close relationship with senior Commission officials” that it impeded his ability to conduct investigations in an impartial manner. Congress needs to change the law to take away the commission’s power to appoint its own Inspector General, requiring instead appointment by the president with Senate approval, the report said. Also urged is a probe into allegations that Martin temporarily halted Liberty-DirecTV merger proceedings after a White House official complained about inability to get broadcast programming from the satellite service.

FCC officials said the report’s chief criticism of Martin is that he “spent too much money to ensure that deaf Americans have equal access to communications services.” Deaf and disabled Americans supplied “hundreds of e-mails” to the commission saying they were “appalled to learn that the FCC staff [was] intent on drastically cutting the Video Relay Service (VRS) rate and effectively cutting VRS availability for the deaf,” said an FCC spokesman. The report’s other main criticism of Martin is that he believes cable rates are too high, the spokesman said. Martin “makes no apologies for his commitment to serving deaf and disabled Americans and for fighting to lower exorbitantly high cable rates that consumers are forced to pay.”

The report complained that commission oversight of the relay service fund has been “lax at best,” with charges to consumers jumping from $4 per line to $6.64. The FCC Inspector General acknowledged problems with the fund in a report to Congress in November (CD Dec 2 p2). The IG recommended an audit, saying costs have risen 50 to 80 percent and are expected to continue increasing, and audits show some providers received improper payments.

The Commerce report said the commission has “yet to produce numerous e-mails and other electronic records covered by our records request.” An FCC spokeswoman said the commission has supplied all the documents requested by the committee. The commission supplied the committee with “more than 9,000 e-mails, 75 boxes containing 170,000 pages of documents went to the Hill, and more than 600 commission employees spent 11,620 hours meeting the request,” a FCC spokeswoman said.

Sorenson Communications, the dominant TRS provider with an 80 percent market share, said the committee based its report on “complaints of a disgruntled FCC employee who raised ill-founded questions about the unanimous decision of the FCC to support TRS.” The report said Sorenson refused to open its books to government-authorized auditors. But Sorenson said it participated in the audit, though it was concerned “about the confidential treatment of financial information provided in the audit, and objected strenuously when the financial information of another provider was mistakenly published on the FCC’s website.”

Commerce Chairman John Dingell said the report’s findings but taken together suggest that the commission in recent years “has operated in a dysfunctional manner and Commission business has suffered as a result.” The FCC under Martin has operated in a “climate of fear,” the report said. “Chairman Martin’s micromanagement of both routine and important matters has resulted in decision paralysis.” When he took office, Martin transferred and/or “demoted” numerous staff, the report said. Although such practices occurred under other FCC chairmen, it didn’t happen as “frequently at the middle manager and lower levels in which it has taken place at the direction of Chairman Martin.”

FCC Chief of Stat Daniel Gonzalez had to approve hiring at the level of paid student volunteers, according to an exhibit included with the report. A document contained in the report included a copy of an e-mail marked urgent with the subject line, “NO CONTACT WITH OTHER BUREAUS,” that instructed recipients not to go to other bureaus to get answers to questions.

Three former top Media Bureau staffers told us that the report’s depiction of staffers being asked to write items with predetermined conclusions departed from commission practices under previous chairmen. Two staffers who worked under Martin said the report’s findings squared with their experience. The report may have downplayed the extent to which career employees felt muzzled under Martin because the degree of self-censorship is hard for an outsider to gauge, they said.

Martin staffers seemed to want to redo an a la carte report to find that selling cable channels individually would cut subscriber bills, said Bill Johnson, who was deputy Media Bureau chief until 2006, when he was reassigned and then left after 38 years at the agency. He now consults occasionally for Comcast. “Every time they try to get some real economist to pay attention to it they would get the wrong answer,” said Johnson of a la carte. “The economists resist making up stuff.” Under Martin, “the idea of actually having an open conversation” as an FCC staffer on “almost any issue” is “out of the question,” he said. Tuesday’s report “seems to me almost understated” because “it’s very hard for an outside body to understand how that thing works and to describe it.”

Barbara Esbin, also briefly in the bureau’s front office under Martin, agreed. The report “is definitely understated” in reviewing employee reassignments, said Esbin. She left the FCC in March and now works for the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a critic of regulation. “The purges went on and on and on,” said Esbin. “There were many other staff reassignments” than were alluded to in the report, she added.

The report validates what Esbin and others thought about a document on video competition approved by commissioners in November 2007 but not yet released, she said. “We've long surmised that the fate of the 13th annual video competition report was very much related to conclusions that were not consistent with Chairman Martin’s desired conclusions.” The NCTA declined to comment, said a spokesman. Progress and Freedom Foundation President Ken Ferree, who left as Media Bureau chief shortly before Martin became chairman, said he didn’t tell people what conclusion to reach in their research. “I have great hope for the next FCC that they will have witnessed this episode,” he said, and “allow the professional staff to do their jobs.”

“The FCC’s processes have been flawed for many years, and this report points up some of the dangers that such dysfunction can create,” said Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn. She said the report “will be very useful to the Obama Administration as it seeks to reform the Federal Communications Commission.

Stupak told reporters that “the quicker Mr. Martin leaves the FCC the better for the telecom industry, and the better for all of us … We need a fair and impartial FCC that is willing to work with the other commissioners.” Stupak said the investigation will continue into the next Congress, saying some who wanted to provide the committee information were “reluctant” to do so while Martin is in power.