So this is Senate Finance and today we are continuing looking at the federal money that's available for broadband and what the state's plan is for going after it, what the need is, and Senator Pearson, you have your hand up, and I have to be on my iPad so I can't see everybody at once because my computer keeps losing internet connections. So I'm back to iPads. Just a really quick question. You said the federal money available for broadband. Is there a special money particularly for broadband or do we all believe that the COVID money is applicable for broadband? Just a point of clarification before we get going. It's my understanding there is some money earmarked and Maria is shaking her head. Maria is going to tell us what the money is and where it is. But I have Secretary French on and Secretary, is it my understanding that you have time constraints? Yes, good afternoon. I do have a hard stop at two o'clock but other than that I'm available. Okay, well then maybe we'll have Maria go first and tell us what money is available and then we'll go to Secretary French. My question for him is what we asked and we've asked from the school, all the school associations, where are the real trouble spots? Where are we seeing, where could we get the biggest bang for the buck in the schools? Have we got schools that are not, you know, have a significant number of students in certain clustered areas that can't do broadband? So I think that's our question there and Maria floor is yours. Okay, great. Maria Royal with Legislative Council. So I am going to hopefully share a document. Okay, good. Did that come up? Can everybody see that? So your face, can you make it a little bigger? Maria, do you know how to do that? I don't. It's filling my screen. So there's a little plus and minus sign at the top of your screen. Usually there is. And Ann, it may be that you want to just rearrange where it may be me. Okay. Okay, I can get it up. All right. I have it on full screen right now. So I'm not sure. Maria down at the bottom where it says 110, you may be able to make that a little bigger for us. Okay. Okay. That's fine. That's. Thank you. Is that working? Yeah, great. That's, yeah. Okay, so what this document is, is a summary of all of the various appropriations in the CARES Act that include money in one way or another for connectivity. Could be devices, could be broadband infrastructure. And we, there are many potential sources. And obviously there are going to be other draws on that money. So how much is exactly is going to be available for broadband is kind of to be determined. But the chair had asked that I kind of review what those streams are. And then no, some of the deadlines are in terms of getting the money out. So you are aware of what your timeframe is with respect to some of the money. And I also, the chair had said that just a few minutes of an overview. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time. But hopefully this document, it will be a good resource to kind of refer back to a lot of these programs are in development right now. So I will strive to update it as new information becomes available and ask Faith to repost it. So with all of that being said, and please feel free to stop me at any point. Otherwise, I'll go through, I think, pretty quickly to ensure that you have enough time before two. So for example, and I've categorized the funding streams, the first category is rural and economic development. There was money to 100 million to an existing RUS program that deadline for that money has already passed. It was already in the works. This is just an influx of additional cash. I believe detail has applied for some of this money. I wanted to include it here and we don't need to talk about it in detail, because if there is service funded through this program, that may impact what other federal funding is available to potentially serve those areas. That's going to be an issue that will need to be tracked of. Okay. Okay. So then also, there was one point and all of these appropriations unless specified otherwise are national. So they go to the national agency department. And I did try to break down where we knew specifically what the state share was. And I'll mention that, but Maria, can you just clarify this is separate from the 1.25 billion, right? Yep. It is. This is all separate. I do have, I did include that in here. So you're aware of that money, but I understand that that's obviously not just for broadband or that's discretionary state money. We'll talk about that briefly, but it is here just so you have the whole world of funding streams, at least in one document. So there's money to the department of commerce, economic development assistance programs, $1.5 billion. I did where I could. So you'll see in most of these appropriations, I included the actual language from the CARES Act, because that will be important, very important in some instances to make sure the money is allocated or expended consistent with the CARES Act. And then I also in some instances included the actual statute, some relevant language to the underlying programs that are going to be expending the money. And then I also have links throughout the document. So if you want to refer back to the program and look more specifically. So those are kind of, those are the two big rural and economic development appropriations. In terms of telehealth, you're aware of, sorry, was there a question? Actually, I do have a question. Um, but last one, how is that different from the 1.25 billion that the state of Vermont is getting? When you say the last one, do you mean the assistance programs? The EDA, totally separate money. So this money is going to a federal program. It can be given out in the form of grants at the local level. If you look on, and I'm looking at where it says section 209 of the public works, I just included a description there of what this particular money can be used for. Again, this is not the relief fund. So on the application of an eligible recipient, the secretary may make grants for development of public facilities, public services, business development, planning, technical assistance, training, any other assistance to alleviate long-term economic deterioration and sudden and severe economic dislocation. So my understanding actually Clay Purvis was very helpful in reminding me about this appropriation and also letting me know the history that this particular program has been used in the past for broadband construction. So the case precedent, so to the extent that there are applicants in Vermont that apply for this money, they potentially could use that for broadband build out. Can the state apply? I don't know the answer to that question. I don't know if it's the state or if it's a municipality or other public, local public entity, but I will absolutely. You know who probably could apply would be the CUDs. They are municipalities, right? They are municipalities and potentially they could apply. Yeah. So that might be something to send out to the CUDs. Is this what's what's broadband defined in the is it wasn't the first one 10 one and the second one 25 free? Uh, when you say the first one, the first program that I have listed here? Yeah. Okay, so I think you're referring to the reconnect program, right? And so this is money in the form of grants, loans, grants and loans that go to areas that currently don't have 10 one and the recipients are required to build out broadband that is a minimum of 25 three. I mean 25 three on a good day up to 25 three. That's the minimum. That's okay. That's a minimum so we could go higher. Well, this is a federal program, right? But I mean we could yes with whatever program you want to create a new program you could set performance levels or whatever you think is appropriate. The minimum is 25 three no more 10 one. Correct. For the reconnect program. Okay. Just consistent with the existing state programs that you have the connectivity initiative across program. They're all at a set the base of 25 three. Okay. So I know you're going to be running out of time really soon. So I'm also happy to come back. Yes, we are. Okay. Do you tell me if you'd like me to pause or if you want me to keep going? Okay. Yeah, let's let you pause and we'll get to secretary French. And then we'll go back. But secretary, I think we're really looking for progress update on where are the schools seeing their biggest issues in broadband? Yeah, good afternoon. I wasn't really sure about what the topic of today's testimony was until I received the invitation this morning. But I'm happy to come back with specific information. I can say the issue what we see in COVID-19 isn't so much school broadband. It's community broadband. We have the issue now as the students are not in their schools. So we do have schools that don't have sufficient access. But the issue now is now the students are in teachers are out in the landscape. How do we support remote learning when we're relying on a different set of infrastructure than they would have available inside their school buildings? I think I mentioned previously during the American Reinvestment Recovery Act in 2008-2009, school districts made a lot of progress in building out wide area networks, which is essentially sort of a hub and spoke configuration that many of our school districts in Vermont employ, meaning that there is a central location in each supervisory union where a central pipe of internet comes in. And then the spokes or the wide area network connections are then farmed out to the individual buildings in the supervisory. And we did a lot of that work during the 2009 timeframe. So most districts I would say today I feel pretty comfortable saying that have some sort of a wide area network. But once again, the issue today is sort of the perennial issue. And Vermont has always been this last mile. And now we see this playing out considerably in that students and teachers are no longer within those networks. They're outside in the landscape trying to pull down resources. I was going to just comment also on, I thought your topic was on federal money. I was going to give you a brief update on the CARES Act and education funding that's available under the CARES Act. Okay. Yeah, that would be helpful. There's two pots of money that are sort of dedicated to education. One is the elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund, which is the big pot of money that's approximately $30 million to the state of Vermont. And then the smaller pot is the governor's emergency education relief fund. And Vermont's allocation there is $3 million. So the last time I was here, we didn't have a lot of specificity on either pot of money. The large pot of money, the ESSER fund application went live last Friday, and we submitted our application yesterday, the SEA, the state, dead, the agency of education. The US Department of Education has told us to expect about a three-day turnaround on that. So, conceivably, by the end of this week, we will have received approval of those funds. And what that means is then we would turn around and allocate those funds to the local districts. Those funds, 90% of those funds are allocated to school districts directly, and they have fairly wide discretion how they use those funds as long as the funds are used, in accordance with an existing federal education program. And including technology and so forth. So conceivably, school districts will have the ability to pay for broadband access, computers, internet-based learning resources, and so forth. But 90% of that $30 million is allocated directly to the LEAs. Now, they also have a lot of competing interests in those funds as well. In particular, I've been messaging them to focus on social and emotional support. I think we're going to have a lot of interest in providing additional support services for students. As you know, we've been feeding students and doing a lot of other things during this time period. But it's really hard at this point to assess the social and emotional impact of this emergency on families and kids, and