Year of Personal Conflicts Spurred APCO-PSST Feud
Some public safety officials are reaching out to both sides trying to mend a rift between APCO and the National Emergency Number Association and the Public Safety Spectrum Trust -- the licensee for the portion of the 700 MHz band reserved for public safety, APCO and other officials said. FCC sources said the fight between the PSST and public safety groups could complicate commission efforts to develop a nationwide network for public safety in the 700 MHz band.
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“There’s pressure to wrap this up quickly but it’s more difficult given the lack of consensus in the public safety community,” an FCC source said Friday.
“It doesn’t do anyone any good for there to be these divisions, or least for things to play out in public like they have,” said an APCO member. “NENA and APCO seem to be forming an alliance to demand changes at the PSST at a minimum,” said a person active in the D-block proceeding. “They're trying to work this out behind the scenes. Both sides think they've become too public in their battles… They realize they're creating real problems for the FCC.”
The problems showed last week at the association’s annual conference, which ended Thursday. An APCO panel on the 700 MHz D-block did not include PSST Chairman Harlin McEwen, a fixture on APCO conference panels. He was in the audience. The session outdrew any regulatory counterpart at the meeting. Before and after, officials there said they were troubled about “personal” issues dividing APSO and the PSST. One onlooker said his group had trouble even scheduling an event on the D-block due to APCO-PSST animosity.
The rift reflects long-time tension among APCO and NENA and the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council, sources said. Communications system managers, who run APCO, and police and other first responders, who dominate NPSTC, at times have argued over who best represents end-users relying on emergency communications. The rancor is unprecedented and reflects personal conflicts, one official said.
The past year APCO, under former President Willis Carter, backed by new president-elect Dick Mirgon, has been less shy about confronting McEwen and NPSTC. And the National Emergency Number Association has more aggressive leadership under new CEO Brian Fontes, a former WRC ambassador and former FCC chief of staff. APCO and NENA are collaborating more closely.
“The new leadership is more willing to take on NPSTC and PSST,” a source said. That played out ahead of the 700 MHz auction, when Carter and the APCO board decided to pull Robert Gurss, counsel to APCO, off the job of representing APCO to the PSST. Carter and other board members felt Gurss was too close to McEwen and the NPSTC, sources said. Gurss, who had served with McEwen as one of three members of the PSST executive committee, declined comment.
To replace Gurss, APCO named former APCO president Craig Jorgensen. But Gurss’s exit left the executive committee down a member. In November, Jorgensen, sitting on the PSST board for the first time, was nominated for the executive committee. Of 15 votes, only two were for him -- APCO’s and NENA’s. Kevin McGinnis, representing the National Association of State EMS Officials, won, joining McEwen and Alan Caldwell, of the International Association of Fire Chiefs, on the committee.
Gurss is in an awkward position and has had to distance himself from McEwen, public safety sources said. McEwen’s relations with Willis and Jorgensen are strained. But APCO officials went on the record last week with comments downplaying the divisions with the PSST.
Carter told us APCO detailed its position in comments on the D-block’s future, asking that the PSST be restructured to get it out from under NPSTC control. “Our position is still is as it was in the comments,” Carter said. “The PSST is aware of some of the some of the issues that trouble us and that’s not unhealthy. Obviously, there has to be disagreement somewhere and the way you work through it is to try to reach consensus.” Carter added: “There’s absolutely nothing personal about any of this. I'm saddened if that’s being spun. But that’s not true. There’s nothing personal. I have nothing personal to gain, win or lose.”
Jorgensen played no role in deciding whether McEwen or another PSST official would be on the APCO 700 MHz panel, he said. “What APCO wanted to do was talk about APCO’s vision,” he said. “The issue of APCO and the PSST and the carriers and all that are well documented… It really serves little purpose to wade into something that is on the public record.” Jorgensen also said: “I don’t think it’s a personality thing and, frankly, I would be opposed to dealing in personalities.”
Gurss would say only that APCO has not told the commission it would pull out of the PSST. “What APCO said in the record is that it had a number of concerns, a number of issues that needed to be addressed,” he said. “APCO said that that could be accomplished by making mandatory changes in this licensee or changing licensees… We all have the same goal of trying to make this thing work.”