§  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]

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Prohibition on Solicitation of Presentations

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