It is off-topic Bob and you will no doubt be told that on Tower Talk
where I see you also introduced this thread. Since you asked, having
a non-ham for the office of Special Counsel for Amateur Radio
Enforcement at FCC is probably the best thing to have happen to that
office.
Many trade organizations and special interest groups such as ARRL, who
pushed for the continuance of this office, the need for which being
debatable, have a common flaw: They have an idea that their field is
somehow so special with such a delicate fragile culture, that only one
of their own is capable of properly exercising whatever authority they
have, over the rank-and-file masses. In this case, to them, a lawyer
would be magically transformed into an all-knowing-master-of-us-all
after taking a license test and getting a ham ticket, maybe with a
Woulf-Hong ceremony thrown in.
This mindset has been entrenched at ARRL for decades, only because in
the past, having friendly hams at FCC gave ARRL a backdoor to having
their way with FCC rule making regardless of what the rest of us
wanted.
But it also led to myopia in ham radio which in this case resulted in
the past Special Counsel attempting to create a ham radio in keeping
with his world view of the hobby, and not necessarily what was
contained in Part 97. Lest anyone thing I am Riley bashing, let me
hasten to say that Riley was an effective steward of his office in a
number of instances, but there were also cases in which Riley, in my
opinion, acted more as a ham than as a lawyer.
It's the job of the Office of Special Counsel to enforce Part 97, no
more no less, and to do so fairly with impartiality. For that we need
a lawyer, not a lawyer with a ham license. In fact, the chances of
getting that fairness and impartiality increase with a non-ham, for
such a person comes to the job with no previous ham baggage, no
biases, no preconceived notions of how ham radio "ought to be."
That's refreshing and probably overdue. Join me in looking forward
to some effective prosecutions when it is possible to bring cases to
trial, which I hope will be free from the influence of special
interest groups with loaded agendas.
73
rob / k5uj
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