FirstNet Probe of Alleged Wrongdoing by Board Well Under Way, Says Special Committee Chair

But the board ended negotiations with three other BTOP recipients after an agreement couldn’t be reached -- Adams County, Colo.; Charlotte, N.C.; and the New Jersey Department of the Treasury. NTIA suspended all of the public safety BTOP grants after FirstNet was launched last year.

The first report examining issues raised by Fitzgerald will focus on openness and transparency and will be ready by Sept. 5, said Wellington Webb, a former Denver mayor, who chairs the committee. A second report will look at conflicts of interest in contracts, but won’t be ready until later, he said. The board isn’t expected to meet again until Oct. 17 in Oakland, Calif., but could hold a special meeting to address the report once it is finished, a spokeswoman said.

Fitzgerald, sheriff of Story County, Iowa, sharply criticized the board leadership in April for allegedly keeping public safety on the sidelines as plans for the network are taking shape (CD April 24 p1). In May, FirstNet Chairman Sam Ginn appointed Webb to chair a special committee to examine the allegations (CD May 9 p1). The committee met with Fitzgerald July 11, Webb said. “Since our last board meeting we have also been collecting correspondence, written materials, from members of the board,” he said. “We're now engaged in conducting a full review. We're poring through enormous amounts of e-mails and written materials, scheduling and conducting additional interviews.”

LTE Network to Supplement Voice

NTIA formally released BTOP funds Sunday. LA-RICS plans to release Tuesday a request for proposals for an LTE system, which will be integrated with its traditional land-mobile radio (LMR) system, which primarily uses the T-band, county officials told FirstNet board members. Public safety nationally is required to vacate the T-band, UHF spectrum, under last year’s spectrum law.

LA-RICS Executive Director Patrick Mallon told the FirstNet board the LTE network is needed to supplement the current LMR system used for first responder voice communications. “There’s not sufficient spectrum in the 700 [MHz] to be able to totally vacate UHF until we can replace some of the voice carrying capabilities with the LTE system,” he said. “Voice over LTE is a very, very critical complement to our success. Without that, we'll be in a really tough position to vacate the T-band."

LA-RICS has gotten from the Legislature an exemption through 2017 from California Environmental Quality Act rules for towers built at existing public safety facilities and publicly owned transmitter sites, which is key to getting the system built, Mallon said. “I'm very pleased to say that all of our LTE sites, 232, are all CEQA exempt.” But Mallon also noted that LA-RICS has to move quickly, since NTIA kicked the performance period forward only until September 2015. “That means we've got to kick some progress moving forward,” he said. “I cleaned it up.” Mallon said LA-RICS plans to evaluate all proposals as they come in, with a goal of signing a contract next March.

LA-RICS has a big job ahead, said John Lenihan, a battalion chief with the Los Angeles County Fire Department, who also spoke to the board. Los Angeles County covers 4,000 square miles and a population of more than 10 million, with 88 independent cities, 50 law enforcement agencies and 31 fire departments, he said.

"I'm delighted that L.A. is up and running and that we have the funding to move forward,” said FirstNet board member Sue Swenson, who worked on the agreement with LA-RICS. “The FirstNet team is very excited.” But negotiations with New Jersey, Adams County and Charlotte had fallen flat, Swenson said. “We've worked very diligently to try to figure out ways to solve the issues that were present in those projects,” she said. “It was very disappointing to me personally."

Swenson said FirstNet also has negotiated an agreement with New Mexico allowing it to lease access to FirstNet’s spectrum. The state must now go back to NTIA and ask the agency to lift its BTOP suspension. Meanwhile, the board agreed to extend negotiations on the buildout of two additional projects, with Mississippi and the Bay Area Regional Interoperable Communications System Authority (BayRICS) in San Francisco. Negotiations with Texas are also ongoing, said a FirstNet news release Tuesday (http://1.usa.gov/17LL4GD). The board also approved a $194 million budget for FY 2014 (http://1.usa.gov/168ArQ3).

Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker led off the meeting with brief remarks. She announced that former telecom industry executive Swenson, former fire chief Jeff Johnson and Department of Defense Chief Information Officer Teri Takai were appointed to additional three-year terms as members of the board. Initially they got one-year terms. Retired telecom executive Bill Keever is leaving the board, Ginn said.

"All of us need to work together more closely and effectively than ever before,” Pritzker said. “In particular, with taxpayer funds now supporting our work, we need to stretch our limited resources as far as possible. ... Clearly, it’s time for us to move forward with a sound business plan and an ambitious operational timeline. Our first responders deserve our collective and unified focus on getting the job done quickly and right.”(hbuskirk@warren-news.com)