Comments on: Can These Numbers Be Right? FCC Paperwork Nightmare = 57 Million “Burden Hours”!

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By: Itinerarist

Itinerarist — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:33:11 +0000

The vast, vast majority of FCC required paperwork filings are not materials generated or even reviewed by communications lawyers

By: Itinerarist

Itinerarist — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:33:11 +0000

The vast, vast majority of FCC required paperwork filings are not materials generated or even reviewed by communications lawyers

By: Mike Sullivan

Mike Sullivan — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 04:24:24 +0000

I certainly agree. It would only be chump change to a Wall Street banker.

I'm certain there are some better figures in filings made at OMB by FCC regulatees contesting the FCC's ridiculously low burden-hour and cost estimates.

By: Berin Szoka

Berin Szoka — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 04:11:05 +0000

Even so, that would be $2.03 billion for the secretaries + $3.42 billion for the engineers, economists, paralegals and lawyers = $5.45 billion/year. Not exactly chump change!

By: Mike Sullivan

Mike Sullivan — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:45:18 +0000

I suspect the 70% at $25 is about right; the remaining 30% would be mostly in-house engineers and paralegals, with a small portion being in-house attorneys and an even smaller portion being outside counsel or other professionals, such as economists or engineers. Maybe divide the 30% into 25% at $75 and 5% at $200. ($200 is probably high, since it's probably way more than the average low-level in-house counsel gets paid, but it also assumes some small use of outside counsel at much higher rates.)

By: Berin Szoka

Berin Szoka — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:05:46 +0000

Fair enough, Mike. So what do you think a reasonable blended rate would be in this case? Let's assume 70% of the work was done by a secretary at $25/hour (which is $50k/year at 2000 hours/year), and the remaining 30% was done at a blended rate of $350/ hour. Even that would be $2.03 billion for the secretaries + $5.96 billion for the paralegals and lawyers = $5.96 billion. That's still a staggering number—and probably 2-3 times as much as the FCC is supposedly planning to spend each year on broadband subsidies. And, again, this is just the cost of responding to data reporting requirements, not the FCC's many open-ended inquiries over the last year or actually implementing regulation!

By: Mike Sullivan

Mike Sullivan — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 04:44:24 +0000

The vast, vast majority of FCC required paperwork filings are not materials generated or even reviewed by communications lawyers, I'm (only sort of) sorry to say. When broadcasters are required to put materials in the public file, it's likely that a secretary or clerical assistant does the filing and in all likelihood no communications lawyer billable hours are involved. Even documents filed with the FCC typically involve way more hours of licensee or regulatee burden than lawyer time. An employment report may involve considerable time rummaging through the files for a low-level employee of a broadcaster, but the report only requires a brief review by the lawyer who files it. The time the lawyer spends developing a plan for compliance doesn't count toward the reporting burden. And for telecom carriers, the generation of Form 477 reports involves a great deal of low-level in-house clerical time; lawyers, whether in-house or outside, spend only a limited amount of time characterizing the data and interacting with the carrier's staff to get it right.

The most onerous paperwork collection that the FCC has ever proposed was in the Katrina reconsideration order, which would have required telephone companies and wireless carriers to itemize the individual facilities used for their services and determine for each one whether it already had backup power in accordance with the new rules, and, if not, whether it would be in compliance, and, if not, whether it was subject to an exemption that required examination of federal, state, and local law, contracts, and other matters. The FCC thought the burden was going to be minimal and said that a single FCC staff member would be able to review the filings on half of a year's time. Carriers responded that they have millions of facilities, and sending an employee to every manhole, pole, and cellsite to verify whether sufficient backup power is available would be incredibly costly. OMB, luckily, didn't tilt to the FCC's panglossian assumptions. Ultimately, the D.C. Circuit vacated the rules because of OMB's refusal to approve the rules.

By: Berin Szoka

Berin Szoka — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 03:15:27 +0000

Or, to put this another way, 57,000,000 burden hours / 2,000 hours per year (a 40 hour work week x 50 weeks per year) = the equivalent of 28,500 people who work on nothing but responding to FCC data requests!