Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Bill seeks to end "Fly Out Friday?"

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 06:23:50 -0400

Denver Post

Bill seeks end to industry-paid travel for FCC

By Anne C. Mulkern
Denver Post Washington Bureau 

Tuesday, June 17, 2003 - WASHINGTON - Sen. John McCain has introduced legislation
to ban the Federal
Communications Commission from accepting travel paid for by industries they
regulate, a practice exposed by a Denver Post investigation. 

"Although this is perfectly legal and it is often appropriate for FCC officials
and staff to attend such conventions, conferences or meetings, it should be
without the appearance of impropriety," said McCain, R-Ariz. "Therefore, the bill
authorizes the commission sufficient funds to pay for their own travel costs in
the future."

The Denver Post in March reported on the FCC practice of accepting hundreds of
such trips. Over the past three years, The Post reported, groups representing
private industry paid for more than $750,000 in travel. Those trips included
paying for four-star hotels such as the Bellagio in Las Vegas, stretch limousines
and black- tie dinners. Commissioners and staff took more than 700 trips, visiting
Florida, California, Arizona and Hawaii, and sent staff members to London, Hong
Kong, Beijing, Brazil, Argentina, Thailand and the Virgin Islands.

The Post found that three groups - the National Cable & Telecom Association, the
National Association of Broadcasters and the Consumer Electronics Association -
paid for the most trips.

The Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based watchdog group, released a
report in May looking at eight years of such trips. It said the FCC accepted $2.8
million in trips, although its report did not distinguish between trips paid for
by private industry and those funded by universities, unaffiliated educational
groups or international institutions.

Accepting trips paid for by others is allowed under government policy and is done
by most government agencies.
McCain included the provision to prohibit such trips in a funding bill for the
FCC. The FCC, which employs about 2,000 people, has a travel budget of $2.2
million out of $281 million in proposed funding for fiscal year 2004.

McCain proposes increasing the budget to $335 million by 2007.

"We think the trips are valuable," FCC spokesman Richard Diamond said. "That
(McCain) provision may shift the burden for the trips to the taxpayers, but if
that's something Congress chooses to do, we're fine with it."
McCain's proposal comes less than two weeks after the FCC voted 3-2 to relax rules
governing media ownership, a ruling some in Congress have criticized.

McCain also proposed banning former FCC staffers from working as lobbyists for at
least a year after leaving the agency.

"Given the attention on the FCC and its importance, McCain feels pretty strongly
some of the changes need to be made and he'll probably get support for them," said
Robert Brandon, spokesman for the Consumer Federation of America. "This has sort
of hit a raw nerve with a lot of the public."

Getting enough votes to pass both the Senate and House could be tough. Rep. Billy
Tauzin, R-La. and chairman of the House committee that oversees the FCC, is
generally supportive of congressional and agency staff travel paid for by
industry, said his spokesman Ken Johnson.

Lawmakers also take trips paid for by private industry, although McCain does not.
The FCC bill would also require more money for the agency at a time when deficit
spending is increasing rapidly.

"I think the odds it will make it are slim," said Norman Ornstein, political
scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. But the
legislation is "a good idea," he said.

"We're talking about decisions involving tens of billions of dollars. The
appearance of conflict in some of those cases, given the stakes that are out
there, is something you have to be sensitive to."

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~1459374,00.html#

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