Pursestrings Update VIII (or is it IX?): CDBS Fee Calculation Glitch Apparently Resolved

Posted on May 14, 2009 by Ron Whitworth

It appears that the Commission’s technical team has successfully resolved the problem reported in our last update. Recent anecdotal observations indicate that the “new” application filing fees – you know, the ones which were adopted by the Commission last September, and which officially went into effect on April 28 – are finally being automatically generated by the Commission’s CDBS on-line application filing/fee payment systems.  (No word yet on whether the problem has been resolved on the Commission’s IBFS database.)

As recently as May 11, a glitch in the system was resulting in licensees being prompted to pay the old, lower, fees.  But as we reported then, the Commission will not be giving a free pass to those who paid the incorrect fees during this time.  The Commission may approach each licensee individually to request the difference in fees, or may announce a set of procedures for licensees to submit the additional fees.

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Pursestrings Update VII (or is it VIII?): The Beat Goes On

Posted on May 11, 2009 by Ron Whitworth

Faithful readers will recall that we titled the last installment of our “Pursestrings Updates” series the “final chapter”. We spoke too soon. 

On April 28, the Commission’s new application filing fees finally went into effect, after a series of delays about which we dutifully reported here . . . and here . . . and here  . . . and, well, you get the point.  We figured that, with its formal announcement of the April 28 date, the FCC had things under control.

We should have known better.

In early May, we noticed that the automatic Form 159 functions in both the Commission’s CDBS and IBFS systems were still using the old fees. And since there’s no way to override those functions when you’re filing an application, the only answer (if you wanted the application to get filed) was to file the lower – outdated – fee that the system was specifying.   (Once the application has been filed, it might be possible to submit the difference through the Commission’s Fee Filer system, which is separate and distinct from CDBS. However, we ran that potential alternative past the staff, and they recommended against going that route – possible difficulties in getting the supplemental payment  associated with the correct, underpaid, transaction, etc., etc.   Based on what we’ve seen already, we’re inclined to take that advice.)

After several calls to the Commission, we determined that (now here’s a surprise) there has been a problem with the Commission’s databases, a problem which the FCC’s technical team is working to resolve. No word on exactly when they might get it fixed.

The Commission hasn’t provided any official guidance on this situation – indeed, it hasn’t even acknowledged the glitch publicly, yet. The staff has informally advised us that, as far as they’re concerned, the new fees did kick in as of April 28, so any applications filed on or after that date are subject to the new fees, even if CDBS or IBFS didn’t ask for them. That means that any feeable filings made from April 28 on will be reviewed at some point by the Commission to determine whether the correct fee was filed. If not, the FCC will reach out to the underpaying applicants for the difference.

The good news is that, according to the staff, the Commission has no plans to bounce or withhold action on applications that weren’t filed with the correct post-April 28 filing fees.  But rest assured that the Commission will eventually come calling for the difference, once it gets on top of the situation.  Depending on how many applications were filed with the incorrect fees, the Commission may handle this through individual phone calls or announce a set of procedures for licensees to submit the additional fees. 

We’ll keep you posted . . . .
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Pursestrings Update: The Final Chapter (We Think)

Posted on April 24, 2009 by Ron Whitworth

New application fee schedule still set to take effect April 28, 2009.

For those procrastinating on filing applications with the Commission, now is the time to act if you want to save a few bucks.

As we reported on March 26, the Commission’s new broadcast application fee schedule will go into effect on April 28. (Application fee schedules for other services also kick in next Tuesday, April 28. You can find a collection of 2009 Fee Filing Guides for all services here.) The current fees have been in effect far longer than the Commission originally contemplated, as faithful readers of the first five or six installments of our “Pursestrings Update” series know.  But the fun ends on Monday night: all the new fee schedules will become effective at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday morning.

Please let us know if we can help you pull together any last-minute filings to beat the deadline.

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Pursestrings Update V (or is it VI?): The Party's Over

Posted on March 26, 2009 by Ron Whitworth

It’s official (we think) – New application fees to take effect April 28, 2009

Loyal readers have doubtless been on the edges of their seats since the last installment of our “Pursestrings Update” series. (Newbies can catch up by reading our earlier installments here, here, here, here, here,  and here.) We have a new development to report: the Commission has now formally announced that the revised application fee schedule first adopted last September (has it really been that long?) will take effect on April 28, 2009. Mark your calendars (and try to get any applications you’re working on filed by then – the new schedule reflects an across-the-board increase, tracking increases in the CPI).

