A $10 Billion Broadband Black Hole?

The US Treasury just gave California more than half a billion dollars to fund broadband buildout. This money may help reduce the digital divide. It also might not. There’s really no way to know because the only public information about the grant is a press release that more closely resembles a flyer than an explanation of how the government is spending 540 million taxpayer dollars. The money comes from the Capital Projects Fund (CPF), which is $10 billion allocated by the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). The Act directs the Treasury to distribute these funds to states, territories, and tribal governments to subsidize new broadband networks. However, the program appears to lack even the most basic transparency. Treasury’s website lists a press release similar to California’s for each state award, and those others also provide almost no additional information. They do list “key state contacts,” but it’s typically an entire state agency. That’s just a hair more helpful than telling people to “call Congress” to learn more about government spending. At a bare minimum, the public should be able to see the plan each state submitted to the Treasury and the final plan the agency approved. That might make it possible for researchers and watchdogs like the Government Accountability Office to evaluate the program — not only to see how well it worked but to inform other broadband grant programs. Unfortunately, these plans do not appear to be available to the public. With the current opaque arrangement, we may never know whether the infrastructure money was well spent because we know little about how the states plan to distribute the money and how their efforts will be evaluated.

[Scott Wallsten is president of the Technology Policy Institute.]