Upton Names Senior Staff

Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), incoming chairman of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, announced Wednesday senior staffers under staff director Gary Andres, including the retention of the Communications Subcommittee chief counsel.
The senior staff was presented as follows: Michael Beckerman, who had been policy director, moves up to deputy staff director; Jim Barnett, former general counsel to then chairman Joe Barton (R-Tex.), returns in the same capacity; Alez Marrero, communications director for the House Committee on Education and Labor, will be communications director; Sean Bonyun, who has been Upton's communications director, moves up to deputy communications director for the committee; Gib Mullen, director of compliance and field operations for the Consumer Product Safety Commission, has been named chief counsel of the subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade, where Upton has suggested there could be oversight of new network neutrality rules and their impact on commerce; Neil Fried will continue as Communications Subcommittee chief counsel; Ray Baum, former Majority Leader of the Oregon House of Representatives will be senior policy adviser on the Communications Subcommittee under Chairman Greg Walden, also from Oregon.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.