Pace Of Broadband Funding Questioned
Leaders of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Thursday pressed Commerce Department officials on why funding provided by the economic stimulus package for broadband deployment and adoption is taking so long to reach communities, CongressDaily reported. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and National Telecommunications and Information Administration Administrator Lawrence Strickling said they were taking steps to allocate the funds more quickly but also want to ensure that the funding is spent wisely.
"I know you need to do due diligence, but we're getting calls from our constituents" asking where the funding is, said Senate Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski, D-Md. Locke said $300 million has been allocated so far and pledged that more than $1 billion in funding for the first round of broadband grants would be awarded by the end of February. He said the rest of the funding would be allocated by the end of September.
"We know a lot of people would like the grants to flow out more quickly. We share that urgency," Locke said. But he added that this "imperative" must be balanced with the need to fund sustainable and worthy projects that will have the broadest impact while also preventing waste, fraud and abuse. Congress provided a total of $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus funds divided between NTIA and the Agriculture Department's Rural Utilities Service.
Senate Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Richard Shelby, R-Ala., blasted the broadband program as a boondoggle. He also wondered whether NTIA, the smallest agency in the Commerce Department, was capable of managing the program. He noted that the $4.7 billion in stimulus funding given to NTIA for broadband grants is more than the budgets of the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. To read more, click here (Subscription required).
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