The new effective date is just about four months later than the effective date which the Commission originally envisioned and indirectly announced. It’s also about three months later than the effective date that was formally announced in the Federal Register. And it’s a bit more than two months after the effective date that was posted, ever so briefly, on the Commission’s “application fee” webpage (and printed in some fee filing guides that the Commission posted, and then removed, from that webpage). 

But what the heck – better late than never. Actually, since the fees are going nowhere but up, the delay has been beneficial for those who have been filing feeable applications since December 30. 

But it does look like we’ve come to the end of the line.

Readers will observe that the latest public notice offers no explanation for the on-again-off-again-on-again-off-again-on-again-off-again effective dates so far. In fact, the notice makes no reference at all to any of that history. That’s probably for the best.

In any event, April 28 appears to be the day. We’ll keep our fingers crossed.

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Pursestrings Update IV: The Continuing Mystery of the Disappearing Revised Fees

Posted on February 19, 2009 by Ron Whitworth

February 18 has come and gone, and the new application fee schedule which was supposed to go into effect on that day has NOT gone into effect. (By the way, if you want copies of the Commission’s now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t 2009 fee filing guides, let us know – we have a complete set of those bad boys and we’ll be happy to make them available to one and all.)

In response to our February 18 post, we heard from one off-the-record source that the folks charged with updating the on-line CDBS payment process have finished their work, so they’re apparently not the cause of the delay, contrary to our earlier suspicions. We also heard that at least somebody inside the Commission was saying that the effective date had to be postponed from February 18 because of some “legal ‘notice’” (the internal FCC memo reportedly included quotation marks around “notice”) requirement that they supposedly just learned about.

Just learned about? Since we’ve been on this topic like a hobo on a ham sandwich for weeks already – not to mention our original post about the new fees that appeared months ago – that suggests that they haven’t been reading CommLawBlog.com, which hurts us deeply. 

But wait a minute – the Commission did put a notice in the Federal Register about the new fees back in January, which suggests that they do know about the notice requirements. Curiouser and curiouser.

We called the Office of Managing Director on February 18 to see what was what. They told us that a public notice had been posted on the Commission’s website addressing the new fee schedule. Since no such notice had, in fact, been posted, that was wrong information, which we pointed out to them. They seemed surprised to learn that the notice that they thought had been posted had not in fact been posted. They then said that some notice would be posted at some point, so we should check back regularly. (We have done that, but so far we have seen nothing.)

We also heard from a seemingly informed source that somebody involved in the fee schedule fol-de-rol has suggested that the Commission may issue an erratum to the original September, 2008 order adopting the new schedule. Careful readers will recall that, in that order, the Commission specifically said the new fees would become effective 90 days after Congressional notification, which would put the effective date at December 30, 2008. The thinking seems to be that the Commission can and should simply say that they didn’t really mean 90 days, but rather some other number which, when calculated out, will make the effective date some time in the future. We’ll let you know if such an erratum pops up.

We still find it hard to understand exactly why the Commission’s folks seem to be so twisted up about how to put the new fee schedule into effect. And we find it even harder to understand why the Commission seems so dead set on not bothering to let the public know what’s going on. Perhaps when the Sure-To-Be-Posted-Someday public notice actually makes an appearance, we’ll all have a better idea.
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Pursestrings Update III: Adjusted Fee Schedule Is Apparently NOT Effective February 18, 2009

Posted on February 18, 2009 by Ron Whitworth

The latest word is that the adjusted application fee schedule which the Commission adopted six months ago, and which was supposed to go into effect on December 30 -- no, wait, make that January 29 . . . no, no, that’s not it . . . wasn’t it February 18? – will NOT be going into effect on February 18 after all. That rumor appears to have legs because the 2009 Fee Filing Guides – you know, the unofficial items that the FCC quietly posted on its site in early February, as we previously noted – have been equally quietly removed from the site. We checked this morning (February 18) and, sure enough, they had disappeared.

If we had to guess, we’d suspect that the on-going delay may have something to do with revising the automatic fee payment system in CDBS, which has to be adjusted to conform to the new fee schedule. And, of course, we do have to guess, because the FCC has not bothered to announce any of this to the public. So much for governmental transparency.

As a practical matter, the Commission’s delays on this particular front are welcome, as they postpone across-the-board fee increases. But it’s troubling that the Commission seems incapable of dealing with what should be a relatively mundane internal updating process, and it’s troubling that the Commission appears willing to ignore its own orders (e.g., its September Order expressly mandating that the new fees would become effective within a very specific time frame) without public explanation. And it’s even more troubling that the Commission hasn’t elected to let its regulatees – who, after all, are the ones most directly affected by the fee change – in on any of this.

