Viacom Inc. The deal would be the largest ever involving a minority tax certificate, and would put Mr. Washington in control of one of the country's 10 largest cable systems. The deal is expected to be announced soon, perhaps as early as this Week. Mr. Washington knows minority tax policy inside and out - he helped write its foundation while a consultant to former President Carter's White House staff in 1977. He later went to the Federal Communications Commission, where he helped implement the policy, which was created to increase minority ownership of radio, broadcast TV and cable properties. It focused minorities with aspirations to get into the business, and it focused the funding sources, the white establishment.
Advocates say the policy is a practical solution to the dearth of minorities in telecommunications.
They say it has helped only a handful of people, and Mr. Washington, who controls more cable systems than any minority in the industry, has been its primary beneficiary. Mr. Washington worked his way into Yale Law School, where he met FCC Chairman Reed Hunt and became lifelong friends with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The men were two of only 10 blacks in their class of about 170 students. After graduation, Mr. Washington went first to a Washington, D.C., law firm and then into the political arena as a consultant to the White House office of telecommunications policy. It was here that he devised the minority tax certificate.