we expect to have considerable new expenses in that area. So I just cautioned district to maintain some flexibility in addressing those needs. The second pot of money, which is the Governor's Emergency Education Relief Fund, I believe, is $3 million. The Governor has expressed interest in working closely with the General Assembly and prioritizing how those funds are utilized. That application should be going out soon. It's a pretty pro forma application. Essentially, it just requires assurances and so forth. But those funds are fairly, can be broadly utilized largely once again, focused on COVID-19 response, can be utilized for school district that has significant impact, can be used in higher education, it could be used more broadly for any other kind of educational entity that's been felt the impact of COVID-19 in providing support. So that's sort of an update on the funding. Back to the issue of access, I think the access, my perception of what I've seen unfold so far, it's really the last mile issues. It's not so much the infrastructure inside of schools, it's how do we deal with parents? I had another parent email me this morning, I'm in the town of Chelsea, can't seem to get online, but they also have cell coverage. So it's hard to figure those things out. So we're literally down to those kind of family by family sort of issues. Well, I think that's what we're looking for. If we're going for a grant, we're going to need to say something a little more specific than broadband. I think we're going to need to say this area has got 20, 30, 40, whatever percent of their kids can't access remote learning. And by extension, their parents can't get telehealth. So the more the focus, I think that's the schools are there dealing with it. I think they have probably the best first hand information about just the percentage of their kids and the sections of their towns or the districts that are cut out so that we can figure out how to focus on that. And if you can just touch base with the principals or the superintendents and get that course, then it will make putting things together that much better. Okay, Senator Pearson. Thank you. A couple of questions for the secretary. Are you or the governor considering any of those funds that go directly to schools to be used for food as we get out of the school year? I know there's been a lot of concern that and your department agencies to be credited and our school partners across the state have done a great job handling school food and making that go way further than school lunch. So I appreciate that very much. But I am worried that this is all supposed to get cut off on June 18th or whatever. So I'm curious if you've thought of that. And then I'd love a second question if we have time. Yeah, we are actively working on that, Senator. The immediate issue I'm working on right now is the governor's asked me produce guidance on end of year celebrations and graduations. So we have a deadline to produce guidance of May 8th on that. And that's sort of the beginning of the conversation about what is the rest of the summer look like. I was just in a conversation with Dr. Levine trying to as I have been pushing him to predict the future, you know, which is really difficult. But we're trying to play out that trajectory of the virus based on the sort of opening of the spigot and the implications for being able to use our school facilities for a wide range of activities, not just in person instruction, the provisioning of meals and so forth. So we're getting a better handle on that. But I think the issue of summer activities is going to be an important one, but we certainly have a priority being able to feed students through the summer. And that's essentially the authorization that allows us to do that now is essentially the summer authorization. So we've effectively closed our schools, but are still providing federally subsidized meals. We're allowed to do that under the federal law that speaks to the summer programming. So we considered a priority and I know districts do as well. So yes, this funding, a lot of the CARES Act money starts to be spoken for lots of different ways pretty quickly. But a priority that will remain is making sure students don't experience food insecurity. Okay, Senator Pearson, did you have another question? Yeah, but I don't want to hug. We've only got a few minutes with the secretary. So okay, Senator Ballant, did you have a question? No, okay. Just saw a motion. Anybody else? Yeah. Okay. Senator Pierce, well, I got Senator McDonald, and then I'll go back to Senator Pierce. Where in the federal grants is money specifically available for last mile built out? In the two pots of money I refer to, it's not referenced at all. In the larger pot of money that goes to districts, there is a sort of allowable use dedicated to technology, but it doesn't talk specifically about school districts building out last mile infrastructure. School districts could pay for bandwidth for the provisioning of services inside their district, but it doesn't speak any more specifically. Yeah, I don't think that's really the pot of money we're looking at to do actual build out. Okay, Senator Pearson. My question is, I guess, similar. I've been wondering if it's too soon, but if you've had any thoughts of the fall. I'm sort of picturing, a lot of people say we'll go into these constrict and relax time. So October 15th, we get some flare ups. We send kids home. At that point, when we still have kids that are totally unable to be learning remotely, that begins to be more on us as I mean broadly. I'm not pointing fingers at the agency, but is there a planning underway for those moments? Maybe it means we identify a few towns where there's no high speed internet and we drop lines there. I mean, I'm just trying to think about what's the next wave and we won't be able to answer all of that, but can we be aiming to be 75% of the way there by October 1st or whatever? Yeah, I think a lot of the conversation we've had with our partners in state government is about around sort of the near term solutions, like literally how do we go down this road or how do we reach this family? And that's going to be a priority. I think the point on remote learning though is that districts have flexibility to deliver remote learning lots of different ways and not all that requires technologies. We've seen schools hand delivering things, I don't say hand delivering, but delivering materials to students' houses. There's lots of other options available and I think in those moments where we are able to utilize our facilities better, we'll have to enact those supports for students more emphatically. But yeah, I think the near term issues are very much on everyone's mind and as I mentioned those calls come in fairly regularly about individuals and sometimes it's just educating people about how to use their technology they have. So when someone calls in and says, I don't have broadband, but then we find out they have really good cell coverage and we're helping that. In some cases I've heard of schools helping a parent use their cell phone as a hotspot so the student could use the Chromebook and Verizon, Comcast or other providers have been very supportive of making sure those families have access. So there's a lot of different issues out there. I hear from schools that say, yeah, I have broadband but what are they going to talk about even better broadband because my broadband isn't really that great. So you'll hear the, I'm sure you've heard all of that before, but whatever I can do to help and I know the other agencies are very supportive as well. Okay, because I think we can admit that broadband is probably the best way. Picking up homework or going to a hotspot and downloading it and uploading it is not the same as face to face with your teacher or meetups with your classmates. Yeah, and it's the perennial issue of technology and education is like one thing leads to the other. So it's not sufficient to say we'll have all the bandwidth and then figure out what to do with it. In many cases right now we're figuring out what to do with it but then exposing places that don't have sufficient access but one helps drive the other. And I think particularly I'll just reference the point about the social and emotional supports. We're investigating using the technology to deploy social and emotional supports to students just like telemedicine is being supported. So increasingly our designated service agencies and other providers will be relying on the infrastructure to reach out to families that have not been as well connected. I know that there is concern about students who have kind of disappeared for the last two and a half months. I know we've got some mental health workers who are actually delivering meals so they can just kind of be there and have a door sell discussion. So I think what we're saying is if there's federal money available we would really be negligent if we didn't do everything we could to be prepared for the next time. And the next time might be something very different but you know that I think this is pointed out that there's two Vermont's the ones that can get connected and the ones that can't. So that's where we're trying to go especially since there seem to be resources available. So and please don't discount this summer. I thought Sandra Ballant might be going to speak to that but I know I have a family member who says well he's not sure his layoff isn't going to be permanent but he's not going to look because all the day camps and the whole thing that they kind of sausage together for their kids for the summer probably aren't going to be open and somebody's going to have to be home with the kids and these are school-aged kids who don't have regular day care so day care isn't it's the rec department it's the pool it's the rec department day camp and they probably aren't going to be open and it'll be an issue. Yeah we're working on that we're hopeful that we can have that infrastructure up but we're it's a priority right now for us to start working on. Good because I think that would relieve some parents' minds. Yeah we've got a lot of anxious parents out there who are already at their wits end and are just not sure how they're going to face the summer. Right so and we've already got parents that are going back to work and there is no school and there is no childcare and so there are kids. Okay thank you I hope we got you out on time and we're going to go back to Maria and you can walk us through and then we'll go to Commissioner Tierney and Clay. Okay there comes Maria's all right. All right can everybody see that? Yes. Okay so just I think I kind of rushed into this a little bit but just so you understand how this is organized before we go any further. I provided the special appropriations in the CARES Act by subject matter. So we talked about the rural and economic development appropriations we're about to talk about the telehealth appropriations that encompass some form of connectivity then we'll talk about the education appropriations then digital literacy and then a review of the coronavirus relief fund the big pot of money and then finally it will conclude with just looking at some pre-existing federal funds for broadband in unserved and underserved areas because those are large pots of money available to the state this year. So trying to orchestrate and think about what money you go after and for what areas this is so you have all of the possible funding streams in mind. So I hope that is helpful so you understand how I approach things here and like I said some of these programs are in the works this next program the telehealth program the COVID-19 telehealth program this program was in the works by the FCC before the CARES Act was passed. So the CARES Act was passed March 27th the FCC actually issued a report in order on April 2nd and the FCC is taking reviewing and accepting applications right now. I'm mentioning that because the money is available on a rolling basis for as long as until it has all been expended or