Opinion ID: 472549
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Cable Act Issues

Text: 33 Yakima and CCTA urge this court to order the FCC to determine the current status of the taxes under the new franchise-fee provisions of the Cable Act. Although the Commission has announced a policy of leaving franchise-fee issues to the courts, the petitioners contend that this policy of forbearance is either illegal or, at the very least, arbitrary and capricious. Admittedly, the issues raised by Yakima and CCTA are not easy. Because of the operation of the Tax Injunction Act, 24 for example, it appears that the result of the Commission's policy of forbearance will be to leave the enforcement of the franchise-fee provisions of the Cable Act entirely to state courts despite the Cable Act's enunciated purpose of developing a national cable policy. 25 34 These difficult questions, however, should not be decided in this proceeding. Instead, we conclude that they are best left to our pending review of the new Cable Act regulations in ACLU v. FCC. 26 The initial petitions for declaratory rulings involved only the status of taxes under the franchise-fee regulation; the Cable Act issues were not raised until the petitioners filed applications for review with the Commission in January 1985. Before the Commission even considered the petitioners' applications for review, the agency issued new rules to enforce the Cable Act and, in so doing, unambiguously announced the new policy of forbearance: 35 Section 622 of the Cable Act spells out quite clearly the terms of the franchise fee and how it is defined and administered. Therefore, there is no need for us to further define these matters. We believe that any disputes involving the franchise fee are best resolved through the courts. 27 36 In other words, the forbearance policy was not promulgated in the instant case; rather, the new policy was developed in a separate rulemaking proceeding and was then relied upon in this case as one of the justifications for the dismissal of petitioners' requests for relief. Since the full sweep of the FCC's rationale is better understood in a careful review of the entire Cable Act rulemaking, we will decline to prejudge those issues in this appeal. 37 Accordingly, we conclude that the appropriate proceeding for review of the FCC's forbearance policy is in connection with the ACLU appeal now pending in this court. 28 However, because petitioners have been directly affected by an application of the forbearance policy, and have raised their objections in a timely fashion, we will permit them to intervene in ACLU v. FCC for the express purpose of raising issues relating to the enforcement of the Cable Act's franchise-fee provisions.