Fees for filing formal consumer complaints at the FCC could be skyrocketing, if a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking gets an affirmative nod from the Commissioners.
Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel is doing whatever she can to stop that from happening, and is taking her ire out at Chairman Ajit Pai for agreeing to such a rate hike.
News of the verbal scuffle over the FCC’s plan, which would see the consumer complaint filing leap from $235 to $540, was detailed Friday in a Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth blog post written by Donald Evans, a veteran communications attorney at the law firm.
He noted how “long festering rancor” between Pai and Rosenworcel “broke out into volleys of open epithets and acid-laced sarcasm this week.”
It’s all tied to an Amendment of the Schedule of Application Fees Set Forth in Sections 1.1102 through 1.1109 of the Commission’s Rules, something Rosenworcel is completely on board with.
“I broadly support this effort,” she said in a statement. “After all, this undertaking is compelled by statute.”
But, in one respect, this proposal “is definitely not fair. Not even close.”
She writes, “At a time when a public health emergency has crashed our economy, with unemployment at record-high levels, and with so many now compelled to go online for so much of modern life, the FCC proposes a dramatic increase in the cost of filing a formal consumer complaint. This is crazy. It shows a wild disregard for the financial insecurity of
so many households. By proposing to more than double the cost of a filing—from $235 to $540—the agency is demonstrating contempt for consumers looking to us for assistance when they have disputes related to their communications bills, difficulties securing service, or problems with their providers. Worse, it is deterring them from seeking our help in the first place. This is shameful.”
As such, she affirmed all of the NPRM — except this matter.
And, her statement led Pai to issue an epic retort.
“As Chairman Pai describes it, the NPRM process normally permits Commissioners to have input into the text of proposed releases before they are voted on,” Davis noted in his blog post. “Per this custom, Pai says, Commissioner Rosenworcel had from July 2 to August 21 to seek a modification of the NPRM but did not avail herself of the opportunity on either of those dates or any the 49 intervening dates, each of which he venomously identified one by one. She only spoke up after the vote had been taken.”
Pai’s statement deserves to be seen, in full:
In closing, Pai added, “If my colleague actually believed the hyperbolic claims set forth in her statement yet made no effort to change the Notice for the better, there’s a word that comes to mind: shameful. But of course that’s not what’s going on here. This is just another attempt to make ‘blatantly false’ claims for political purposes. In any case, going forward, my staff and I will continue to search for ways to address issues that are never raised with us and that we’re thus unaware of, given this recurring issue.”
Wow.
With D.C.’s legal community chattering away over the exchange, Evans concludes, “It’s no longer shocking these days to hear political adversaries attack each other with the harshest of verbal slings and arrows, but open invective of this sort at the FCC is unheard of in our experience.”
He adds, “Disagreement at the Commission no longer takes the genteel form of the old Senate, where even the bitterest of debates were couched as disagreements between ‘my good friend from Alabama’ and ‘my esteemed colleague from New York.’ Those days are gone. As this political year accelerates toward its increasingly hostile conclusion, we may be in for a lot more rotten tomatoes being cast in the hallways of the eighth floor. In the meantime, maybe everyone should step back and take a deep breath.”
