A Closer Look at the Titillating Report on FCC’s Martin

House Energy and Commerce Committee Paints Ugly Picture of Boy-Faced Chairman

‘Climate of Fear’

Finally, it’s clear that Martin micromanaged the FCC. He also pushed out longtime workers; demoted several senior employees, moves the committee called “a senseless waste of resources” and a “waste of taxpayer dollars to have senior-level employees performing junior-level work”; and strained relations among commissioners, according to the report.

“...There is a climate of fear at the FCC,” the report reads. “Employees believe that if they express an opinion, even if based on fact, they may be demoted, reassigned or hounded out of the agency. Most of the current and former employees to whom we spoke did not want to be identified, fearing management retaliation.”

Some of Martin’s personally chosen, high-level staff also face some serous allegations. Kent Nilsson, the inspector general selected by Martin, is accused of a number of improprieties, some so serious that the Integrity Committee of the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency is looking into them. As a result, House committee staff said legislation should be introduced requiring FCC inspectors general to be chosen by the president, not the FCC chairman.

Derek Poarch, chief of the recently formed public safety and homeland security bureau, is up against claims that he has violated a number of regulations, involving a variety of aspects from travel rules to personal attendance records. Poarch has denied the allegations in various media reports.

Typically, the House committee would recommend holding a hearing to gather more testimony, but decided against doing so because people were unwilling to present their views in public.

This might be one of the reasons why Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee didn’t agree with the findings of the FCC report and therefore wouldn’t sign off on it. To wit, minority ranking committee member Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, supported the investigation at first, a Republican staff director told The Washington Post, because there seemed to be serious problems afoot. But “he and his staff are unconvinced that the discovery of a lack of gentility warrants much hoopla, or any hoopla at all,” Larry Neal told the Post.

A focus on gentility misses the point, however. Martin was found to have manipulated numbers in attempts to change policy dishonestly. That seems like grounds for further investigation into whether any of his other actions — merger and forbearance approvals, as just two examples — might have contained similar questionable or even illegal activity.

Martin also has implemented such stringent internal rules that there’s a backlog of paperwork waiting for approval, hamstringing FCC staff from accomplishing their duties. He won’t even allow his four fellow commissioners to talk with staff without his blessing, the report found.

Martin and his staff had several opportunities to present their side to House committee investigators. But the chairman and two of his top personnel “ignored our invitation,” the report reads, while others simply declined to meet. Such continued obfuscation doesn’t improve the Martin FCC’s tarnished image, nor does it buoy hope that the report’s findings could be inaccurate. Such continued obfuscation surely has FCC staff and communications insiders holding their collective breath, waiting for Jan. 20, 2009.

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