Stay tuned. We’ll try to be your go-to site for Adjusted Fee Schedule updates.

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Pursestrings Update II - OMD Says Adjusted Fee Schedule Is Effective February 18, 2009

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Ron Whitworth

Unofficial Fee Filing Guides said to trump Federal Register notice

True to our word, we have doggedly pursued the mystery of the effective date of the new application fees. Here’s what we found out.

Back in September, when the Commission adopted the new fees, it specified that “the amendment to the Schedule of Application Fees made herein shall become effective 90 days after notification to Congress.” The FCC then promptly notified Congress and, according to a representative of the Office of Managing Director (OMD), the 90-day waiting period ended on December 30, 2008. Now the FCC’s own language (i.e., “the Schedule . . . shall become effective 90 days” blah blah blah) certainly seems to be self-executing – that is, one might have thought that, once those 90 days elapsed, bingo, the new fees would automatically go into effect.

But no.

Apparently the Commission felt that more had to be done, but what with the change of administration, the year-end holidays, and other similarly weighty regulatory concerns, it didn’t get around to sending the notice to the Federal Register for publication until late in January. At that point, we are told, the notice reflected the December 30, 2008 effective date. That makes sense.

But according to our friend at OMD, somebody at the Federal Register noticed that the 12/30/08 effective date pre-dated the planned date (January 29, 2009) of the notice’s publication in the Register, which apparently is a no-no. So the date got changed at that point to January 29 (despite the FCC’s seemingly self-executing language in its original order).

But OMD now tells us that the Commission really intended the effective date to be February 18, and that the Commission’s just-released Fee Filing Guides should be deemed to be the controlling authority – even though the Guides are “unofficial”, at least according to the verbiage on their covers.

So the moral of this particular story appears to be: the adjusted fee schedule is effective as of February 18, 2009. We’ll let you know if that changes.
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Pursestrings Update: New Application Fees Won't Go Into Effect Until February 18, Maybe

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Ron Whitworth

A couple of days ago we reported that the new application fees adopted back in September had, at long last, become effective as of January 29. Our report was based on an order that appeared in the Federal Register on January 29 which specified that the new fees were, in fact, effective on January 29.

We suspected that something might be amiss, though, when the automatic fee calculator in CDBS continued to demand the former (i.e., lower) fees, rather than the newly effective “adjusted” fees, but that could just have been a problem with the CDBS administration.

Now the Commission has indicated that, despite the Federal Register directive, the effective date for the new fees will not be until February 18, 2009. We say that this was “indicated”, rather than “announced”, because the information showed up without fanfare (let alone public notice) on a page deep in the bowels of the FCC’s website. There the Commission posted revised Fee Filing Guides for the various services, with the link to each of the Guides labeled “Effective 2/18/09”. So it looks like February 18 is the official date.

But wait.

On the front page of each of the Fee Filing Guides is a notation which reads “This is an unofficial compilation of the radio services and requests for FCC actions that are subject to fees.”  Unofficial? Does that mean that the Federal Register date – which sure looks official, being in the Federal Register and all – supersedes the Guides? We’re looking into this and will post the answers if and when we get any.

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Pursestrings Note: Increased Application Fees Now In Effect

Posted on February 2, 2009 by FHH Law

Way back in September we alerted our readers that the Commission had “adjusted” its schedule of  application fees to reflect increases in the consumer price index. (Reminder: The term “adjustment” here is a euphemism for “4.9% across-the-board increase”.) But, as so often happens, the new rates weren’t put into effect right away. Instead, the FCC had to notify Congress of the changes and then sit back and twiddle its regulatory thumbs for 90 days. That process has now run its course, and on January 29, 2009, the Commission published a notice in the Federal Register letting us all know that the new fee schedule took effect as of that notice. Presumably the Commission will eventually get around to issuing revised versions of its Fee Guides for the various services. Until then, all of the revised fees may be found in the schedules included in the 1/29/09 Federal Register notice.

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Application Fees: Up, Up and Away!

Posted on September 23, 2008 by Harry Cole

With just about everything else getting more expensive by the minute, why should filing applications with the FCC be any different? And sure enough, on September 22 the Commission announced that it was “making adjustments” to its application fee schedule to reflect changes in the Consumer Price Index. In this case, “making adjustments” is just a euphemism for “4.9% across-the-board increase”. The new fee schedule appears as an appendix to the Commission’s Order. The increases take effect 90 days after the FCC notifies Congress of the changes, so you have at least three months to get applications filed before the price jumps kick in.

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