I thank her for her immense contribution to the public and to my own time in government. Most important in the long run, Michele's Bureau published the first comprehensive spectrum policy statement done by the FCC since 1945. On the one hand, usable radio spectrum is finite and it is highly desirable to guarantee that some of its uses serve public purposes. On the other hand, maximizing economic benefits from spectrum use requires extensive reliance on the same market-based forces that lead to optimal use of private property. The airwaves belong to the public, and should be used for public purposes.
Public safety is an example of a public purpose.
The market on its own will underprovide public safety services. These benefits won't come from marketplace competition. This has come at the expense of PSAs, which have dried up and disappeared like rain in the desert. If only a fraction of the time networks devoted to self-promotion were made available for free access by candidates, we'd be a long way down the road to a big solution for the big problem of the campaign reform everyone knows we need. So when the need for ad time forces candidates to dial for dollars instead of ideas, government should consider rules to fix this broken system.