Election Winners’ Focus on Budget Could Translate to Support for D-Block Auction
GOP and tea party movement gains from the election could mean more support for a commercial auction of the 700 MHz D-block, officials of conservative think tanks said in interviews. Giving the D-block away to public safety would not be consistent with the cost-cutting platform that many winning GOP candidates ran on, they said. Building a national interoperable public safety network is expected to be a key issue for Congress in 2011, which will mark the 10-year anniversary of 9/11.
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If the new Congress wants to cut spending, it should auction the 700 MHz D-block, said Kelly Cobb, executive director of the Digital Liberty Project at Americans for Tax Reform. Giving away the D-block to public safety would require the government to find funding for the network, whereas an auction could raise enough money to fund the public safety network with some left over to reduce the national deficit, he said. “The more spectrum you auction, the more money you raise for the Treasury,” said Bruce Mehlman, co-chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance. But everyone wants a strong public safety network and the issues should not break on partisan lines, he said.
The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials believes that national security should be policymakers’ larger concern, said Richard Mirgon, the group’s immediate past president. The government has a “fundamental constitutional responsibility” to protect the American people, and giving the D-block to public safety is the best way to do that, he said. Auctioning spectrum other than the D-block would raise significantly more money for the public safety network and the Treasury, Mirgon added.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has yet to tee up a D-block order. The sale of the D-block and giving public safety access to that block and other 700 MHz spectrum was a key proposal of the National Broadband Plan. The FCC is required by law to auction the spectrum, and the next step would likely be a rulemaking notice on auction rules. FCC officials said they don’t expect anything from the chairman’s office soon, especially with Congress looking at reallocating the D-block.
"This seems to have kind of fallen off the radar screen at the FCC, as Congress looks at the [Rep Henry] Waxman [D-Calif.] bill and other bills,” said a carrier source.
The recommendation to auction the D-block is supported by Democrats and Republicans on the House Commerce Committee, including Chairman Waxman and Ranking Member Joe Barton, R-Texas. In an interview Friday about his priorities next year (CD Nov 8 p1), Barton said he favors an auction. But reallocation to public safety is backed by Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., in line to chair the House Homeland Security Committee next year. King introduced a bill that had 78 bipartisan cosponsors, and he’s expected to reintroduce it in the 112th Congress.
Meanwhile, in the Senate, Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., introduced a bill that would reallocate the D-block to public safety. Commerce Committee Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, said in a recent hearing that she supports the premise of the Rockefeller bill (CD Sept 24 p5) but has funding questions. Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and John McCain, R-Ariz., also introduced a bill supporting reallocation.
Republicans tend to be more free-market friendly than Democrats, so with added GOP seats a D-block commercial auction “could gain traction in Congress,” said Seton Motley, president of the tea party activist group Less Government. The “intense focus in the new Congress on reducing the budget deficit” likely means “more receptivity, on a bipartisan basis, to auctioning the D-block spectrum,” said Free State Foundation President Randolph May. “For the same reason that bank robbers target banks: It’s where the money is.”