the pandemic has ended whichever occurs first and to date there have been 17 awards to various healthcare providers nationally in 10 states for a total of 9.5 million in funding. So that's just to give an indication that this money is going out and it's available right now to eligible healthcare providers. In terms of the other question that is coming up you know is this last mile can it be used for last mile connectivity? I've included here a link to the FCC's guidance and then I actually put their language here where it describes what services and devices are covered. You'll see that first bullet funding for telecommunications services and broadband connectivity services including voice services and internet connectivity services for healthcare providers or their patients. This is about as specific as it gets in terms of whether it would actually fund a service drop of say you know fiber connection from a line that runs by a patient's house or whether it would actually fund building out for specific patients if it became apparent that there was a need. It's not clear to me that this money cannot be used for that. The application description of the programs is in somewhat narrative form so I think if a provider could make an argument that particular patients and where they're located their health outcomes and the cost savings would be dramatic if they had fiber. I think you can make that argument. I don't know if that would be approved and I have not had a chance to review the applications that have been approved to see what levels of connectivity have already been approved but I guess it's a long way of saying it's not clear that you cannot spend the money for actual last mile connectivity and I wouldn't want to discourage a provider from seeking that funding if it felt like that would be important to serve its population. So this would have to come like from a VNA and then they would have to have a contract with a provider to run the line up and it would probably if you had three people in the same loop or ten people in the same loop it would probably be have a better chance of passing. I think that's right. I mean there's limited money available 200 million nationally so and the FCC has said that they're going to cap the award at about a million dollars so that there's you know enough to go around. So obviously it's going to depend on what the cost is for building out if you felt like you could make the case that in a particular instance this would be a good use of money for healthcare reasons. So I will continue to look into this issue and see if I can find greater certainty about exactly what the money can be used for but again these applications are being accepted on a rolling basis and the money will run out eventually. Okay. The other program oops sorry I'm trying to get used to this paging up and paging down there's another program that I've included here. It was created by the FCC as well called the Connected Care Pilot Program. This program became effective earlier this month. It does not get an appropriation under the CARES Act rather the FCC has reallocated its existing money under the Universal Service Fund. I wanted to include it here because it's a program to the extent that entities are looking for money to help cover some of their telehealth and connectivity services. This is a potential source of funding. It's a pilot program. Providers can apply to participate in this program. It's a three-year program. The amount of money that's going to go for the whole program over that three-year period is one hundred million dollars. I don't know how many I can't recall if I knew actually how many pilots they're going to fund but the idea is to see to what extent the FCC through its Universal Service Fund should dedicate more funding towards telehealth and connectivity because of the potential cost savings and good health outcomes for certain patient populations. So I wanted to make sure you were aware of that program. I'm hearing those as two different programs that seem to do just the same thing. So can you is there a distinction that I'm not picking up on? There are two different programs. The COVID-19 telehealth program, that money's going out right now immediately. It's one-time appropriations to deal with the strains on the healthcare system and particularly the need to provide healthcare to people at this time who are in their homes who potentially should not be going to a hospital or to their doctor's offices because of the risk of potentially catching the virus. So those are one-time funds. They range so far. I've seen awards as low as one hundred thousand dollars and again as I mentioned earlier up to a million dollars. So this is not part of the broad three-year program where the FCC is really going to look to collect the data to show services. Telehealth services are actually improving patient outcomes or they're saving dollars. That's a study that was a program that was in the works before the pandemic. It's obviously taken on greater importance but again that's a three-year pilot program which will involve a lot of data collection and review of results on very specific terms. That helpful? Thank you. Yeah, I think so. Okay, and I do know. Senator McDonald, do you have? No? Okay, go ahead. Let's see. And for that pilot program, I just included the dates here so that interested providers were aware that that application deadline may be coming up as soon as July 31st. Just keep that in mind. Then this particular, the next appropriation here, the 27 billion dollars to the Department of Health and Human Services. This is money that's going into the existing Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund. I've included on that right-hand column just the introductory language that was in the CARES Act related specifically to this appropriation. It is lengthy and a lot of that money is going to be going towards vaccine research and development and it's not clear to me how it's going to be allocated. However, you can see that I've underlined that some of that money is available for telehealth access and infrastructure. I don't know enough about the specifics, but I wanted you to be aware of that and I will continue to try to track down additional information about how that money might be accessed by in Vermont. Then in addition, there is another 180 million dollars that goes to the Department of Health and Human Services. This goes to a specific fund. I think it's part of the Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund. This is the Health Resources and Services Administration HRSA Rural Health Program. These are existing programs that are now getting an additional influx of money to continue offering grants as they have been in the past. I have the time to confirm whether, again, this question about last mile connections, whether they are covered, I am going to continue to look into that matter. There are just a lot of regulations and relevant definitions and it's just taking a little more time than I had to prepare. Okay, this is a lot. There are, let's see, so for example, under the Telehealth Network and Telehealth Resource Centres grant programs, this is at the bottom of the screen if we're looking at the same screen, this provides grants to support telecommunications technologies which are defined in federal laws technologies relating to the use of electronic information and telecommunications technologies to support and promote at a distance health care, patient professional health related education, health administration, and public health. So the language in the code is pretty general. So I need to just look further in the regulations to find out and more specifically and that can be said for all of these programs listed here. Then, so more in the area of telehealth right now. These are all telehealth. Everything that I'm talking about now is telehealth. There's money, $2.15 billion has been appropriated to the Department of Veterans Affairs for their IT systems and to ensure that they have services available to provide telehealth to veterans. There is also authority and I believe under that program that includes a subsidy for broadband subscriptions. I believe that that is covered for certain. Then the question is, will it pay for the building out of lines or service drop? I realize that's a very significant issue. There's also authority for that. This isn't an appropriation, but this is just for your awareness that the Secretary can enter into healthcare agreements with communications providers to provide subsidized broadband services to veterans for purposes of telehealth. There is no specific appropriation attached to those contracts, but there are more general appropriations to the VA that might be able to be used to fund these subsidized subscriptions. There's more. Yeah, there's a whole bunch. Maybe I'll go a little bit more quickly and we can come back to this. Yeah, it's on the website. Okay. Any of us that want to print it and then sit down and work on it, this would would be helpful too. All right. This next one, the USDA's distance learning and telemedicine program, $25 million. The name suggests this is for educational remote learning and for telemedicine. What I will say about this is the application deadline is July 13th. Again, I'm just trying to highlight. We have to get on it. Institutions that want to apply, they might want to keep that deadline in mind. I've included all of the regulations and announcements that describe the programs. There was one thing that I noticed that USDA, what they had on their website that I thought was interesting in relation to connectivity, which is a statement UCI italicized and underlying there. While the CARES Act requires these funds to be used to prevent, prepare for and respond to coronavirus, the agency believes that all BLT projects, this is in a pre-existing program, already serve that purpose. I think that's underscoring that everything related to getting people who are at home connected right now is interesting to the coronavirus. Having said that, to the extent you can further specify needs based on the funding source, telehealth patients, students, we're going to ask a quick question, Madam Chair. Yes. I'm just wondering, are the education funds specific for pre-grade to 12 or can our higher ed institutions, state colleges use those as well for the teleeducation? For this particular program, and we'll get to the other education funds that the secretary spoke about, for this program, the eligible applicants include the way they're listed, most state and local government entities barely recognize tribes, non-profits or profit businesses or consortia of eligible entities. So I don't see a restriction on K through 12. Okay. Okay. So it's a pretty broad category of eligible entities. Does Madam Chair? Yes. Does the state have an office of public school and state college education, telemedicine and veterans services? Because if it did, it would be the only agency that could apply for this stuff if you wanted to put it into last mile broadband.  