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TagsBY BOB HOLT
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
Earlier in the year Meredith Attwell Baker, one of the two Republican Commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission, resisted attempts by the FCC to place conditions on the Comcast-NBC merger.
Baker, married to the son of former White House chief of staff James Baker, said the merger could "bring exciting benefits to consumers that outweigh any potential harms."
Politico reports that Baker plans to leave the FCC for a job as a lobbyist at Comcast Corp., a leading cable service provider in New Jersey.
According to Comcast, Baker will become Senior Vice President of Government Affairs, NBCUniversal. She will be located in the Comcast/NBCUniversal government affairs office in Washington, DC., and will report to Kyle McSlarrow, President of Comcast/NBCUniversal for Washington.
There was expected unhappiness with the move by Baker. Craig Aaron of the Free Press lamented the relationship between government and private industry. According to arstechnica.com, he said, “We hope that her replacement will be someone who is not just greasing the way for their next industry job."
He also commented on Baker’s attempts to move the merger along, saying, “What we didn't know then was that she was in such a rush to start picking out the drapes in her new corner office.”
Federal law states that former employees are barred from “knowingly, with the intent to influence” contacting government employees on issues where they “participated personally and substantially as an employee.”
Baker was sworn in by President Barack Obama as a member of the FCC in July 2009. She also has served as acting assistant secretary of Commerce for communications and information and acting administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
There, the Wall Street Journal reports she ran a government coupon program that made it cheaper for Americans to make the switch to digital-only television.
Baker’s statement said she was leaving the FCC June 3, and she was "privileged to have had the opportunity to serve the country at a time of critical transformation in the telecommunications industry.”
