Nominee for FCC Top Job to Face Hearings ‘Tightrope’

William Earl Kennard, who would be the first African American to serve as the nation’s top telecommunications regulator, is regarded as that rarest of Washington bureaucrats: a bright and likable public servant who has deftly sidestepped political land mines.

But Kennard, a Los Angeles native who has served as the Federal Communications Comission’s general counsel since 1994, will find himself again walking on explosive ground starting Wednesday, when the Senate begins politically charged confirmation hearings on his nomination.

During his tenure at the FCC, Kennard, 40, has questioned the increasing concentration of media holdings, championed greater minority ownership and pondered whether to rein in broadcasters’ 1st Amendment rights.

Yet Kennard, who has close ties to the White House, as well as to fellow Yale Law School alumnus and departing FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, remains something of an enigma, having said little about his views on the key issues now before the agency.

The Senate panel “will ask Bill to lay out his agenda, and that’s a tightrope for him,” said Andrew Barrett, a former FCC commissioner and Kennard supporter. Kennard, added Barrett, “can’t distance himself too far from the White House . . . and he is not completely without a track record as general counsel of the FCC.”

Among the most complex issues Kennard would face as FCC chief would be handling the aftermath of the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996, which remains a political lightning rod more than a year and a half after its enactment.

The landmark measure was intended to open up the nation’s heavily regulated telephone and broadcasting industries to greater competition. But since its passage, long-distance telephone and cable TV rates have risen markedly, and little or no local telephone competition has emerged in most residential markets.

The hearing is expected to examine Kennard’s plans to address those issues, probing how he plans to subdue escalating cable TV rates, his ideas on restoring credibility to FCC auctions of airwaves and his intent on keeping rural telecommunications prices affordable.

The Senate Commerce Committee is scheduled to take up Kennard’s confirmation on Wednesday, one day after considering three commissioner nominees--Harold Furchtgott-Roth, Michael Powell and Gloria Tristani.

The fireworks over Kennard have subsided somewhat since last month, when Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.), the committee’s ranking Democrat, and the Congressional Black Caucus threatened to oppose the nomination and throw their support behind former Hollings aide Ralph B. Everett, a Washington communications lawyer.

But the nomination hearings are nevertheless expected to be among the most closely watched in Washington. Their prominence is a reflection of the clout the FCC wields overseeing the burgeoning telecommunications industry, which is having a huge and growing impact on voters and the nation’s economy.

“The FCC is at the center of the information revolution,” said Gigi B. Sohn, executive director of the Media Access Project, a Washington, D.C., watchdog group active in communications issues. “No other agency will play as large a role in determining what people will see and hear over the next generation.”

“I think you’d have to say this new commission is the highest in quality and experience ever assembled,” Hundt said. “Bill is a compassionate and brilliant person who has a deep awareness of all parts of the American quilt. His challenge will be to break out of the noose of lobbying . . . and implement the full policy of the [telecommunications] law.”

Kennard, who has widespread industry and political support, is expected to weather the questioning and win the committee’s approval. Kennard has already won the endorsement of former nemesis Hollings, as well as a number of other senators. Kennard declined to be interviewed.

“Everybody that I know of in the industry is very supportive of Bill Kennard,” said Robert Johnson, chairman of BET Holdings Inc., the parent company of the Black Entertainment Television cable channel. “I think the general perception is that Bill is an honest broker, that he doesn’t have a political ax to grind.”

But Kennard is active politically, buttonholing voters in support of his party. Johnson said he saw Kennard on a Denver street corner last year campaigning during his off hours, handing out literature for President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.

As FCC general counsel, Kennard has led a 50-member legal staff that has won an impressive 85% of its cases in federal appeals court. But Kennard’s office has also lost some crucial cases.

Congress dealt Kennard a blow when it eliminated a controversial program to give big media owners generous tax breaks on capital gains if they sold any communications properties to minorities. Kennard had testified at least twice on Capitol Hill in 1994 in support of the program.

Kennard has also argued in writing that broadcasters’ 1st Amendment rights are not as broad as those of newspapers. Broadcasters have been seeking to turn around decades-old government regulations that limit their freedom in programming.

More recently, the FCC has lost court decisions over agency rules aimed at opening local telephone networks to greater competition.

The latest setback came in July, when the U.S. Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled that states have the right to set prices and service standards for phone companies operating within their borders.

Besides having to grapple with Congress and the states in his new job, Kennard also would face a potentially delicate showdown with the Gore Commission--a blue-ribbon panel being assembled by the White House to develop public interest standards for digital television. The panel is likely to take up such controversial issues as whether TV broadcasters should be obligated to provide free air time to political candidates.

But Kennard, whose first job out of law school was with the National Assn. of Broadcasters, brings wide intellectual and political savvy to the table as well as valuable connections with industry and political insiders.

Lana Corbi, executive vice president of network distribution at Fox, and BET President Deborah Lee are Kennard’s cousins. And Clinton intimate and high-profile Washington lawyer Vernon Jordon is a close family friend.

Some members of Kennard’s old law firm of Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson & Hand have stepped up to the plate for him. Last week, several firm members held a mock nomination hearing to help Kennard prepare for the proceedings.

“Bill is very low-key and judicial in his thinking,” said Riley Temple, a lawyer at the firm who participated in the mock session.

But Temple and other supporters emphasize that Kennard is a capable-enough lawyer to prevail on his own merits. “I can’t think of any FCC commissioner who, at the time of his appointment, has been as qualified.”