Ted Hearn: Check Please – Louisiana Wants to Raid Lutnick’s $13 Billion BEAD Piggy Bank
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said Monday he has directed staff to conclude an investigation into EchoStar’s compliance with federal spectrum license obligations.
BEAD: Just a couple of days ago, NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth was flexing her BEAD billfold. In a Sept. 5 press release, NTIA hailed the news that Team Trump’s takeover of the $42.25 billion BEAD program had yielded savings of “at least $13 billion for American taxpayers.” Roth gushed, “After years of delay, the Trump Administration has made monumental progress in moving the BEAD program forward,” Yesterday, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick effectively saying, “Nice going, Arielle, but that $13 billion belongs to the states to spend on soft programs unrelated to broadband deployment.”
Broadband Breakfast
In Louisiana’s case, Landry is asking Lutnick to send him a check for $857 million, in a Cajun cash grab that other states are almost certainly itching to copy. The timing of the letter was aggressive: No state, including Louisiana, has received NTIA approval of its final BEAD broadband funding plan; and in August, NTIA Chief of Staff Brooke Donilon stressed to a conference packed with state broadband officers that BEAD “is a deployment program. It’s not a non-deployment program.” (More after paywall.)
Editor's Note: We have labeled this Policyband edition as an "Expert Opinion."
Have an additional comment to make? Log in to your Broadband Breakfast account (free community account or paid Breakfast Club Member), and leave your comment below.
Member discussion