William E. Kennard, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, is a most civil man.
So when his assistant was treated impolitely by the secretary of one of the nation’s most powerful television chieftains, Kennard personally phoned the ill-mannered woman to point out, politely but firmly, the error of her ways.
Since becoming chairman of the Federal Communications Commission last November, Kennard has seen a lot of incivility, much of it directed at him.
Congress, consumer advocates and industry officials are all finding fault with him and with the commission, which one Democratic senator describes as “the most important agency of the U.S. government for the next 20 to 30 years” because of its role overseeing the evolution of the telephone, broadcast and cable TV industries.
The $48 billion proposal last week by AT&T, the long-distance phone giant, to buy Tele-Communications Inc., the biggest cable TV operator, is only the latest example of head-turning changes confronting an agency that is under fire for its interpretation of key parts of the landmark, deregulatory Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Kennard’s initial response was favorable, no surprise since he advocates faster Internet access to American homes, a major element of the AT&T deal. But grousing is assured.
Indeed, Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, the sharp-edged senior Democrat on the House Commerce Committee, has intimated that Kennard is in over his head by declaring that the Stanford University Phi Beta Kappa and Yale Law School graduate is “a few affiliates short of a network.”
Kennard is catching flak for hewing too closely to his predecessor’s way of implementing the act, including a controversial strategy for subsidizing the cost of connecting schools and libraries to the Internet. Congressional critics recently forced the FCC to scale back funding for the Internet E-rate program, which opponents portrayed as a vast new entitlement financed by a “Gore tax” on Americans’ phone bills, an allusion to Vice President Al Gore’s support of the program.
The FCC also has drawn criticism from Congress and industry for blocking local phone companies from offering long-distance service. The agency contends local companies haven’t opened their markets to competition as required. But others turn the blame back on the FCC, saying that by preventing local companies from entering the long-distance market, it is actually retarding competition for local residential phone service.
Kennard further angered many lawmakers by making one of his first initiatives a campaign-finance reform proposal that would require broadcasters to provide free air time to political candidates as a way to reduce the need for office seekers to raise huge sums of money.
Meanwhile, much of the disappointment of consumer advocates, industry officials and just about everyone else with the act’s seeming failure to deliver so far on its sponsors’ promises of greater competition–and lower prices–in phone and cable TV services has been aimed, fairly or unfairly, at the FCC.
At a recent hearing of the Senate subcommittee that oversees the agency, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) openly commiserated with Kennard and his four fellow commissioners. “You operate under the kind of pressure that very few government agencies that I’ve ever even heard of have to put up with,” Rockefeller said.
“Most Americans don’t know the names of the members of the FCC, so it’s easy (for Congress) to pick on you,” Rockefeller continued. “But we do that at our own peril. . . . You are the most important agency of the U.S. government for the next 20 or 30 years as we see ourselves through this extraordinary revolution going on in technology which has changed all the rules. . . . “
That FCC decisions will eventually affect virtually every American is indisputable. Besides devising a plan to connect every U.S. classroom to the Internet, the agency is overseeing the nation’s transition to digital television, the biggest advance in TV since the advent of color and ultimately much more important. The new technology promises TV images of breathtaking clarity while allowing broadcasters to transmit vast amounts of information.
Kennard’s agency also must decide how far to let mergers between telecommunications companies go. Will the $59 billion deal between regional Bell companies SBC Communications Corp. of Dallas and Chicago’s Ameritech Corp., for instance, help consumers, or hurt them by limiting choices and raising prices? Meanwhile, the FCC must ensure that telecommunications services are available to all Americans at affordable rates, no matter how remote or low-income their community.
The FCC must determine when local phone companies are finally permitted to offer long-distance service, which probably won’t happen until they convince the agency that they have sufficiently opened up competition for local residential service.
At the center of all this is Los Angeles native Kennard, a youthful-looking, 41-year-old, blue-eyed African-American, the first black to chair the commission. Described by a former colleague as a “lawyer’s lawyer,” he was a telecommunications law expert at Verner Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand, the law firm Bob Dole joined after his failed presidential bid. Kennard took a sizable cut from his pay as a partner and board member at the firm to become the FCC’s general counsel in 1993. He makes $125,900 a year as chairman.
