Pai Restricts Editorial Privileges in Latest Process Tweak
FCC bureaus and offices no longer will be able to make substantive changes to items after they have been voted on, said Chairman Ajit Pai in a statement Thursday on his latest process change. Pai has announced a tweak to…
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an FCC process each day this week. Beginning at the Feb. 23 commissioners' meeting, “editorial privileges granted to Bureaus and Offices will extend only to technical and conforming edits to items,” Pai said. “Any substantive changes made to items following a meeting must be proposed by a Commissioner.” Pai connected the change to concerns raised by Commissioner Mike O'Rielly during the previous administration. “Filling in a citation in a document is one thing; changing the meaning of that document is another,” Pai said. O'Rielly routinely objected to granting editorial privileges on items under Chairman Tom Wheeler. "I gladly support the effort to officially establish an FCC post-adoption editorial process that is sufficiently narrow and should rarely be needed, finally fixing a process abuse of our past," O'Rielly said in a statement. “Substantive changes to items should only be made in cases in which they are required, pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act, as a response to new arguments made in a Commissioner’s dissenting statement,” Pai said. Editorial privileges were subject of a story on O'Rielly's and other critiques in 2015 (see 1509170046).