FCC General Counsel Tom Johnson Remarks at TaxWatch 40th Anniversary

Much like TaxWatch, one of the Federal Communications Commission’s chief priorities under FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has been to serve as a watchdog to identify and repeal bad regulations and learn from the lessons of the past. By eliminating regulations that impose unnecessary costs on the economy, our actions protect the American consumer, facilitate the deployment of new communications networks to connect distant communities, and help close the so-called “digital divide.” Now, the Communications Act envisions an important role for the states and municipal actors (like local utility and zoning boards) in regulating local communications networks. That is consistent with our long American tradition of federalism (or what in Catholic social thought  might be called “subsidiarity”), namely that states and localities, being closer to the people, ought to have a say on those issues that uniquely affect their own communities. But there are some issues of a national character that, when state and local governments either exceed their authority or act in their own narrow self-interest, it can actually be detrimental to the people they represent. That is often true in the communications space, where providers need to deploy regional and national networks that can crisscross up to fifty state, and thousands of municipal, jurisdictions. Conflicting state requirements or excessive aggregate state and local fees can prove fatal to a provider’s effort to deploy a new network—particularly smaller businesses who can’t afford to take on additional regulatory and litigation risk.  

States and localities have litigated heavily against the FCC whenever it has attempted to streamline regulations. Indeed, we are currently facing lawsuits from a number of localities in the federal court of appeals for the Sixth Circuit to cable franchise reforms. And with respect to our infrastructure reforms on excessive local fees and “shot clocks,” those are currently under review by the federal court of appeals in the Ninth Circuit. We feel confident that our actions are well supported by the law. But as we prepare for an ever more connected future, there is a lot more work to do. I plan to spend much of 2020 making sure that the FCC’s hard-fought reforms are upheld in court and continue to deliver value to Americans. I also look forward to continuing to work in good faith with our state and local partners and with groups like TaxWatch to identify areas in which we can make regulation simpler and smarter, for the benefit of everyone.