Fact Checking the New Taxpayers Protection Alliance Report, GON With the Wind

The Taxpayers Protection Alliance has returned with another puzzling attempt to discredit municipal broadband networks. TPA’s report offers 30 short case studies and there is no explanation of how TPA chose this odd subset of municipal networks. Yet they allege a failure of the network or failure to pay debt in only 9 of its examples. One of the claims of failure, North Carolina’s Wilson, relies solely on a false claim that was quietly retracted years ago by Christopher Yoo at the University of Pennsylvania, who admitted he did not understand the revenue bonds he was criticizing. To be clear, TPA chose 30 municipal networks to make its argument and can only accurately claim 8 out of 30 networks as failures.