Following the Rules When Choosing an Internet Service Provider Partner

Local governments all over the country are choosing internet service provider (ISP) partners and making grants from American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to help bring better broadband. This blog is a warning to handle the awards of such monies in a way as to be safe from challenges from ISPs you don’t choose to fund. The reason for issuing this warning is that ISPs that don’t get funded can ask to see all of the records that are part of the process of choosing a partner and can sue a local government if they don’t believe the review and award process gave them a fair chance to win the awards. It’s important to remember that although ARPA money came to local governments from a federal grant program, this is still local government money, and the process of spending the money is subject to at least some portion of government procurement rules and certainly is subject to all rules having to do with openness and transparency of records. I strongly advise local governments to include an attorney and perhaps a trusted consultant who has been through this before in the process. A selection committee needs to get the speech about being fair, open, and transparent and warned not to create written records that are derogatory to any of the ISPs in the process. Governments have a legal obligation to be fair and aboveboard when choosing anybody who will receive public funding. I know that picking ISP partners feels like it is an extraordinary thing, but it is not somehow outside the normal government procurement processes.

[Doug Dawson is President at CCG Consulting.]