So this is what the grants are. Then we'll have the commissioner talk to us about what they're looking at and what they're thinking about going for. Okay. And I'll just mention that for this program in particular, that existing distance learning and telemedicine program grant may be used for capital assets such as broadband transmission facilities. Okay. So then we move on to education. So the DLP program I just spoke about is both telemedicine and education. So I won't repeat that here. But then we talk about money specifically to the funds that the secretary just spoke about. And I, so to the federal U.S. Department of Education, there's an appropriation of approximately 30 billion dollars of that amount. And this is just based on numbers that I got from the joint fiscal office. So to the extent there are any changes, I'll make sure I try to keep track of those. But of that amount, approximately 58 million dollars will be coming to Vermont. So the secretary has already kind of reviewed these. I think he said three million in the governor's emergency education relief fund. Yeah. I think the JFO of 4.5 million. So we'll just make sure we're all on the same page. But these funds can be used to support the transition to remote learning, which may involve connecting students at home. And that could include remote hotspot devices and potentially broadband connections. I don't think it's clear that they would be excluded similar to the other programs. So that's being looked at. Really going to depend on how comprehensively we write a grant. Well, you're going to, these are all different funding streams. Right. So the decider is going to be various, depending on what money you're applying for, different federal entities are going to be approving for their kind of particular program. So it may be a matter of eligible entities coordinating what money they're going to go after in a particular area, for example. So I think that's where a lot of the organizing might be. And there may be overlap, obviously, with some of the populations and the households most in need. So I won't go through these in detail, but I'll just add that in addition to the two funds that the secretary talked about, there's also a higher education emergency relief fund. And Vermont's share is about $22 million. These funds may be used for, this is according to the CARES Act language, technology costs associated with the transition to distance education and grants to students to cover some of their technology needs. Pretty broad language, I understand that. I just want to at least have all of this information in one place, and it will be updated. It's overwhelming, but it's helpful. It is a little bit overwhelming. I realize that. So in terms of digital literacy, what that has to do with is teaching people how to use their internet connections if they're available and making sure that they're able to take advantage of online resources. There's a $50 million appropriation to the Institute of Museum and Library Services. And I believe based on the April 13th announcement by the IMLS, the first $30 million is going to be allocated to states based on population. And it looks like based on their website, what they've published Vermont's share is estimated to be about $56,000. But that announcement is also linked here. Get additional details. So that's it for the special appropriations in the CARES Act. Then the coronavirus relief fund, this is the $1.25 billion coming to you, or maybe it's all came already, I've lost track, to the state of Vermont. You're aware of the three conditions that were sold out in the federal law. The eligible expenses include those that are necessary expenditures incurred due to COVID-19. They were not accounted for in the budget most recently approved as of March 27th. And they must be incurred this year, starting from looking back to March 1st. The Department of Treasury has issued a guidance, which I have linked here, which gives a little more clarification on what the money can be used for. Again, this is not obviously all for connectivity, but to the extent you want it to use it for broadband. I think that certainly would meet the conditions under the federal law. And I don't see anything in the guidance that suggests that that money would not be available for broadband. I think the issue that I am trying to monitor and keep track of is the incurred provision to the extent you did want to make monetary awards or grants for build out, structuring them in a way so that the money goes out by the end of the year. That can be a little bit tricky in general. Grants are awarded based on performance metrics. It doesn't all go out once the contract is signed, but over a period of time. And so in terms of what it means to be incurred, the guidance basically says the money is expended. So I think the question there is, would it be one of the options that I've been thinking about and want to do a little more research on is, for example, could the department set up a program and maybe hold the money in escrow so that it's no longer with the state and it's to be appropriated in installments based on a performance contract. Whether that would meet the guidelines for expenditures under this particular fund. And that's just so you know that's something that I am looking at just to be ready for in the event that you do want to try to use some of this money for deployment, which may not happen obviously. Maybe there are deployment measures that can happen this year. So in that case, you're all set. So just a couple more things I'm going to add. I don't have to go through these again. I'm realizing now it's getting very late, but for your awareness, the NTIA through their broadband USA office has compiled a guide to all federal broadband funding programs. There are about 57 broadband programs right now that span 14 federal agencies. This is an excellent database because you can search based on broadband infrastructure grants, digital literacy. It's very specific in terms of what you want the money for. And it's also, if you're looking for money through particular federal agencies or eligible entities that might apply. So it's a great resource. It does not include the CARES Act programs and some of the more recent federal programs. But I thought it's helpful that that information is out there. The last two programs I'm going to touch on pretty briefly. But these are the FCC programs that predated the CARES Act, but are new programs. One is the rural digital opportunity fund. This will go out to rural areas in phases. The first phase, the money is scheduled, the auction, it's a reverse auction. That auction is scheduled to commence in October of this year. And up to $16 billion will be available through that program. The next phase, I don't, there isn't a deadline yet. That will, I think, depend on the first phase. But that smaller amount of money will be available to cover areas that were not served under phase one. There are a number of issues to consider here about these dollars. And I'm sure you'll probably want to go into more detail at a later date. But I just wanted to have that information there. Similarly, there's another FCC program for mobile service. And that's the 5G fund for rural America. And that is scheduled to distribute up to $9 billion. This is still in a rulemaking phase. So it's not clear yet when that money will be auctioned. And that's a lot of information. But that concludes what I was prepared to walk through today. Wow. That's even more detailed than the health and welfare one. So thank you. That's a lot of information. And I have, play purpose was wonderfully helpful. And has been available at all hours of the day and night to answer random questions that I have because there's a lot of complexity in history here. And I've benefited from that, I have to say. Okay. Thank you. Questions from Maria at this point. Sandra Pearson. Maria and actually, Madam Chair, you may have some insight into this. A lot of these programs may be the stake and play a role. I'm glad you're looking into what some creative ways we could do that. But it also strikes me that a lot of our partners, you mentioned the BNA, Madam Chair, could potentially take advantage of that. And there are tight deadlines. So it could be that the state ends up just trying to alert people to it, maybe playing a coordinating role. Are we aware that our partners in home health and elsewhere are looking into this? I mean, are they even aware of these options? Do we have any way to know that they're engaged on this front? We took testimony in health and welfare. We had Maria, but I don't know what the chair is, she's planning to go forward with it. But to this point, I don't know of anything. Maybe the department does. I think most of the healthcare agencies at this point are busy. So it would probably have to predate this, you know, the present emergency. But as we're coming out of it, it's a good time to start talking to them about working together, perhaps, you know, we could be of assistance to help them write the grant because they may not have the in-house expertise to do it. And it sounds like a lot of these would be better off if we put in kind of a joint grant, I mean, but we'll find out if we can be part of it. Okay, do we have other questions for Maria? I've got you all on one screen. Okay. If not, we're going to go to Commissioner Tierney. And Commissioner, I've asked you to kind of talk to us about where the state is and, you know, what your thinking is, what your planning is, not for the 10-year plan, because I think we understand that that's money in the budget and who knows what's going to survive in the budget. But shorter range, these kinds of emergency, how do we deal with the present crisis and the possibility, probability that at least next year we may see some shorter term or even longer term similar kinds of stay-home issues that will require connectivity. So I turn it over to you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I trust that the members all have the handouts that the department prepared and sent over, one of which is a one-pager. The room that they are up on the website. There's a one-page document there that outlines what I plan to cover. And you'll see immediately looking at it that I view this as a three-phase operation that has three windows, which I mentioned on April 4 and April 9. Today I'm pleased to give you some details about the planning that we've been doing that I mentioned we were doing in my April 10 testimony to you. And then we also touched on April 21. So good progress is being made. There's a lot to do. And as you can hear from the excellent overview that Maria just gave, there are lots of funding resources out there. But this is not a situation where you have one access in and one authority that can grant a bunch of money to you. There are lots of little approaches and many different federal agencies that have a hand in granting money in addition to the funds that have been sent to the state. So this is a huge coordination exercise. And the department is undertaking work in that area, which you'll see in this briefing. In the first item, I don't want to spend a lot of time on it, but I do want to make the point to the committee that the immediate actions the department has been taking are not intended to be permanent fixes. They're not in any way considered optimal, but they are something. And when you have nothing, something is pretty good. So we've been rolling out these hotspots that people can use in parking lots of schools, for instance. We've gotten a lot of very positive feedback from the public on this. We've heard from a school superintendent who characterizes literally up in the Champlain Islands as a game changer and an equalizer for the kids in his district. Basically, what we did is put out a map, as you know, it has 733 sites on it. It's had over 18,000 views since it was published, an average of 537 views per day. Alone on the Vermont Emergency Management social media, it's had 644 shares. So this map and the word about the hotspots is getting out there. Folks are engaged on it and helping us to update this map as well. And we will continue doing this work. We were able to successfully coordinate a donation from Microsoft and RTO Wireless to get 35 hotspots up and running. This was cost free to the state and to Vermonters. Of those 35, we already have 20 up and running and another 15 to go. 10 of those are going to go up this week. In addition, Velco is also looking at its infrastructure to see whether they can put any hotspots online. Also, there are a variety of providers who have made their hotspots, like Comcast, for instance, available for free to the public. In addition to the hotspots and the webpage that the department has put up and is maintaining consistently every time new offerings and new discounts are published from a variety of internet service providers or if in the electric space, the electric utilities are trying to do something, that information goes on, excuse me, goes on our webpage. We also are looking into what we can do with FEMA funding in order to arrange for emergency communications aid.  