Uncertainty Over California PUC Reconsideration of Net Neutrality Comments to FCC
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is scheduled to reconsider Thursday whether to submit comments to the FCC supporting the federal body’s net neutrality Title II NPRM, though at our deadline Wednesday it was unclear whether a vote on the issue would proceed. An industry lawyer who has dealings with the CPUC told us Commissioner Carla Peterman was seeking to hold off on a vote on submitting comments until the commission’s Oct. 16 meeting. A CPUC spokesman said the net neutrality comments remained on the agenda for Thursday’s meeting, but an official list of held items wouldn’t be released until later Wednesday. Peterman and other CPUC commissioners didn’t comment.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
Peterman remains undecided about whether to support staff-recommended comments urging the FCC reclassify broadband as a Communications Act Title II service, the industry lawyer said. The CPUC staff-drafted comments would also urge the FCC to use Title II in conjunction with other authorities as jurisdictional bases for new net neutrality rules (http://bit.ly/1ue5rLm). Peterman abstained from a vote on the comments at the CPUC’s Sept. 11 meeting, after originally voting with Commissioners Mike Florio and Catherine Sandoval in favor of recommending reclassification. Peterman’s vote switch tied the CPUC’s vote at 2-2, putting the issue on hold (CD Sept 12 p4).
The Utility Reform Network Telecom Director Regina Costa said she had also heard that CPUC might hold off on a vote on the Title II comments, but said there hadn’t been official confirmation about a hold. “I'm going on the assumption that the vote won’t be held up until it’s official, but I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if it was,” she said. Media Alliance Executive Director Tracy Rosenberg said she had heard similar “scuttlebutt” in the days leading up to the vote, but the lack of official word from CPUC made the vote’s status unclear.
Greenlining Institute Legal Counsel Paul Goodman said he had “the most trouble” seeing which way Peterman will vote out of the five commissioners. “She’s very data-driven, she’s very analytical,” Goodman said. “For her, it’s often about the evidence and she goes where the data leads her.” All commissioners except Peterman are likely to vote Thursday the same way as they did Sept. 11, he said. CPUC’s original vote at the Sept. 11 meeting was 3-2 in favor of recommending Title II reclassification, with Commission President Michael Peevey and Commissioner Michael Picker voting against the recommendation.
The vote remains so closely divided that the Media Alliance began urging the public last week to contact Peterman and the rest of the CPUC in support of reclassification (http://bit.ly/1ue4we2). That appeal has continued amid the uncertainty because “whenever they vote, it’s good for Californians and other folks to tell them what the impact of their decision is going to be,” Rosenberg said.
Any comments the CPUC submits now will take the form of an ex parte letter because the commission missed the Sept. 15 deadline for reply comments, but that isn’t likely to affect the importance of those comments, Costa and others said. “We were disappointed that the commission didn’t vote out the staff recommendation before, there’s been such an overwhelming response to the FCC on this issue that I think they are looking at this very carefully,” Costa said. Goodman said he doesn’t believe the later timing “will make too much of a difference. The FCC is really thorough, so I don’t think the CPUC comments being an ex parte would change the official analysis very much."
CPUC comments would “carry a lot of weight” regardless of the timing because California is the most populous U.S. state, Costa said. CPUC has historically been an “active” commenter to the FCC and “has been in many ways a forward thinking body,” Rosenberg said. “There’s a regulator-to-regulator conversation going on in D.C., so CPUC’s input as regulators would be helpful.” Government bodies from several other states have also commented on the net neutrality NPRM (CD July 22 p7).