Four months after the Federal Communications Commission approved a contested merger of Comcast and NBC Universal, one of the commissioners who voted for the deal said Wednesday that she would soon join Comcast's lobbying office.
WASHINGTON — Four months after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved a contested merger of Comcast and NBC Universal, one of the commissioners who voted for the deal said Wednesday that she would soon join Comcast’s lobbying office.
Meredith Attwell Baker, a former Commerce Department official who worked on telecommunications issues in George W. Bush’s administration, said she would leave the FCC when her term expires at the end of June. At the Comcast office in Washington, D.C., she will serve as senior vice president of government affairs for NBC Universal, which Comcast acquired in January.
The announcement drew criticism from some groups that opposed the $30 billion Comcast-NBC merger. They said the move was indicative of an ethically questionable revolving door among regulatory agencies and the companies they oversee.
Although Baker, 42, was appointed to an independent regulatory agency, she signed the administration’s ethics pledge upon taking office in July 2009. Under the pledge, she will not be allowed to lobby anyone at the FCC for two years after her departure.
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In addition, she will not be able to lobby other political appointees at the FCC, including other commissioners, for the remainder of the Obama administration, including a second term if the president is re-elected. She faces a lifetime ban on lobbying any executive-branch agency, including the FCC, on the agreement that Comcast made with the commission as a condition of its approval of the merger with NBC Universal.
Baker can lobby members of Congress immediately upon beginning her new job.
Comcast said it did not begin discussions with Baker about a job until after the transaction had closed.
Craig Aaron, head of the public-interest group Free Press, called the move an example of “business as usual in Washington — where the complete capture of government by industry barely raises any eyebrows.”
Baker, one of two Republicans on the five-member commission, recently criticized the speed of the commission’s review of the Comcast-NBC merger, which took 355 days. The FCC voted 4-1 in January for approval, subject to several conditions.
“The NBC/Comcast merger took too long, in my view,” Baker said March 2.
Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.