I'm anticipating the possibility. I don't have knowledge, but from a planning perspective, I have to anticipate the possibility that there will be flare ups, the possibility that we will not be able to return to normal, so to speak, if there is such a thing until a vaccine is issued, which means that we may be looking at a planning window of 18 months. And so I'm trying to see whether there is FEMA funding available to deploy temporary communications, wireless though they may be to provide broadband, recognizing that that is not the superior way, perhaps, to provide broadband, at least not with available technology right now, but it is a way to get to people. A sampling of technology, for instance, would be to deploy so on wheel vehicles, such as was done in the aftermath of Irene. Problem there is there aren't a lot of those available. So, but we are continuing to look into this area. We are also coordinating with regional planning commissions and CUDs and many state agencies in order to come up with the optimal way to deploy these kinds of communications, should we be fortunate enough to be able to get them and funding for them. Transitioning to phase two, which is approaching more quickly than I'd like, but it's the reality of what we're dealing with. As you can see, item one is cross-coordination with a variety of stakeholders. I have specified CARES Act funding here, because that's what we're trying to get our arms around right now. As you can see from the presentation with Maria, it is a rather complicated area and the two focuses in our cross-coordination are education and telehealth. In point of fact, to your conversation of a moment ago, the department is reaching out to the Department of Health in order to see what kind of help they need, what kind of support they need and to also ensure that providers are aware of the variety of grants and funding opportunities that are available in this very short period of time. That effort's not complete, but it is underway. Related to it is the next item here, which is our survey project, because at the foundation of all of our planning activities is that we need to know who we're trying to reach. As you can see from listening to Secretary French's testimony, sometimes folks will contact their schools, sometimes they will contact the directors, sometimes they will contact the secretary, sometimes they contact my CAPI division and they tell us we don't have broadband. Sometimes it turns out that that person in fact does not have fiber or cable broadband service, but maybe a cell option is there that they didn't know about. There's coordination that has to go on and we do our best to do that coordinating with those individual cases, but what it highlights is that we don't have a good repository of reliable information about how many people are in this situation, what their specific technology needs are, whether it's an infrastructure issue such as last mile or whether it's a technology issue such as not having a device or whether it's an affordability issue as in they can't pay for a subscription or they didn't know that there was an offering in their area or for whatever reason, until this point in time they didn't want to have such a service in their home or such technology in their home. So that's a surveying effort that is underway. I very much appreciated your asking the secretary of education to check in with the superintendents and the schools because I think this is the one time or one of the very few times I can think of where frankly you can't have too many cooks in the kitchen and this is a perfect example of how the legislature could be enormously helpful because all of you are elected officials have constituents and so if you have a means of reaching out to your constituents and say, hey, do you need a connectivity solution? Do you have a student at home who doesn't have a connectivity solution for remote learning? Do you have somebody at home who has a medical condition who's in need of remote telemedicine? Please contact the department and so you folks could help us find these people. As you pointed out, Madam Chair, knowing how many people we have and where they are would be a very important fact for any grant writing that is done if we're going to apply for a variety of the resources that Maria has enumerated so far. So I would very much ask your help on that point. The next item on the short-term action list is the utility call to action which I think you are familiar. I recall sending an email out. I just don't recall whether it went to all of the membership of your committee but that is the email in which I stated very clearly to the utilities that are under the regulatory jurisdiction of the PUC and the department and also the utilities that are working in this state but that are not providing a regulated service have asked them there to do what they can to get connectivity solutions deployed whether it's working together to do that or to accelerate projects that they already have in their pipeline and the like. I have told them to keep track of their costs because it still is not completely clear how we could reimburse them but if we don't have the information we couldn't even begin to do that and as you can see from the overview that you got from Maria we have only very recently learned what the language means at least under the 1.25 billion that has been allocated to Vermont which is that those expenditures as I understand it have to be made the money has to be out the door by December 30th 2020 end of this year. So that's a very short fuse and that's why I put that call to action out. Going to the next item we have a at least as far as I recall a three-year grant track record with the connectivity fund consistently our bid our our funds were oversubscribed by bids which means that there are a variety of bids that did not get funding through our program they had to have been sufficiently engineered when they were made such that we could assess whether or not to give the funding so one of the projects that we have in our way is a review of those bids that did not receive any funding to see whether they could be revived. They would be shovel ready projects I see that I've misspelled that to show ready but that happens. Anyway those are shovel ready projects that we're looking to to inventory. We also know that there are a variety of providers that have line extension projects in the works for instance Comcast is required to build out over 300 miles of line as a result of a settlement last year that the department brokered they've completed roughly half of that so far and if there is a way for us to help them get fast-track permitting and to move through that process so that they can get those lines built the department is going to do that that is part of the guidance that I gave on April 10. In response to that call to action and and the like we have heard from charter and Comcast who are arranging meetings with us to discuss what they could be doing we have also heard from Franklin telephone which of its own initiative was out there building fiber and excuse me lines in in its community and also put up a hotspot of its own accord so they they anticipated the needs that that I went public with on April 10. We've also heard from Velco and from Verizon and VTEL and Vermont gas and I know other utilities are working as well to see how they can be responsive to that call to action. I don't have the specifics yet because as you can imagine there's a fair amount of planning work, budgeting work, board of directors work that those entities have to do before they can commit to something but you should know that that work is underway and frankly that is one of the the best prospects we have if we can get money from the the COVID-19 relief money in order to get connectivity built before the end of the year. What we then finally have is the emergency broadband plan update I've had a few bullets here that describe what that's about we also gave you a handout that more specifically outlines what the department is shaping up and it's thinking we've also done some plans I mean excuse me some map work and I think there's one or maybe two maps that we have provided to you and I'm going to ask clay to speak to that but before I go to clay to discuss the emergency broadband plan I'd also just like to point out that phase three is the more long-term plan so what I envision there is that there will be a mechanism much in the nature of what the state did during era where if there isn't an office of recovery that's set up on the fifth floor as was back then there will be another group it may well be the group that has been convened under the leadership of Secretary Curley right now in order to pull together a federal grant approach or a a pitch through our federal delegation and through you to get federal funding should there be an additional stimulus bill or infrastructure bill coming out of Washington DC and if there were to be such a funding source available the broadband plan that clays about to brief you on would be one centerpiece of a grant or a funding proposal that the state advances I have to emphasize how important it would be for my agency at that point to be working with you and to be working with the federal delegation so that we are approaching the federal government as a unified voice with that I'm going to ask clay to give the briefing on the emergency broadband plan update okay maybe we can stop here and say are there any questions for the commissioner at this point and you'll have to just say I this because I can't see anything all right all right I think if I got Senator Brock and Senator I've got Senator McDonald's popped up did I hear Senator Brock okay Senator McDonald's when uh when Comcast was obliged to um to build out a certain number of miles as a um because they had failed to do something else um what was the minimum of requirement for broadband that they had to build out apply unless you know the answer to that we're going to have to get back to you on that Senator I'm pretty sure it does which build out obligation are you referring to any build out obligation where the cable companies are obliged to build more lines out into the countryside what standard are they obliged to build or are we putting diabetics as a punishment working on a chocolate factory assembly line all right you lost me in that one Senator Madam Chair the cable company don't want to build anywhere about the the speed yes okay that that I understand the chocolate and the diabetics you lost me at um commissioner generally you know our client the the build out obligations that cable companies build out under usually through their cable video cpg so we're building out cable video plan um cable video systems using dox's 3.1 which is the the cable standard um in play today they can provide download speeds of up to a gig theoretically uh in general practice the download speeds are um about 150 megabits per second the upload they're asymmetrical so the upload is usually lower um the consumer can't be lower be symmetrical asymmetrical so 30 or 40 megs but it's uh the the service offerings provided by Comcast and charter usually well above the 25 three federal definition in other words they offer very good service if it's even though it's not fiber it's still a very good usable service okay so any other questions for the commissioner okay clade the floor is yours thank you madam chair may I ask at the outset just how much time I have so I don't uh you asked me it is three o'clock so I guess I'll have to ask Faith to let if she hasn't already let Abby know we're running late um we've only got one more witness after you and that's uh probably going to be a 10 15 minute just some answers to questions so I'd say you've got up to a you know 15 minutes half hour 15 would be better let me share my screen all right so um in line of the COVID-19 emergency we've undertaken uh development of a uh