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The Battle Over Internet Telephony
by Ted LeventhalBrian Adkins, a former legislative counsel on technology and telecommunications issues to Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., has moved to the National Association of Rural Utilities Commissioners (NARUC) to be its new legislative director for telecom and water policy.
Adkins said NARUC's biggest challenge in 2004 will be regulatory issues on Internet telephony. "How do you address that technology from a regulatory perspective? Do you do nothing, or is there a happy medium? State commissioners have a lot of experience in this area," he said, adding that he and NARUC staff likely will provide lots of testimony on Capitol Hill next year.
Before joining Harman's staff, Adkins spent five years with the Information Technology Industry Council working on intellectual property, e-commerce and privacy issues.
Elsewhere on the telecom front, the Association for Local Telecommunications Services (ALTS), the trade association for companies that build, own and operate networks to compete with the regional Bell companies, named two new officers to its executive committee. Jim Geiger, president and CEO of Beyond Communications, was elected chairman, and Steve Dubnik, CEO and chairman of Choice Once Communications, was elected vice chairman.
Roscoe Young, CEO of KMC Telecom and ALTS' chairman for the past two years, was elected executive chairman. Dan Moffat, the president and CEO of New Edge Networks and a vice chair of ALTS for two years, remains on the board. In a statement, Geiger praised Young and Moffat for their past leadership, particularly their efforts to stop enactment of legislation to deregulate the telecom industry, to influence the telecom debate at the FCC and to maintain ALTS membership despite an industry downturn.
Motorola, meanwhile, reports a change at the top. Edward Zander, formerly the chief operating officer with Sun Microsystems, will become Motorola's new chairman and CEO. Since leaving Sun in 2002, Zander has been a managing director at Silver Lake Partners, a private equity firm based in Menlo Park, Calif., and New York. Zander is succeeding Christopher Galvin, grandson of Motorola's founder, who announced in September that he would resign.
Top Democratic Aides Named At Senate Finance
Montanan Max Baucus on Monday announced senior staff changes on the Senate Finance Committee, for which he is the top Democrat. Russ Sullivan, chief tax counsel to the Democratic staff, has been named staff director; Bill Dauster, Democratic general counsel, will be deputy staff director; and Patrick Heck, chief investigative counsel, will become chief tax counsel.
Before working on Capitol Hill, Sullivan worked as a tax attorney with the law firm Vinson & Elkins. Dauster has worked in Washington since 1986 and held several positions, including deputy assistant to the president for economic policy in the Clinton administration, chief counsel and Democratic chief of staff on the Senate Budget Committee, and Democratic chief of staff on the Senate labor committee. Most recently, he was the legislative director to Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis.
Heck previously was a senior manager with the federal legislative services group at Ernst & Young and was assistant counsel to the House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee.
Departures In The Bush Administration
Jack Zinman has left the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, where he was a senior adviser to the assistant secretary, to join SBC Communications' FCC legal regulatory group. He will work on Internet issues.
Zinman had a long tenure of government service, including his assignment as deputy chief of the FCC's pricing policy division and counsel to the chief of the Wireline Competition Bureau. Before joining the FCC in 1997, Zinman was an attorney for Justice Sandra Newman on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and an associate at the Margolis Edelstein law firm in Philadelphia.
At the White House, Kathryn Harrington on Friday left her job as special assistant for public affairs at the Office of Science and Technology Policy. She is the new public-relations officer for the president's Take Pride in America Initiative. Bob Hopkins replaces her.
In The Middle Of Privacy Road
The monthly newsletter Privacy Manager has named Ann Cavoukian, the information and privacy commissioner for Ontario, as the privacy manager of the year for 2003.
"Whether Ann is speaking before government committees, business groups or giving advice to law enforcement agencies, she always takes a middle-of-the-road approach that still respects the privacy of citizens," Publisher Robert Vinet said in a statement. "In a world where medical records, credit reports, employment records and communications are being stored electronically, profiled and put up for sale, Dr. Cavoukian is able to guide businesses to succeed while still preserving their customers' privacy."
The Next Chairman Of The FEC?
Bradley Smith, a Republican and currently vice chairman of the Federal Election Commission, is likely to become the commission's chairman for 2004, PoliticalMoneyLine reports.
The online newsletter notes that Smith has been an outspoken critic of the new campaign-finance law just largely upheld by the Supreme Court, and while Smith has pledged to uphold the law, he will make his own decisions on how to apply it.
Smith has been on leave from Capital University in Ohio, traveling and delivering lectures -- mainly to college chapters of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization. The Cato Institute, the John Ashbrook Center, and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy have sponsored other speaking events.
PoliticalMoneyLine also reported that Griffin Johnson Madigan Peck registered Dec. 9 to lobby for Adelphia Communications on issues such as Adelphia's "relations with the government, including cable rates and services and tax treatment relating to chapter 11 reorganizations."
The Gore Effect
While former Vice President Al Gore's endorsement of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean for the Democratic presidential nomination may have hurt the feelings of Sen. Joseph Lieberman, it has not hurt his campaign's balance sheet.
The New York Post reports that online contributions to Lieberman, a contender for the Democratic nomination this year who was Gore's running mate in 2000, jumped to 13 times the average rate after Gore endorsed Dean. The Lieberman campaign did not provide a figure for total dollars raised but said most of the contributions were for small sums, averaging $71.55.
In other campaign news, the conservative online group Grassfire.org is planning a radio and television advertising campaign intended to counter the liberal message of the activist site MoveOn.org, reports MensNewsDaily.com. Grassfire is seeking $100,000 from its members to pay for the costs of the initial campaign, which is entitled "Truth" and is designed to expose the "lies of the anti-war left" and MoveOn's agenda.
"Grassfire.org has incurred significant production costs to get this vital campaign off the ground," the group wrote in an e-mail to supporters. It added that additional campaigns are now being planned, "but the fact is that we simply do not have 'deep pocket' supporters like [Democratic contributor] George Soros -- and the liberal media certainly isn't granting us any favors."
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