Office of Management and Budget Approves FCC Online Public File Rules

[Commentary] The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has once again rubber-stamped and approved a Federal Communications Commission information collection request in apparent defiance of its statutory obligation to take a hard look at the burdens imposed under the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA).

As I reported previously, the FCC adopted burdensome rules requiring television stations to replace their existing locally-maintained public inspection files with digital files to be placed online on an FCC-hosted website, including stations' detailed political records. What is a bit of a surprise, and frankly disappointing, is that the OMB took less than two weeks to approve the FCC's request even though the proposed rules appear to clearly violate the standards of the PRA, and lengthy comments were filed by multiple parties informing the OMB of that fact. The new regulations will without question increase burdens on TV stations (including thousands of pages of copying, significant costs, and countless hours of employee time), while needlessly duplicating records already required to be maintained online by the Federal Election Commission. If such rules are not something the OMB should withhold approval of, or at least take a long hard look at, you have to wonder what level of burden is required to trigger a denial under the PRA. Very few FCC regulations that I can think of historically have imposed more paperwork burdens on stations than the online public/political file regulations.