JOINT STATEMENT OF 
COMMISSIONERS MICHAEL J. COPPS AND KEVIN J . MARTIN

Re:	Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service; Implementation of the Local 
Competition Provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Order on 
Reconsideration, CC Docket Nos. 96-45 & 96-98

	We write separately to express our support for the Commission's efforts to reduce 
its backlog of outstanding petitions.  Clearing this backlog enables this Commission to 
work from a clean slate, allowing us to make decisions on current matters faster and 
thereby promote regulatory stability.  We thus commend the Chairman for making the 
elimination of outstanding petitions a priority.

	At the same time, we recognize that the means by which this Order reduces 
backlog, although necessary in this instance, is far from ideal.  In this Order, we dismiss 
petitions for reconsideration that went unresolved for such a long time that we found it 
necessary to require parties affirmatively to indicate whether they still wished to pursue 
them.  Allowing petitions to become moot solely due to the Commission's failure to act is 
unfortunate, at best.  More problematically, the process used here raises the possibility 
that a party may fail to indicate its intention to pursue its petition only because it failed to 
receive notice of the Commission's intentions.

	Nevertheless, we vote for this item because the Commission conducted 
substantial outreach to ensure that parties - and in particular non-traditional stakeholders 
that may not have representatives in Washington - had actual notice before a petition was 
dismissed.  Indeed, additional outreach at our request determined that several parties 
whose petitions were going to be dismissed in fact still wished to pursue them.  Those 
petitions have now been removed from the list of petitions we dismiss today.  We 
commend the Commission for undertaking these efforts.  In the future, we hope that 
actions such as today's order are not needed.  But if they are, we expect that the 
Commission will undertake the kind of substantial outreach efforts it undertook here.