Earlier i welcomed our cspan audience and i want to welcome them again. Were grateful that cspan is here. Im sure it has quite a bit to do with our next guest here, chairman pai, but were glad all of you are here. So, in keeping and chairman pai knows that i do this because hes been here before. Hes got an illustrious biography. I could go on and on and on about it, but weve got it in the brochure. For those of you who are in the cspan audience, our brochure is on the website, on the home page of the website. Its got fcc chairman ajit pais bio in it. I commend that to you but i would just state what everyone here knows, that chairman pai served as a commissioner prior to assuming the chairmanship of the fcc. How soon after the inauguration . Was that two days later . It was on a monday, january 23rd. So about three days after. About three days he was appointed by President Trump to be chair of the fcc. What i will say about chairman pai is this, without going over each of the particular offices, which you can read about, and i pointed this out before but i think its important. Hes actually served in all three branches of government, spent a lot of time in senior positions on the hill and of course in the agencies, over at the justice department. I think all of those experiences are of course important and provide insights that are useful, i think. Thats a charitable explanati explanation. Evidence of the peter principle, keep failing the every job and keep getting promoted and the next thing you know im in the corner office. I think my explanation was really the correct one. I appreciate that. As i said, we have actually do this before, chairman pai and myself. And really the only difference today is i have a bigger chair here for you because of your new office. By the way, i was looking around earlier and i didnt see it, did you bring your weed wacker with you . I did not. I had a feeling it wouldnt travel well, so i left it at home. Okay, well i mentioned that because it was at the state foundations tenth Anniversary Gala back in december when then commissioner now chairman pai offered whats now a famous illusion to the weed wacker i think referring not to his front yard but to the regulatory underbrush at the fcc. And i noticed just last week i think john eggerton, the reporter at broadcasting and cable, he said in reference to your weed wacker speech or reference to the weed wacker, he said that that term, quote, has gained cultural currency within and beyond communication circles. Thats quite a bit. Anything else about the weed wacker you want to say before we move on . I think its probably best that we move on at this point. All right. Okay. We do like to create cultural currency things here at the state foundation conference, so i thank you for that. I had, as you know, ajit, a House Minority whip for this conversation. Weve had several fcc commissioners, other notables do this conversation but never the chairman of the fcc. So im really honored to have you here. Thank you for having me. I do want to say just for the record really that each year that tom wheeler was chair of the commission i did invite him to come and do the same thing or really do whatever he wanted to, and he with a lot of advanced notice and he always declined, but i made a point of letting him know that he would be welcome and that i would of course be my usual polite self. But he didnt come. But im really pleased that youre here as well. Well see how this goes. I dont want to be too hasty here. Youre not making any promises about the next time. Well, you never know. Until i get demoted to cspan 8. Right now were on cspan 2 for those of you that want to watch the reruns. Okay, so again a lot of us are familiar with your bio as i said. So im just going to ask four questions, and were going to do the lightning round so to speak, up front as opposed to towards the end when ill have another one, because these are pretty straight forward questions. Did you always know when you were growing up that you wanted to be chairman of the fcc . Absolutely. Without question. What indianamerican growing up in the late 70s wouldnt say, of course, the chairman of the federal Communications Commission in 2017, ive got my eye on it. No, i never would have anticipated it. Even coming out of law school i didnt know what i was going to do. I thought id be a lawyer in kansas city. Sort of testament not to my own skill and expertise but just to the power of the American Dream that someone like me or any of us really can aspire to such heights. Its really humbling and gratifying at once. I should say, you mentioned the 1970s, and i think we do have with us today actually an fcc chairman from the 1970s, dick wiley whos with us and [ applause ] i will always pleased when he joins us. You know, im sure that there are probably youngsters watching cspan right now who are thinking when i grow up that i want to be like ajit pai. Hopefully theyre saying i want to be like dick wiley. Hes got a much more successful track record and i think widely respected by everybody in this room and around the country. Now more seriously, which one, im emphasizing one of your previous positions do you think best prepared you for the job of chairman other than serving as commissioner . Thats a good question. So ive had a number of jobs,. S all of them prepared me in working on the hill help me understand, working as a judicial law clerk helped me to understand how federal courts interpret statutes and apply them. But i would say the job that actually prepared me the most was being deputy general counsel at the fccs office of general counsel. The reason is twofold. Number one, from a substantive perspective, they gave me a birds eye view on everything the agency was doing to help me understand how the nuts and bolts work, from interpreting section 332 of the Communications Act to understanding how fiscal law applied to the agency. Also from a manage ear yal perspective, it was the first time i had a chance to manage a lot of people and it gave me the experience, especially in my current role when youre the chief executive officer of the entire agency. I feel blessed to have worked at ogt at the time and little did i know that the experience i would be getting would be extremely important in this current role. Which one person has been most influential