Better E-Rate Rules Urged by State Program Coordinators Group
The FCC’s E-Rate program needs better rules to define eligibility, improve efficiency and transparency, State E-Rate Coordinators Alliance Chairman Gary Rawson told us. The program is successful, but in a minority of cases, the process is “significantly more complex, frustrating, and ultimately self-defeating,” the group said in an ex parte filing at the FCC.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
The eligibility service list is the biggest issue, Rawson said. The rules are open for interpretation, he said. Applicants are confused about what’s eligible, he said. “Black holes” is another issue, in which no decisions are made on individual or related groups of E-rate applications and/or invoices for extended periods of time with little or no communication, he said. The number of black-hole applicants went from four in 2005 to 169 in 2009, the group claimed. The number of black hole service providers went from five in 2005 to 79 in 2009.
Investigations involving allegations of criminal behavior require the involvement of law
enforcement agencies such as the Department of Justice, the alliance said. In such situations, the Universal Service Administrative Co. and the FCC are bound by confidentiality restrictions and relinquish significant control on the timing and resolution of E-rate issues, it said. While an investigation may be pending, all funding requests associated with the party being investigated -- particularly when it’s a service provider -- may be stayed indefinitely and unfairly penalize applicants as well as other service providers with which those applicants may have contracted, Rawson said. The overall goal is to stay paid and get paid, he said.
The FCC should develop and adopt a “bill of rights” for the E-rate stakeholder community, the group said in its filing. That should at a minimum include the right to expect timely decisions on funding requests and changes, invoice and appeals -- absent active criminal proceedings. The bill also should include the right to informative status updates on pending decisions -- absent the misrepresentation of information on an application or invoice, and on submissions to USAC reviewers, the right to consider funding decisions final, the right to the due process resolution of outstanding issues and the right to have all rules and procedures fully explained and available for review in a single, indexed source. Freedom from the retroactive application of new or revised rules, procedures and/or interpretations also is sought.
The group asked for more status update information on pending decisions and tight timetables for resolution. Funding request numbers (FRN), subject to further review, need to be isolated from broader application decisions, the alliance said. Too often, an entire application or groups of applications involving funding requests for different service providers are held up pending resolution of one FRN for one provider, the group said. The FCC shouldn’t mandate recovery of funds disbursed in error for non-statutory violations that should have been identified during the pre-funding application process, the group said. USAC should institute time frames and procedures to confirm whether there’s any systematic violation of program rules, it said. The group also urged USAC to streamline the handling of Code 9 complaint reports and discourage abusive use of the system by developing and partially disclosing “triage” procedures.