broadband deployment plan uh tailored to respond to the COVID-19 emergency um we would like to publish this plan um for public comment on Tuesday May 5th just as a general overview we're hoping to we will be proposing to you concrete executable measures that the state could implement if funding's available to provide universal service so we're starting with the premise that um this is how much money it will take to provide universal service so not a plan that proposes to work with what we have but tell you what you need um to get everyone broadband um because the key our list of key recommendations the the number one in recommendation is to create a subsidy program that would provide 100 megabits per second symmetrical service to all addresses that currently lack 25 three today um we're identifying the need for uh somewhere between 85 million to 293 million that'll depend on several questions what decisions you make about um how the program should run um we're proposing a reverse auction much in the same vein as the FCC's um uh Rural Digital Opportunity Fund um we're proposing that it complements the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund so that we wouldn't be subsidizing the same locations that the FCC is proposing to subsidize so as in the reverse auction we would start with a reserve pricing um earlier this year or excuse me at the end of last year we submitted to you report on the feasibility of electric utilities providing broadband service that report discusses in detail the costs associated with providing uh fiber of the premises and we didn't find any significant cost savings um if an electric utility does it pretty standard um whether it's an electric utility or um the incumbent local provider so what we we've created um a subsidy based on town so companies would propose to serve entire towns we're starting with the assumption that um each location passed would cost a little over four thousand dollars a location um for towns within the communication union district we'd be proposing that they have decisional authority over those grants but provided you two maps uh the first map um is the map of what we would propose for a subsidy for each town this is based purely on the number of locations that are in the town that are unserved at 25 three so you can see some towns like Montpelier or Rutland will really have no funding available um towns such as Victory although 97% unserved they have very few um actual locations so the subsidy appears low but um the whole town we need to be wired so that would um they may ask you to get to the the best part of the state I can't quite show him Bennington oh yes I'm sorry senator I apologize yeah I'm not the only one looking senator I could read your mind I'm so sorry yeah I'm trying to see Windham no need to apologize there you go yeah so um land as you would expect um you know the the towns between Bennington and Battleboro are the ones that would require the most subsidy um the way we propose the auction would work was is that um when when bits come in we have to make sure that there's no town left behind so we want to make sure that an entire county is served or we could use regional planning commission boundaries um as I said before with CUDs we would want to make sure the entire CUDs serve right so the way we want to treat CUDs is uh you know they would have decisional authority over the solution or they would get to bid on the money themselves so if they want to provide the service themselves they can bid just like everyone else um if they're comfortable with the private uh public partnership um they would have a hand and making the final determination as to what the solution is there you go Matt Madam Chair yes sir here sir Clay um we just looking at your map again which is everybody loves maps in this business thank you um is the uh red towns are they a greater subsidy because they have fewer options today in other words they they've got the the least options or are because because it seems like they would get the biggest bang for the buck so I'm just trying to understand a little bit uh you know the the places where we would spend the most per hookup would probably not be the places that have no options can you help me understand the the legend I guess yeah so the legend um and it's a helpful question because um we don't always know how our maps get viewed um by the public and by the legislature so um the map is showing um the uh it breaks down the amount of subsidy so the red is three million to five point seven million um and that is purely the result of the number of unserved locations so maybe if I could zoom in to uh we'll pick seven remotes um so you can see that Weidingham has eight hundred um we're also not we're losing your clutch Weidingham can you hear me? okay um so Weidingham is a is an example where the majority of the homes are unserved and there are a lot of unserved locations uh now I'll pick on Victory Vermont in the northeast kingdom uh or any of these victory is 97% unserved but it only has a hundred and one unserved location and this is a weakness um that we are trying to overcome by making sure the entire county um has a solution so um that if you purely did it based on town the provider would be incentivized to serve Lunenburg and leave Victory behind and we don't want to see that so that solution would have to include both Lunenburg and Victory. This is great Clay I really appreciate seeing this. Thank you um the second map I've provided you is just a map an updated map of the CUDs every month we're getting um new towns joining CUDs so you can see where we are where we need to go with the CUDs so that is the central piece um at this point we're not identifying a funding source that's um work that I think we're all going to need to do um moving forward um there are other recommendations long term um concern over the access to middle mile fiber we've been working with electric utilities on that issue because they have a lot of fiber and so one recommendation we're going to make is to modify section 8091 to further provide open access of utility on the middle mile fiber to entities like CUDs Clay could I ask one more question yeah what um this is this is really promising are the CUDs are we in discussions with them at all um to accelerate I mean everybody every business wants to develop faster and you know now I would guess workforce can start to get back to work and actually do that but is there is there some opportunity for us to help them build out faster I mean the need it has become more glaringly obvious and and so I'm just curious if you've had any discussions along those lines yes we've we talked to CUDs almost daily like staff that you actually gave us through Act 79 um who's um writing along with the CUDs on their journey um there are a few areas where we are going to propose um we could help see these I've got two listed here that we'll have more in the plan what we could develop the the first is continued grant support um we provided grant support for design and feasibility studies last year those are humming along those are going well what they're going to need moving forward is administrative support and grant writing support as they go to apply for some of that money especially the money that maria highlighted the second um the FCC's rural digital opportunity fund um is probably the biggest broadband expansion program um that the federal government has right now um it's going to mean somewhere in the neighborhood of nine million dollars a year for vermont loan over over the 10-year period um excuse me the 20-year period um providing direct support to CUDs to meet the letter of credit obligations is probably the most important thing we can do to make sure they can bid on that money um right now CUDs don't really have any money they don't have any credibility that they can take to a bank um and get a guarantee from a bank uh to participate in the art off auction so to the extent that the state could um support CUDs by guaranteeing letters of credit um that would be an area of further exploration and I know that that's discussion that's the kind of discussion that's happening in other states okay could stop me if you have a question or play where where is this grant going to be submitted to what's the rural digital opportunity fund it is okay yeah um yeah so for them to participate at the FCC in the auction um they have to be able to show that they're getting a letter they have a letter of credit for the full amount of the money okay they propose to draw down in that program that's the CUDs yeah that's that that's for anyone participating we've heard that incumbent providers are going to struggle with that uh requirement and so CUDs are going to be even more disadvantaged okay and probably unable to participate maybe that's something we can talk to Vita about because we put some money in there last year as backstop but maybe we could find a way okay any other questions for clay if I could supplement something there your question about Vita for instance is is right on point and you'll see in the May 5 draft that that's one of the things that we're thinking about too is that it would make sense to put more resources in there so Senator Pierson's question about accelerating one of the challenges with the CUDs is you have to keep in mind they're all citizens who have day jobs and so it's you know it's a heavy lift for them I think the biggest help that we can give them at this point is funding for grant writing as clay was pointing out and technical assistance and I had a third point but it's escaping right now so I'll just pass on my point is that you'll see in the May 5 draft many of these points flushed out it wasn't clear to me Senator Cummings whether you were asking about when you said where's the grant going to be submitted whether you were asking about the Ardolf auction or if you were asking about no I was asking this this is a good plan we're going to put this plan into a grant proposal this is what I want I wanted to focus on so as I said a moment ago there there is no one authority that I have seen yet the week that we could put one grant in front of but what we can design is this plan where we target a variety of funding pots and try to draw those dollars in and if there is federal legislation that comes out or better said if at some point the federal delegation tells us another bill is being put together we can get a big share of money what would you do with that this is the plan that we would use to say here's what we're going to do with it for instance we haven't asked like that not too long ago from Senator Leahy's office and we had to very quickly within hours give him some ideas for for what we would do with money if if they if he could get some of the next bill and so this is a more coherent and a more yeah I'm going to leave it that a more coherent plan for that that we've been working on for the past five weeks as you can see the maps for instance and the like there was a lot of analysis that had to go into generating that and this is the product that we have now the final version will be to you on May 5 okay so okay clay unless I hear another question I have I have a question okay sander syracan so I hope I'm not bringing the rest of the committee down to my level here but I'm trying to understand the subsidies that were outlined I seem to recall from one of the pages that the total subsidy would be any range of 89 million to 250 million what does that range buy you what does that subsidy buy you set by universal broadband coverage up to a hundred asymmetrical for all those homes that don't have 25 three presently yeah yes at a high level both we do universal service fiber in the places where we do not have 25 three today the price difference comes down to um I'm sorry I'm getting a message saying my internet connections on state yeah your voice a little bit gotta get you some broadband so the the way comes yeah I I live the problem every day so don't think I lack um I desire to do something about this problem um it's