§ 1.1208 - Restricted proceedings.

§ 1.1208 Restricted proceedings.

Unless otherwise provided by the Commission or its staff pursuant to § 1.1200(a) ex parte presentations (other than ex parte presentations exempt under § 1.1204(a)) to or from Commission decision-making personnel are prohibited in all proceedings not listed as exempt in § 1.1204(b) or permit-but-disclose in § 1.1206(a) until the proceeding is no longer subject to administrative reconsideration or review or judicial review. Proceedings in which ex parte presentations are prohibited, referred to as “restricted” proceedings, include, but are not limited to, all proceedings that have been designated for hearing, proceedings involving amendments to the broadcast table of allotments, applications for authority under Title III of the Communications Act, and all waiver proceedings (except for those directly associated with tariff filings). A party making a written or oral presentation in a restricted proceeding, on a non-ex parte basis, must file a copy of the presentation or, for an oral presentation, a summary of the presentation in the record of the proceeding using procedures consistent with those specified in § 1.1206.

Note 1 to § 1.1208:

In a restricted proceeding involving only one “party,” as defined in § 1.1202(d), the party and the Commission may freely make presentations to each other because there is no other party to be served or with a right to have an opportunity to be present. See § 1.1202(b). Therefore, to determine whether presentations are permissible in a restricted proceeding without service or notice and an opportunity for other parties to be present the definition of a “party” should be consulted.

Examples:

After the filing of an uncontested application or waiver request, the applicant or other filer would be the sole party to the proceeding. The filer would have no other party to serve with or give notice of any presentations to the Commission, and such presentations would therefore not be “ex parte presentations” as defined by § 1.1202(b) and would not be prohibited. On the other hand, in the example given, because the filer is a party, a third person who wished to make a presentation to the Commission concerning the application or waiver request would have to serve or notice the filer. Further, once the proceeding involved additional “parties” as defined by § 1.1202(d) (e.g., an opponent of the filer who served the opposition on the filer), the filer and other parties would have to serve or notice all other parties.

Note 2 to § 1.1208:

Consistent with § 1.1200(a), the Commission or its staff may determine that a restricted proceeding not designated for hearing involves primarily issues of broadly applicable policy rather than the rights and responsibilities of specific parties and specify that the proceeding will be conducted in accordance with the provisions of § 1.1206 governing permit-but-disclose proceedings.

[62 FR 15857, Apr. 3, 1997, as amended at 64 FR 68948, Dec. 9, 1999; 76 FR 24383, May 2, 2011]