“Like a lot of people who supported the president when he was first elected, I really believed in a lot of his vision to change the country, so I wanted to go into government,” said Kennard, a Democrat, during a recent interview.
Kennard said much of what comes before the FCC is “usually cast (by the industry players) as a regulatory battle between (one) interest and another,” the long-distance versus local phone companies or the satellite versus cable operators.
“What I try to do is find a voice for the public in all these battles . . .,” said Kennard. “A voice for the disabled community, a voice for inner cities, a voice for rural America.” Since becoming chairman, Kennard has traveled the country to gauge Americans’ attitudes about communications and to explain his view of what’s at stake in the technology revolution. “Because these issues that we’re dealing with are so important to the nation, we can’t afford to have them decided behind closed doors or inside the beltway,” Kennard said.
Being the public’s voice also has meant being on the hot seat. The telecommunications act called for the FCC to devise a strategy for providing Internet access to the nation’s schools and libraries. For Kennard, that has meant continuing the plan approved under his predecessor, Reed Hundt, which set up a corporation to disburse $2.25 billion in the program’s first year to schools, with the goal of linking every U.S. classroom by the year 2000, a major Clinton-Gore pledge from 1996.
But Hundt was detested by many in Congress as prickly and sanctimonious. And it didn’t help that he was an old friend of Gore, the presumed front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. That made his plan, which had become Kennard’s plan, politically unpalatable, especially to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a potential Gore challenger and head of the key Senate Commerce Committee with FCC oversight.
“He’s had a difficult start,” said John Windhausen of the Competitive Policy Institute.
“A lot of what he’s doing is having to clean up after Reed Hundt, frankly,” said Windhausen, who as a congressional aide helped write the telecommunications act.
“I just wish some of the people who criticize this could go out and actually see how it affects the lives of kids in America,” said Kennard, who has visited schools across the country to highlight Internet access.
It was not Kennard’s only confrontation with Congress. One of his first initiatives, also inherited from Hundt, was a proposed FCC rule requiring broadcasters to give political candidates free or discounted air time, an initiative Clinton pushed in his State of the Union address,
Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers felt blindsided because Kennard didn’t consult them first. And though no member of Congress said it publicly, Kennard’s initiative also was not a popular idea with incumbents, who can raise cash more easily than challengers.
“We must remind Mr. Kennard that the FCC is an independent agency created by Congress, not an arm of the White House. . . ,” said Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), chairman of the Senate’s communications subcommittee. “This is a question for Congress, not the FCC, to answer.”
Kennard retreated. In hindsight, he said, he “probably would’ve done it a little differently,” briefing lawmakers first.
“But fundamentally it was the right thing to do. Because Americans are very discouraged by the campaign finance system and Congress can’t seem to enact real reform. And I think it’s incumbent upon any of us who have any role in the political process to try and do what we can to try and help solve this problem . . . I haven’t given up on this issue.”
“He screwed up,” said an observer, asking not to be identified, who likes Kennard and hopes he succeeds. “Bill got caught up in the frenzy or got bad advice. So he got left out naked in the freezing cold. Smart does not translate into politically savvy. He has been described as having a political tin ear.”
Kennard is “a well-intentioned, bright guy who’s very experienced,” said telecommunications lawyer Henry Geller, who drafted the rule that led to the end of TV tobacco advertising when he was FCC general counsel in the 1960s.
Kennard’s interest in campaign-finance reform springs from a strong desire to use his chairmanship for what he views as social uplift. He credits his parents’ influence for the importance he places on doing good as he sees it. His father, founder of one the nation’s first black architectural firms, designed buildings that brought people together, he said, structures like community centers and synagogues. His mother was a bilingual education teacher who taught English to immigrant children.
One of Kennard’s next priorities is likely to be less controversial on Capitol Hill and elsewhere than his earlier initiatives. He has asked the telecommunications industry to make phone bills easier for consumers to understand.
“Why? Because my wife was paying our phone bill and she comes over to me and says, `What are all these charges on the bill? If you can’t explain it to me, nobody can.’
“And I said, `Honey, we have a problem. Because if it takes the chairman of the FCC to explain what’s on the telephone bill, then there’s too many consumers out there confused.’ “