it comes down to the the way we would propose funding at 293 million would be straight grants at the full subsidy level but what we want to do is a reverse option so lower amounts of the bidders would be bidding on lower amounts of money for each town we've also are devising a scheme where there would be a mixture of grants and loans through a vehicle like Vita where the some of the the cash that they get are lower no interest loans and some of this money that would be needed would be used to build up a reserve fund for uh for those loans so on the on the map where I saw like Whitingham it had 2.5 million did it have a range or was that the that town somewhere in the middle between the 89 and 290 or something um that would just for that town the the full price of doing every home at $4,240 a location would cost 343 set uh 3.43 million so what we propose to do is just you know when we auction off Whitingham um you know take the lowest bidder so it might be less than that um but then the difference in cost could also be reflected in how you pay the provider to do that so whether it's a straight grant or if it's a mixture of grants and loans so simplistically put if if we were able to get this down to the lower end range of 89 million dollars we could take something like 7 or 8 percent of our 1.25 billion and have broadband throughout the state yes assuming you can get that money out the door um within the time constraints that is certainly a possibility okay it's simply a matter of money um and um how do you pay for it okay commissioner did I hear you yeah I I need to be very clear on this point I think what Senator Soraki is thinking is from a clinical perspective absolutely correct um from the perspective of the Scott administration I hope the committee will understand that I can't get out ahead of the governor in advocating what his administration thinks should happen with that money but this is what a classic example of where the the state really needs to come together and work together and I know the governor wants to do that and I think senator Cummings you know very well the many ways in which that money is already being spent in people's heads so I would just ask senator Soraki to keep that in mind but but what you said senator is what my preferred solution would be if somebody gave me free rein with the money I just have to leave a placeholder for the governor here and this is totally appropriate for a one-time money you you don't have to subsidize going forward do you in terms of the service that's a separate question we we're not counting on that um it's hard because that would be a question that would come later so some areas get a subsidy from the FCC whereas other providers cover the same territory without a subsidy so I think getting the service out there is one question and then whether there needs to be an ongoing subsidy I think it'll be very difficult for the state and we should be incumbent on the FCC through the universal service fund to provide a high-cost subsidy like it's always done for telephone and now for broadband okay thank you senator mcdonald you had a question uh when senator soraki asked if everyone in the state could be served for 89 million dollars what was the level of service that was being delivered for that amount of money we're proposing uh fiber to the premises to all areas not served today at 25 three so once you have fiber you're capable of meeting the state's in 25 three no of 25 three no I think I'm breaking up no not 25 three not no it's people that have 25 three like mcdonald pealier or better are not eligible towns that don't have that that have less than 25 three or nothing are the eligible towns am I understanding that correctly yes we're focusing on sub on really substandard so if if senator soraki's question the answer is yes for 89 million we could get everyone 25 at least 25 three throughout the state that's the that's what you're telling us no that's what we're suggesting it it's right here in a it would be we would propose infrastructure that meets the state's goal of 100 100 megabits per second to all addresses currently on serve at 25 three okay so it's more than 89 100 it's it's on more than 89 million to get to serve the state in it right we're proposing not to subsidize areas that already have decent broadband service right um decent means what number 25 three okay like then use the number don't use adjectives please okay um click yeah did we just heard and the commissioner said this does not necessarily all have to come out of the one billion that the state just got that there are multiple grants or pots of money available that we could go after different different sections if we've already spoken for the one billion cares money three times over senator comings if you don't mind i'll take that question that is that is correct i think i think what we have to do is be able to thinking of it this way maybe there's some part of this that could be done through the cares act money or the covet 19 money maybe there's some part of this that could be done through existing resources but what we've tried to do right now is present you with an overview of what it's going to take to get everybody to 25 three with five or to the premises and my hope is that there will be something in addition coming out of washington dc that would be some serious money that could be put toward this it would be ideal if if a comprehensive pot were forthcoming that could take care of this in one fell swoop and this plan would certainly be instrumental in that but barring that funding is going to have to be something more piecemeal does that help that helps yeah this is very helpful thank you may ask a question or two yes um starting the basis for the cost estimates regarding the majelin report how comfortable would should we be that the majelin reports costs are accurate what uh i i do believe they're accurate um i think they're probably on the high side and the reason why we're there's a i apparently have an authority that allow people into the meeting i hope that's okay i can hear you um i don't know how you got authority i don't know if i would do that but um excuse me this is faith that's fine in order for him to screen share he has to be and that's right okay grand cam just joined the meeting so um but that's why we're proposing um an auction um because um the cost may be high perhaps people can do it for less um and companies would also then be encouraged to put some of their own equity into um a project um but okay um participant averaging yeah go ahead but excuse me it is averaging a single cost per passing to the whole state um you know is not an exact science um i'm happy to uh share with you have the the cost that went into it um in the thought process there but majelin's done that kind of costing for uh electric utilities and internet service providers um in both the united states and canada how long ago was this done clay we issued the report in december of 2019 oh god so that work would have been done in the fall of 2019 so it's less than a year old now in terms of the actual delivery of the fiber to the premises let's take a town that has 80 percent 23 and 20 un-serve would you anticipate the carrier or carriers that provided the 80 to be the carriers that would be involved in the auction or would you envision new participants becoming involved uh i i think that's where we run into our problem uh the obvious answer would be to have the incumbent carrier that already provides 80 of that town do the last 20 but because our state goal mandates 100 symmetrical service unless cable company can promise to meet that which they may they would be foreclosed from bidding on that remaining 20 percent so we would be looking for a fiber to the premises provider that could you the remaining 20 percent and that would inevitably lead to competitive overbuilds of the remaining 80 which should be considered in in the costs that are attributed to that project so that would that then suggest that in that that kind of case that there would be a higher cost for the remaining 20 percent because of the distances that that would have to that that would have to travel in order to get to the those premises yes absolutely because we're not we're not suggesting that we subsidize any locations already served at 253 so under our scheme if a provider wanted to come in and do that 20 they would have to put it in a substantial amount of their own money to meet the reserve price for that miss color are there any issues or restrictions about the potential of requiring neutrality in terms of the lines that go in terms of their ability to serve a variety of of providers of content on a lease basis i think if it's if it's our money i think we can add the rules that we want regarding that in areas where you have cd's that i believe they've all made a commitment to net neutrality or intend to so that's certainly something worth thinking about as a program develop would that serve to would that serve to discourage some of the larger providers from participating i think if you put net neutrality restrictions on on the program that it may discourage certainly we the industry groups that brought a challenge for the state's net neutrality law and participated in the the the challenge that attorney generals but on the sec's order order are encouraging a national solution to net neutrality so this would be an area where a state is acting on its own outside of the national net neutrality regime okay that's that probably we just need to flag is an issue because i know this it's currently in court and being decided and our net neutrality bill has been put on hold so i would think we'd have to conform with existing state law which right now isn't set it's it's on hold waiting court decisions well i'm really just just raising the issue of whether or not if we're paying for lines to go to the premises if we are able to or should require that those lines carry the content of any carrier in order to get to those premises do you mean an edge provider as in carry the content of microsoft or netflix or do you mean an open access regime where the lines are can be used by multiple internet service providers to provide the service in the home the latter the latter okay no that is that is a question that we should incorporate into the plan we haven't intended to make a recommendation on that okay so that's something to look to legal counsel just but if at all possible without violating federal law i think the legislature is on record as supporting net neutrality whether or not that counts i don't know but um i think the expectation would be that it would encompass net neutrality well i think there actually might be some advantages even to larger carriers if for example you have that 80 20 town the larger 80 percent carrier if they were not the one to pay for that a general 10 percent 20 percent they might still benefit from having their content be able to be screened to that 90 20 percent or for which they would pay a fee yeah okay i'm here and uh senator pierson i hear your voice yeah um clay took a couple quick questions um i joined everybody and saying thank you this is helpful and and uh feels concrete in the beginning of getting our arms around it and i know a lot of work has gone into this let's say the administration was willing to make this investment the legislature shared in the goal and we were able to find a hundred million dollars to get started is the department ready or would we need staff to help i mean i'm trying to trying to understand while we may be giddy at the prospect what some of the other costs are going to sneak up on us um if we really try to dig into making this real that's not a question i'm prepared to answer today i think we'd have to take stock of the the administrative tasks and costs associated with implementing a program like this um the departments and department of 50 people we have five in the telecom division so um it would be something that we'd have to review after i think the program design is more solidified