WASHINGTON-Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) wants excess revenue from a future third-generation mobile-phone auction to help fund deployment of enhanced 911 service, according to sources.
The plan could potentially complicate passage of relocation fund legislation previously hamstrung by a controversial amendment that lawmakers apparently have now agreed to strip out when the measure hits the Senate floor.
The Stevens effort is playing out on the heels of a compromise to drop language added to relocation legislation last year by Sens. John Sununu (R-N.H.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.). The Sununu-Cantwell amendment, which the mobile-phone industry opposed because it introduced unwanted controversy to the relocation bill, would have enabled Northpoint Technology Ltd. to bypass a Federal Communications Commission auction and receive free spectrum for broadband and video services.
Sununu’s press spokesperson did not return calls for comment, but one source said, “The Northpoint issue has been taken care of.”
While Stevens adviser Lisa Sutherland was reluctant to talk about adding E911 funding language to the relocation fund bill, the influential Alaskan lawmaker-who holds the purse strings for federal agencies-has huge leverage in the matter.
Relocation fund legislation, passed last year by the House and critical to the success of the Bush 3G plan, has been stalled in the Senate for months. The bill, supported by the White House, the Department of Defense and industry, would finance the transfer of military radio systems from the 1700 MHz band-a portion of which is designated for 3G services-to other frequencies.
The relocation fund guarantees the Pentagon receives 3G auction proceeds-likely billions of dollars-collected from the sale of mobile-phone licenses. Spectrum auction receipts usually are put into the U.S. Treasury. Absent such a fund, the Pentagon would be at the mercy of the annual appropriations process and thus could lose 3G revenue promised to the military.
Last year, Stevens expressed concern about a lack of accountability safeguards in the relocation fund bill and signaled he would revisit the issue on the Senate floor in the form of an amendment requiring the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to provide Congress an estimate of the costs and a timeline for moving military 1700 MHz systems to another frequency band.
But at that time, Stevens did not publicly voice any desire to earmark any 3G auction money for E911. Last September, the Bush administration raised objections to the E911 grant program advocated in pending legislation championed by Sens. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). A companion bill was passed by the House last year.
Burns’ spokeswoman could not say whether Stevens is acting on the Montana lawmaker’s behalf to get E911 funding included in relocation fund legislation.
NTIA spokesman Clyde Ensslin said Michael Gallagher, acting director of the agency, would not comment on pending legislation. Gallagher’s nomination to head NTIA has been in limbo since last December when former Senate majority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.)-whose fall from grace created bad blood with the Bush White House-blocked the appointment because of a controversy unrelated to Gallagher. It remains unclear whether the Bush administration is willing to cut a deal with lawmakers on Capitol Hill to save the Gallagher nomination and whether Gallagher’s leadership is being compromised by his uncertain status.
Failure to win approval of relocation fund legislation this year would be a setback for the mobile-phone industry and an embarrassment for the Bush administration, which is expected to deliver two major spectrum reports to President Bush early next month.
