New York's broadband program is behind schedule and inaccurate. It's still getting another billion dollars

If you are going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars of state money on a program, clearly the goal is to do it right. New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli says New York’s broadband program didn’t do it right. In a new audit released in July 2022, he says a core mistake was to rely on a system which measured success in providing availability and which isn’t accurate. Orleans County (NY) Legislature Chairman Lynne Johnson says that’s how her county received slow satellite service. Now, Orleans is making its own way by building a network on that satellite service and 911 towers and municipal service towers. The promise is availability to every home and business in the county next summer. The build out uses federal COVID money. The New York Broadband program started out as a $500 million program and went up from there, with another billion dollars in this year’s budget. DiNapoli says there have been serious problems with contractors running up to four-years behind schedule, state-wide. DiNapoli says the projects in that original half-billion dollars were supposed to be finished in 2018 and some still aren’t.