In article , "Phil Kane"
writes:

On 07 Aug 2004 12:14:49 GMT, N2EY wrote:

I think FCC was between a rock and a hard place on the whole issue.
On the one hand, they were tasked with making licensing accessible to
the US population - all of it, not just those who lived near big
cities. On the other, they could not have an exam point convenient to
everyone.

For several years before the FCC abandoned its responsibilities by
turning the function over to the VEs, there was a "pilot program" in
several areas where the U S Civil Service Commission examiners gave
the FCC written tests by prior arrangement at their regular exam
points. This avoided the problem of finding a local ham and vetting
his/her character before sending the exam. (The field office
examiner was supposed to check with the local FCC investigators to
find out whether the choice of proctor raised any "red flags".)

I did not know that! Thanks, Phil!

That program did not yield any better results than the previous
mail-volunteer system and was ended.

Really a sharp move by FCC - they get unpaid volunteers to do almost
all of the grunt work, from coming up with questions for the pool to
verifying CSCEs. Yet FCC retains all the authority and dictates
procedure and the fees VEs can collect to reimburse their expenses.

The only ones "inside" who really wanted the work passed to the
volunteers were those examiners who wanted to do less work (some,
but certainly not all).

But wasn't the FCC, like all agencies at the time, under pressure to reduce
spending? Seems to me that getting unpaid volunteers to take over most of the
work of amateur license testing and test preparation would save some $$. Not
much, but it would be something the top dogs could point to and say "see -
we're saving money and getting the govt. off your back"...

The rest of us felt that it was a bad move,
and would be the start of a very slippery slope of the FCC abandoning
its regulatory responsibilities under the guise of "privatization".
Replacing said examiners with more and different examiners with better
work attitudes would have been a better solution.

Of course, but that was politically incorrect back then, wasn't it?

The brass obviously had their minds made up before they even asked
us about it.....and in fact it was the start of said "privitization"
downhill spiral.

Exactly. Brought to you by which administration?

73 de Jim, N2EY