In recent weeks, there seems to be a competition to make the FCC more responsive, and to mandate that, before it adopts any new regulations, it take into account the costs of the proposed regulations and the burden that they place on those being regulated.  The Communications and Technology Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee adopted a bill (The FCC Process Reform Act of 2011) that would, if adopted by the full House and the Senate, require that the FCC, before adopting any new regulations, take several steps to make sure that regulations were really necessary (see a summary of House bill here).  Before adopting any rule, the Commission would have to survey the marketplace, determine that there was a market failure or specific consumer harm, then take into account the cost of complying with regulations before the new regulations are adopted.  The proposed legislation would also require that the FCC adopt deadlines on many FCC actions ("shot clocks"), perhaps in response to a Study commissioned by the House Committee looking at the length of time that many FCC proceedings take.  The FCC adopted its own proposals for making its regulations less burdensome by reviewing the continuing need for existing rules, following the President’s call for all agencies to take such action.  The FCC report, after making the seemingly obligatory bows to broadband adoption that the Commission seeks to foster, talked about many of the same issues that the Congressional committee seemed to be addressing – deleting unnecessary regulation wherever possible.  What changes will these efforts bring to the FCC?

Call me cynical, but I doubt that the proposed changes will really lead to any significant differences in the way that the FCC does business.  The FCC is already bound by all sorts of laws that demand that it take into account many of the same considerations that are included in the plans of Congress and the FCC.  The Paperwork Reduction Act has already stopped certain regulations from going into effect, including the Form 355 (which sat in limbo for 4 years and the FCC is only now considering reviving in a somewhat more abbreviated form).  The FCC also must take into account the Regulatory Flexibility Act, looking at the impact of any regulation on small entities who would be subject to any new rule.  Congress itself has already enacted other requirements that the FCC review regulations on a periodic basis – for instance the required Quadrennial Review of the FCC’s multiple ownership rules.  And what do these accomplish?Continue Reading Congress and the Commission Look to Make FCC More Responsive and to Take Costs Into Account in Making New Rules – Will It Work?