Free Press Asks FCC Commissioners to Take AT&T-Mobile Pledge

Levin: No sitting commissioner should interview for job with company they had regulated

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 6/3/2011 10:20:40 AM

Free Press, which has been critical of the exit of Republican FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker's exit from regulator to regulated industry (Comcast/NBCU), sent a letter to the four remaining FCC commissioners Thursday asking them to take a pledge that they would not seek a job with either AT&T or T-Mobile, the merger the commission is currently vetting.

Free Press, which has been a big critic of both the Comcast/NBCU and AT&T-T-Mobile deals, said: "We ask the commissioners to stand up and declare that they will not seek nor accept employment from AT&T or T-Mobile directly upon leaving their present posts. We ask for assurance that the FCC's commitment is to the public it serves and not to a big payday from potential future employers."

Elsewhere, former FCC National Broadband Plan Czar Blair Levin, who had worked with Baker during that process, told C-SPAN in an interview Thursday that he would go even further. He said he thought there should be a new rule that no sitting commissioner should be allowed to interview for a private sector job with any company they had regulated. "If you go there to be a decisionmaker and the Senate confirms you, be a decisionmaker. And when you want to leave, leave."