How a State Can Blow a Once-in-a-Generation Investment to Close the Digital Divide

The Illinois General Assembly is currently considering legislation that will constrain the state's use of Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act broadband funding and likely impair efforts to close the digital divide in Illinois. Earlier this year, Illinois State Senator Patrick Joyce (D-Essex) introduced the Illinois Broadband Deployment, Equity, Access, and Affordability Act of 2022 (SB 3683), a bill that is rumored to be on a fast track to approval and attempts to establish the exclusive processes the state will use to distribute grant funds Illinois receives from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Although SB 3683 includes some of the same findings that Congress included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, State Senator Joyce proposes constraints on the use of federal funds that fly in the face of the clear language of federal law. If Illinois adopts this law, it risks losing access to over one billion dollars of federal support for broadband deployment.

[Kevin Taglang is Executive Editor at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.]