New York City Official Resigns From BDAC Working Group
Miguel Gamiño, chief technology officer for the city of New York, told FCC Chairman Ajit Pai he's resigning from the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee’s (BDAC) Model Code for Municipalities Working Group. Andy Huckaba, city council member from Lenexa, Kansas, and lone local government member of the full BDAC, told us he understands Gamiño’s frustration but plans to stay. The FCC didn't comment.
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The resignation is the most high profile since San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo​ resigned from the full BDAC in January (see 1801250049). BDAC still must finalize and approve model codes for states and for municipalities (see 1801240033). BDAC is scheduled to meet April 25 at the FCC, and BDAC officials said the codes are likely to get a vote at that meeting.
“I have expressed concerns with other municipal colleagues in multiple meetings and documents that the makeup of the BDAC, with roughly 75 percent of members representing large telecommunications and cable companies or interests aligned with those companies, would result in recommendations unfavorable to localities looking to responsibly manage public rights-of-way to promote public safety, quality of life, and other priorities,” Gamiño wrote. “This has resulted in the BDAC producing pre-packaged one-size-fits all proposals that industry lobbyists have pushed nationwide rather than working in a cooperative fashion to find creative solutions to dynamic local issues,” Gamiño said. “In our own working group, there have been no efforts to add more voices familiar with city operations or to replace the former working group Vice Chair,” Liccardo.
New York officials were “frustrated,” Huckaba said Friday, based on his recent discussions with them, and BDAC remains a lot of work for all involved. “I really appreciate the technical expertise that New York City was bringing to the table on a lot of these issues, especially as we got into the model code work and I really do think that they helped move [the code] forward,” he said. “They did some pretty significant work.”
Huckaba said other BDAC members paid attention to his concerns, though what the final municipal code will look like remains to be seen. BDAC is only an advisory committee and it’s up to the FCC what to do with its advice, he said. “Some of the people who get involved in this lose that context,” he said. “I’ve said multiple times you can’t make a difference if you’re not at the table. … I have a sense that what we’re working on here is important and will make a difference in the big picture.”
“The BDAC process and product are severely prejudiced,” said Best Best telecom attorney Gerard Lederer. “San Jose and now New York City, two cities that have worked closely with industry to achieve substantial build out in their rights of way, both felt compelled to resign in such a public way to alert the chairman and the other commissioner’s that the work product of the BDAC is severely flawed.” Liccardo and Gamiño “expressed the disappointment of almost all of us in local government that BDAC will not deliver the insights one would have expected from the hundreds of hours the participants devoted to the process,” he said.