January 15th, 2009
Martin will leave FCC on Tuesday
Kevin J. Martin could stick around the FCC as a plain ol’ commissioner. But he won’t. Reuters reports that Martin will depart the FCC on Jan. 20, pretty much the minutes Barack Obama is sworn in as president. Martin is heading for the conservative think tank, the Aspen Institute.
In a press release, Martin said he’s always enjoyed the Institute’s Communications and Society Program and “will relish the opportunity to reflect on the nature of leadership that I exercised in this field for the past several years.”
The job is hardly a surprising one. It’s basically a tradition, Aspen said, and the last four FCC chairs have all taken the Aspen fellowship upon leaving the chairmanship.
Reuters notes that the chairmanship is a wildly more powerful position than mere commissioner and Martin did not shy from using his power. That led to complaints of an overbearing leadership style and commissioners complained he excluded them from key decisions.
Just Wednesday, fellow Republican Commissioner Robert McDowell released a letter to Martin, criticizing his exclusion of the other commissioners in the agency’s oversight of the digital television transition.
“It appears that your fellow commissioners have not been brought into planning or discussions,” he wrote in a letter.
