FCC’s lengthy delay (22 months since last pleadings were filed) i...
FCC’s lengthy delay (22 months since last pleadings were filed) in acting on Sinclair Bcst. applications to buy 15 TV stations from Sullivan Bcstg. isn’t “an egregious length of time for agency action,” Commission told U.S. Appeals Court, D.C.…
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FCC was responding to court order giving it 40 days to explain why it hadn’t acted (CD Oct 17 p9). Sinclair had asked court to issue writ of mandamus ordering FCC to act (CD Sept 14 p4). Commission said 22-month delay was “far from the extraordinary cause that would warrant such a drastic remedy” as mandamus order. Draft order deciding case currently is “under active consideration,” agency told court, and decision will be released “in no more than 30 days.” Explaining long delay, Commission said case involved “a complicated series of transactions,” with applications first filed in 1998. Additional applications and amendments were filed by Sullivan and Sinclair in Aug. 1999, which prompted petitions to deny by Rainbow/Push Coalition and others. Citing numerous applications and “dozens of pleadings” filed in case, FCC said “serious allegations of misrepresentation” against Sinclair “certainly warranted” complete examination by Commission. Sinclair’s claims of “bad faith” against FCC officials involving EEO matters “merit little response [and are] unseemly and baseless,” agency told court.