in shaping your thinki thinking regarding the way you approach your job at the fcc . Besides you . No, you can include me. No, besides me. Pandering to the host, hip for people watching cspan, pandering to the host, always a wise move. I think there have been any number of people ive worked for over the years, people ive come to know. Obviously my family has been very supportive. One of the great things about this job is that you get to establish connections with the people who came before you, and one of the connections ive been very grateful to make, in addition to dick wiley whos been a long time friend, bill canard. He was the chair during a time of great change in the industry. The telecommunication act was barely on the page when he ascended to the chairmanship, a time of political polarization. I really admired at the time and have come to appreciate even more that ive gotten to know him the way that he led the agency. I think that he and others like him serve as a model of leadership and i would be very fortunate if after my time is done that people mention me even in the same breath as bill canard. I agree. I have a great fondness for bill and the job he did. So the last in this series of one questions is, what one personality trait of yours will be most important to succeeding as chairman . One personality trait. So there i would say i guess between the external and internal. Externally what i like to think i bring to the job is whats called a sense of energy in the executive. The Founding Fathers called it of course as you know one of the key ingredients, leading ingredients to Good Government and thats something the Agency Benefits from i would like to think, having a chairman and commissioners who embrace the task with vigor, put things on the agenda that are important, move them quickly, try to create a sense of dispatch and transparency. Thats something that ive really enjoyed embracing and explaining to the outside world is that i really want to be an active chairman because i think the world isnt standing still and our rules cant stand still as well. Internally one of the traits i would like to think i bring and you would have to ask my coworkers is just my general love for the agency. I love my coworkers. Its been such a privilege to get to work with them and know them, even unsolicited sometimes smet send me emails. Last friday, with your indulgence, i got an email from a woman who said, not having met you as a commissioner, i didnt know what to expect from you as chairman but youve quickly earned my confidence and i look forward to seeing how the agency develops. Im impressed with your actual knowledge and precious for what we all do. Thank you for breathing some hope into the agency and thank you for taking on the tough challenges youre facing. I admire your nononsense approach and im glad to be working for you as the head of our agency. Those are the kinds of things that lift my spirits, honestly. I dont want to be one of these ceos that just sits on the floor and doesnt know doesnt care about what the many talented members of the fcc do. I want them to enjoy what they do and ive had a chance to meet with virtually all of them. The message i tell them is, look, i want you to have the same sense of enthusiasm when you get up and come to work that i do. Its gratifying honestly to get feedback like that regardless of whether people might agree or disagree with a particular policy position. At the end of the day were all striving for the Public Interest and theyre all valued members of the team. With your indulgence if i could recognize anyone in the audience who is currently or has ever been a member of the fcc, if you wouldnt mind raising your hand just so i can salute you. [ applause ] these guys are the best. People like me get all the credit or occasionally the blame but honestly they are the most talented workforce that any federal agency has. Its just really humbling to walk alongside them in these labors. Appreciate that sentiment, and i know the audience does as well. I happen to serve at the agency for three years myself a long, long time ago. It was close in time to chairman wiley. I often tell people, even my wife sometimes, that those years were some of the best professional years of my life. I know everyone appreciates the way that you express that sentiment, so thanks for that. Thank you. So lets talk about making the fcc great again. Thats a joke. But lets start actually in this place. Theres been a lot of discussion, including quite a bit by you as well and mike oreilly i think too about the supposed loss of collegiality at the commission during tom wheelers years. So if you believe there was such a breakdown in collegiality, how did it manifest itself, and what do you think the causes were . Because i assume that i know there were a lot of split votes, 32 votes, and i get that, but im sure that the fact that there were split votes in your mind in and of itself is not evidence of any lack of good faith by your fellow commissioners. So just talk some about what you perceived the problems, if there were any in collegiality, back then and then what you would like to do to restore a greater sense of collegiality during your administration. I appreciate the question. I will say that obviously a lot has been written about this. A lot has been said about this. And i am honestly looking forward, i have a great deal of respect for my predecessor. I think we may have differed on a lot of policy issues but thats just the nature of the process. Im focused on trying to create an environment in which every commissioner, any stakeholder who wants to come to the agency feels he or she can have a fair hearing and we can exchange views in a collegial manner and thats by constitution who i am. I tend to be a pretty happy, optimistic engaging person. Even if my fellow commissioners and i are on the opposite side of an issue, i would hope they would say, at least he heard us out and explained why he was taking a different route. Thats the goal ive got Going Forward is that no matter what the partisan or policy differences might be, at the end of the day we have an environment thats conducive to consensus more often than not. Okay. Ive asked this question almost every commissioner thats been in this chair, maybe yourself before, but its relevant to the