Opinion ID: 517397
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Was the FCC's Ruling Consistent With the Standards Set Forth in the Reconsideration?

Text: 13 HITN argues that the Commission's ruling was inconsistent with the standards enunciated in the FCC's Reconsideration of its amendments to the ITFS rules. 7 In the original rulemaking--the 1985 Order--the agency established a one year local priority period beginning on July 28, 1985. All qualified local applicants filing for licenses during that year, as well as all qualified local entities whose applications were pending as of the start of that period, would be given priority, and mutually exclusive nonlocal applications would be rejected. The appellant concedes that the standards announced in the 1985 Order would require that its own application be rejected and DBCC's accepted. HITN contends, however, that the Reconsideration modified the local priority period to provide that local applicants would receive a comparative preference, but not an absolute priority, over mutually exclusive nonlocal applicants. 14 HITN has simply misread the Reconsideration. The Commission did provide nonlocal applicants with a three-month opportunity to amend their applications by substituting a local entity. Otherwise, though, the Reconsideration left intact the principle that, until the end of the local priority period, local applicants would automatically be chosen over mutually exclusive nonlocal applicants. We believe that the Reconsideration unequivocally reaffirmed the earlier decision to establish the local priority period, providing for the processing and grant of pending and new applications by local entities without competition by nonlocal entities during that time and notwithstanding any mutually exclusive pending nonlocal applications. Reconsideration, 59 Rad.Reg.2d (P & F) at 1358. 15 HITN relies heavily on passages in the Reconsideration which state that nonlocal institutions should not be excluded entirely from ITFS licenses. HITN also notes that the Commission has established a point system for comparing applicants and that the system gives points to local applicants. Such a system would make no sense, the petitioner argues, if local entities were to be given an absolute preference. This argument misses the mark. The FCC did recognize that ITFS operation by a nonlocal entity is better than waiting indefinitely in the hope that a local applicant will appear. The Commission therefore provided that nonlocal applicants would not be excluded entirely, but would be permitted to file for licenses in areas where no local applicants had emerged during the local priority period. By the same token, the point system would be used to compare local and nonlocal applications only after the expiration of the local priority period. These provisos are not relevant to the present case, since DBCC's application was pending when the local priority period began. The Commission's resolution of this case was therefore entirely consistent with the standards articulated in the Reconsideration. 16