Photo credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images/Bloomberg.
Last week, Chairman Ajit Pai led his last public open meeting, capping off almost a decade of service at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Hailing from Kansas, as the son of immigrant parents from India, Pai has been known as a fan of
The Big Lebowski and enjoying his coffee in large Reese's mugs. In addition to oversized mugs, he also brought big ideas to the FCC that provided much needed agency reform and progress toward the goal of connecting all Americans.
Pai led efforts to provide greater agency transparency by requiring the drafts of major orders to be made public three weeks prior to commission meetings and votes. Previous FCC leadership had been accused of substantially changing agency proposals without provide notice to the public. Known even by some commission staff as an “economics free zone” prior to 2017, Chairman Pai oversaw the creation of the Office of Economics and Analytics to make agency decisions more data driven and examine the costs and benefits of proposed regulations.