State Legislators: Don’t Upend BEAD

WASHINGTON, April 3, 2025 – A group of 115 state legislators asked the Commerce Department Thursday not to impose sweeping changes onto states’ management of $42.5 billion in broadband grants.

“As state legislators, we understand that no program is perfect. Indeed, we welcome some changes. However, we ask that you defer to our states about which changes we adopt,” the legislators wrote. 

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said the department is reviewing the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program to make it more technologically neutral, which would mean changing its preference for fiber to some extent.

It’s not clear how significant the change will be, but the legislators said they feared having to redo some of their work implementing the program.

Three states received Commerce approval on spending plans under the Biden administration, but their money has been held up by a grants manager review since President Donald Trump took office. Several others have finished fielding grant applications under current rules, and in total more than 30 states have begun the process.

West Virginia’s governor said last week the state was given an extension on its final BEAD spending plan in order to “expeditiously finalize the proposal in a manner consistent with the program changes being proposed by the Trump Administration.”

“At this late stage, major changes would undermine our work and delay deployment by years,” the legislators wrote. “The health, safety, education, and economic success of our communities depend on these programs. We ask that you tread cautiously when changing them.”

The letter was organized by the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society and State Connections, a working group of state legislators. Its lead signatory was Missouri Rep. Louis Riggs, a Republican.

Campaign comes after Minnesota broadband director letter

The campaign comes after Minnesota’s broadband director sent a similar letter to Lutnick last week. Maine and Louisiana – one of the states with previously greenlit grant recipients – have also written the secretary to urge caution.

Arielle Roth, Trump’s pick to head the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the Commerce agency handling BEAD, has also been critical of the program’s preference for fiber. States can fund non-fiber projects if the sometimes costly technology would be too expensive – something states currently have leeway to decide for themselves – or if no fiber providers are interested, but qualifying fiber bids get first priority.

Roth was noncommittal in her confirmation hearing last week, declining to say whether NTIA would require some states to redo their bidding process or institute a mandatory per-location spending cap that forced states to fund less fiber.  Lawmakers are set to vote on her confirmation April 9.

Even Feinman, the former director of the program, told colleagues in a departure email that he predicted the agency would ultimately set such a spending cap in an effort to shift BEAD funding to satellite, something he called a “betrayal.” Low-earth orbit satellites are a more feasible option for connecting the most remote homes and businesses, but the speeds they provide can’t scale as high as fiber.

Elon Musk, the billionaire serving as a close adviser to Trump, owns the market-dominating satellite ISP Starlink.

The letter’s signatories included 80 Democrats and 35 Republicans from 28 states. The organizers are still collecting signatures.