By Ron Thaniel
September 14, 2009

In a letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, The U.S. Conference of Mayors urged the Administration to give careful attention to reconsidering the restrictive criteria that requires public safety and anchor institutions meet an underserved or unserved test before being eligible for broadband funding in the first round of the Broadband Technology and Opportunities Program (BTOP) in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).

The August 17 letter from Conference of Mayors President Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and Conference Transportation and Communications Chair Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper said, “Unless amended, these critical institutions, which in many cases serve our most vulnerable populations, will not meet ARRA requirements for funding under the BTOP.”

The U.S. Conference of Mayors believes that Congress intended to give public safety and anchor institutions such as schools, libraries, and medical and healthcare providers the highest funding priority in the BTOP, stating, “ Section 6001 of the ARRA specifically lists public safety and anchor institutions as two of the five priorities for funding.”

Under ARRA, the unserved and underserved test only applies to residential consumers. In addition, the underserved test to determine the availability of broadband by census block depends on data that the U.S. Census does not gather.

The letter further states that, “The nation’s mayors do not believe Congress or the Obama Administration intended to deny these anchor institutions, and the vulnerable populations they serve in our cities, the ability to compete for the broadband funding, in effect excluding large portions of the population from receiving the benefits of the BTOP funding.”

Nickels and Hickenlooper wrote, “We also intend to work with the Administration to ensure the second and third rounds better reflect what we believe the goals of Congress and the Administration to be.”