collegiality issue. Ive been involved in efforts to try and change the sunshine act in some way to, you know, even aside from repealing it, there might be ways to modify that would be conducive to more collaboration on collegiality. So youve been on the commission for a long enough time that you ought to have an opinion on that. What say you about the sunshine act . I think that some of the things that you have talked about and others have talked about would be well considered. And i think often the purpose of the sunshine act which was very well intentioned has actually worked to impede collaboration in a way that would benefit the american people. The example i always give is one of the commissioners serving on the joint board, i still remember the telephone calls we would have with a variety of state counterparts. It was incredible at the time it was commissioner clyburn and i, and no more than two of us could be on the call together. Two of us would be on the call and one of our staffers would say its been 15 minutes. Commissioner pai youve got to jump off. Since i wasnt on the call for that 15minute period i would then have to get briefed as to what happened during the call. Its sort of this random game of telephone that happens. Thats just a joint board. The more serious not serious but the more intense issues on a monthly basis were the agenda items, and there too, the three of us couldnt get together and hash out a deal. It would be our staffs being delegated the authority to do that. Then they would have to report back to us and it was a very inefficient process. Especially in the digital age and especially now with some of the process reforms in terms of getting the items published three weeks in advance, i think a lot of the concerns that people have have been mitigated, so i would hope that congress would take a more modern forward looking view if it decides to reform the sunshine act. It sounds like if nothing else the sunshine act runs up the telephone bill over there at the fcc the way you described it. So sticking with the process just a bit longer, and you anticipated just now my next question, but before i ask it, i do want to say this. Ive been involved in other Free State Foundation scholars for a long time discussing process reform and offering some process reforms in addition to the substantive matters that were going to talk about, and i have to say that in my that, in my book, you are to be commended for the way that youve tackled some of this right from the getgo. You know, its more common of course to have another committee at the commission or someone study some of these things yeah. And owe at least for my part, i appreciate the way that you have gotten off to a good start on process reform. I guess the biggest perhaps one that is most important or at least most noted so far is the change in the way that draft items are handled in terms of releasing them to the public. And they are now released at the time the items are circulated to the other commissioners. Three weeks before the commission actually votes on the item. I should say the last week before the commission votes. Then thats whats call the sunshine period. And there are no outside contacts during that time. But the public has the draft ord order. And you know, when i talked about this, i you know, maybe its part of just being an old timer, but i always, you know, always had some concerns about the effect the commissioners work, even doing it on an experimental waysis. You did it on a relative short experiment. Now that its been in effect. Really i think what we all want to know is how do you think thats working, what was this radical reform, areally, because it was considered pretty radical with it w before it was done. But specifically when you are answering the question, talk whether its putting an additional wu additional burden on the Communications Staff or collisioners themselves. In commissioners themselves. In conjunction with that, has this new practice materially changed the nature or the quality of the presentations to the commission and the commissions decisionmaking process as you have observed it so far . I think by and large its been a fantastic success. I never understood why the agency would only let the American Public see what it was doing after it had actually done it. To me it was a simple analogy to the hill when a senator or representative introduces legislation, before that bill voted on, before its referred to a committee sometimes you will get to see that ledges on the internet and everyone can understand what it is and debate it. It seems to me the fcc should take the stai same step with respect to the items the chairman puts on agenda. For years i talk it. I was given a variety of reasons why it shouldnt be done. In the sec week we did it. And world has gone out and things worked out just fine. The most hartening emails i get are from people who tip owe dont follow our proceedings or dont work in this field so much, but citizens out there in the country who say thanks for publishing it. I might agree disagree with what you did but at least i can see now what you were actually doing. There, the openness and transparency has been. I dont think its a big deal to let the public know what the commission is doing in advance. As for a burden, i think it has focused the ex parte meetings they have had in the weeks leading up to a meeting. Instead of the hushed conversation that parties to the commission we have heard this might be a paragraph, can you confirm or deny it. The commissioner would describe what was nonpublic information. Well, i cant confirm or deny it but you might be on the right track. It was a strange game of wink, wink, nod, nod, here its out there, no innuendo, nothing but the cold hard text of the document that explains it in cold hard english. For the staff the urden changed. I wouldnt say its increased. With you its changed. Previously the staff would work hard to get an item together they would be circulated by careman three weeks in advance and then the staff would wait for a week and then two weeks, and sometimes even almost three weeks to get direction from the floor as to how the item going change. Sometimes it would change significantly. I felt sorry for the staff because i was a staffer myself when it happened. 11th hour, 10 00 p. M. The n