CPUC Responds to Pai Lifeline Query

responded to Pai’s July 5 letter asking for four states' help fighting such problems in the Lifeline USF low-income telecom support program (see 1607060047). Pai wrote to state telecom regulators in in California, Oregon, Texas and Vermont, each of which runs its own Lifeline accountability databases. Unlike other states, California has empowered an independent, third-party administrator to determine eligibility, Picker said. “One of the fundamental differences between how the CPUC administers the California LifeLine Program and how states in which service providers determine eligibility for the federal Lifeline program [administer theirs] is that that carriers cannot override the safeguards California has put in place.” The California administrator “reviews each piece of underlying document to determine eligibility,” and the state program “neither acquires nor relies on certifications by service providers as a part of the enrollment process,” he said. At the 2016 NARUC summer meeting last week, CPUC Commissioner Catherine Sandoval said California may want to opt out of national verification, as established in the FCC recent Lifeline order, because the state already has a strong third-party verifier (see 1607270020).