DIVERSITY PANEL FACES MINUSCULE BUDGET, LEGAL UNCERTAINTIES
The biggest early questions facing the recently created FCC Advisory Commission on Diversity in the Digital Age seem to make real change on a $10,000 budget, and how to do it without raising crippling legal challenges, participants said.
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FCC Chmn. Powell acknowledged that federal advisory commissions have had mixed results, particularly diversity commissions, during the group’s first meeting Mon. “I look around the room and I see faces that I've seen participate [on diversity panels] time and time again,” Powell said. “Results are much harder to produce than words of encouragement. Results require top minds engaged in a sustained effort who are willing to do things creatively and constructively toward solutions. This group was built for success; it was built with that in mind.”
The commission will likely have to weigh whether possible recommendations that the FCC make minorities aware of transaction opportunities, reinstate tax certificates and adopt new equal employment opportunity regulations can withstand judicial review in light of recent Supreme Court affirmative action rulings, officials said. For example, the court recently struck down a U. of Mich. practice that essentially guaranteed black applicants admission as long as they met minimum admission guidelines. Georgetown U. law prof. Charles Abernathy told the committee that if the FCC gets involved in affirmative action educational programs, it should do so by recommending colleges do something. Abernathy said the circuit courts are split on recruiting and employment, but “education seems to be special because it doesn’t guarantee success,” he said. “It only puts you in a pool where you can compete to be successful.”
Commission member David Honig, exec. dir. of the Minority Media & Telecom Council, said it’s way too early to tell whether the commission will be able to effect any meaningful change with regard to the major issues of minority media ownership, minority programming and minority employment at all levels of the media and telecommunications industries. Generally, the record of federal advisory committees are mixed, because while they're recognized as official bodies, there recommendations aren’t binding, Honig said. “Advisory commissions almost always wind up as dumping grounds for work agencies don’t want to do themselves,” he said. An example, he said, is the NASA safety advisory committee that closed down earlier this month. He said 3 generations of NASA bureaucrats have ignored recommendations of similar safety panels.
However, “I suspect this commission will be different,” Honig said: “I say that because of the strength and diversity of this commission -- and I'm not talking about its racial makeup.” He said Commission Chmn. Julia Johnson is one of the most creative people in the telecom business: “They couldn’t have picked a better person. And the advisory commission itself includes a number of talented CEOs -- corporate and entrepreneurial alike… It really is a blue- ribbon panel.”
The commission has a 2-year charter and an estimated annual operating budget of $10,000. Its purpose is to make recommendations to the FCC on enhancing participation of women and minorities in the telecom, media and related industries, including making minorities aware of opportunities to buy communications properties and how to access capital. The advisory panel is also to recommend ways of increasing communications education and training opportunities for women and minorities, focusing particularly on upper management and ownership opportunities. The commission was asked to consider how to enhance minority employment and ownership opportunities related to new technologies as they develop. The goal is produce an interim report by May 2004, said Jane Mago, chief of the FCC’s Office of Strategic Planning.
It has been 20 years since the FCC last commissioned a diversity advisory panel. That group recommended strategies for advancing minority ownership opportunities in the telecom industry, focusing exclusively on finance issues. The new commission’s charter is much broader, both in terms of issues but also the industries it’s expected to consider. “We'll be looking at financial issues, but also career advancement and new technologies,” Mago said. “It’s also important to consider that the legal landscape has changed significantly since 1982.” -- J.L. Laws