okay and and um two more questions did the is your plan incorporate things like the connectivity fund and other existing plans are like just talk a little bit about that i assume it's layered on top but i wonder if you could help us understand yes we're in the interest of time we we would prefer that something like this get implemented through existing programs so um we have the connectivity initiative which can do grants if some of the compensation to carriers were through alone beta exists and can be helpful there are um possibly the high the high cost fund which was created by state statute could be helpful here so we'll we will be laying that out um it would require changes to those programs but not a wholesale rewrite of them okay thank you um and and my last question um a couple of weeks ago maria walked us through some of uh some data points that were pulled from you you know the email about her rough estimate which i think was pulled from somewhere on you of it being a billion dollars to get uh fiber everywhere um this is compared to that radically more affordable is that because we're leaving people with 25 three as is or can you just help me understand how we've you know either cut the the cost by 90 percent or by 75 percent depending on the range just help me understand that please yeah so we're we're cutting out the 77 percent of buildings in the state that already have a 25 three or better solution in place 17 percent of the state has fiber to the premises already so and then on top of that 77 percent of the entire locations have cable video service providing 25 three or better so we're proposing to exclude those from this program and focus on the people that really have nothing very little in the way of bandwidth do we assume that thank you do we assume that this build out would go by a lot of those 25 three locations and and effectively bring them the ability to get a more robust service even though the cost isn't built that way right um it would likely entail competitive overbuilds of existing networks what we don't want to do is fund that competitive overbuild so um the senator brox point where you have a town that's 80 percent served with cable video um there's going to have to be some amount of private capital that goes into building that because the subsidy for the 20 percent probably won't get you there so we're anticipating that in those situations yes there will be there would be some overbuild but it would be privately funded okay thank you why would why would someone privately fund that well there's an incentive to get the public funding for the unserved locations um cable video is um generally deployed in areas that are more competitive the cost of service is lower so village centers uh cities um suburban neighborhoods where um carriers are likely more sure to have to pay great that they need to the main change Adam chair yes let's send it back um I don't know if this is for clay or for the commissioner I was just wondering while we have you if we could get an update on the um broadband grant program I know the first round of funding went out uh correct me if I'm wrong I thought another round was supposed to wrap up in February and then another in April and of course that coincides with this uh COVID-19 emergency I'm just wondering if we could just get an update on the program and how much money is still in the funds okay can we put that off for a second until I'm see if there's any more questions on the actual plan that clay's presented no but just thanks again I really appreciate this okay no more questions okay commissioner we're back to you have a question wait send us a rocking I did I just unmuted myself I'm sorry so following up on senator brock's question it seemed like that if there was some sort of softening and I'm not saying that I would support that for the existing lines that you're running by that are a 25 three you wouldn't have a disincentive for that company that's running that 25 three to provide 100 asymmetrical further out so we would be furthering our state goal for new people that would come on but not making anybody who already had service at 25 three making their service worse it would stay the same and it seems like it would use the overall cost and subsidy if that requirement wasn't there am I missing something but no I senator I think that's correct um we're when in drafting this plan we're relying on I'm not relying but we've been reading other state programs we're very familiar with the massachusetts model we've looked at that many times under that model they did a town by town subsidy they gave towns the decision authority to the decision authority to pick the solution they wanted they could take the money reserve for them and do their own system or have an incumbent provider provide the broadband and they funded that program they more or less have every town I think only one town in massachusetts is not completely served with broadband the majority of the towns selected the incumbent cable provider because the the cost uh was less in the deployment timeline quicker so there is an incredible build out of cable service in the western massachusetts area the berkshires in your valley mostly incumbent cable and I think four towns or five towns ended up building their own system with the funding so there is a there is a model for that and it's it's massachusetts thank you okay we finish with questions I can only see one at the time now so I was hearing on I don't think we'll get to everything today it might just be a good idea to talk about some of the short term short term actions yeah and then we'll get to the commissioner and that final question okay um so these are short term proposals um one um and I'll go through them very quickly um create a um uh cable line extension fund that consumers could uh individually with a support from to do cable line extensions we're getting lots of calls from people that um got a quote from a cable company to extend the line but it's a thousand dollars or two thousand dollars to bring it to their house so this would be a fund that that consumers could apply for um held just with the consumer portion of the line extension we have a rule on that at the state pc rule eight that um has a formula for divvying up costs the consumer and the cable company as I think June mentioned we're reviewing past connectivity initiative proposals to see if there are any shovel ready projects that could be done this summer um language I think was submitted through the administration on on uh waving act 250 or act 248 a process these are letting you see do that on an emergency basis to recruit um quickly wireless facilities um something that will propose in the plan uh passing 248 a which I know this committee's already done so thank you um uh number five I think if you want to get in uh wire strong our infrastructure in the ground before the end of the year this is going to be an important one is providing some kind of support to pull them in utilities to fast track full licenses full licenses can take six months to a year um to be issued they require survey work make ready work that would all have to be fast tracked so um another proposal that we'll put forward is um providing support to uh companies to quickly ramp up um their their pull licensing duties they're usually um staff to handle you know somewhere between 100 and 300 miles of plant a year but if there are projects in the hopper that could be done this summer we'd like to see those get done um and then the last is um I'm standardizing or formalizing uh a work group around federal grants we've been in numerous conversations with um state agencies with nonprofits in the lake trying to uh strategize how uh someone could draw down this grant or that grant um for instance my staff gave a presentation to a telehealth um work group it's a group of hospital and administrative staff and administrators that focused on telehealth we're working with groups on an individual basis to help them identify and apply for grants um so something that standardizes this or um formalizes um that effort um be helpful in something that we plan it for please okay any questions for clay all right thank you this was very helpful thank you I appreciate it in a lot of work okay thank you very much yeah and I think now maybe we'll start moving into filling in the details and perhaps helping to facilitate and reaching out to some of the telemedicine folks and the schools and see if we can get some priority areas all right um yeah because it's the plan to go out and bid all these at once or are you going to go out and bid a county at a time uh I think I think the timeline here is important uh to maximize uh participation it would be most helpful to hold a state auction uh around the same time as the art off auction which is in late October so they turn around there's quick but it would be awkward I think if we had a scenario where say a satellite company took the art off census blocks and then we had a fiber to the premises provider doing the rest I think there's there would be some um ability to leverage those art off dollars here if its carriers could apply for both at the same time okay all right any other questions for clay if not um the commissioner will go to you and I think standard balance question just very briefly because I'm mindful of the time the last answer that clay just gave right now highlights the complexity of the interplay with federal programs and state programs so ideally we would be prepared to do one auction in the October timeframe but we have to keep in mind that that may not be possible if for instance if we haven't secured the requisite funding we wouldn't be in a position I think to hold that auction then but these kinds of questions are things that I think we need to note and we need to be prepared to address while we keep momentum going forward so the essential next step is to get this plan to you published for public comment because you also have to keep in mind we need to socialize this with the stakeholders who are out there to hear from them whether they think this is feasible or not whether they would be willing to participate in this and not so that is an essential next step and then there's always the possibility to the point that a senator syracan and senator brock was making if if the first approach doesn't work and say the town with the 80-20 split doesn't get a solution outright from the first round of auction or because there are net neutrality limitations imposed or the like we can then go back and try again the thing to do is to is to pick up gains and make progress in the first instance and then lastly to senator pierce's point I wanted to give him comfort that we what clay is telling you today is we don't know exactly what our staffing resources needs would be in the like but please understand that much of what we've talked about today are things that the department is already doing but putting on steroids so this is very much an overlay on the connectivity initiative that we've been administering pursuant to statute for a couple of years now and it also is a deliberate attempt to incorporate the CUDs because the state policy since 2015 has been really to try to to facilitate their participation in the build out of connectivity and remand so those those two um polls of state policy enacted in law are very much at the foundation of what we're trying to do here where you see the rub is you have those pockets that don't make sense from an incumbent provider's perspective to serve that's how you get an 80 percent 20 percent split in a town for instance and that's really where the CUD has a role because the they're the people who are stepping up to say okay how can we organize ourselves to have a service vehicle if you will that will get to these people who have been left behind for too long so I just wanted to bring those thoughts forward and to thank you for the conversation we've had today about this plan and to again just emphasize that we are open to suggestion and partnering on this because we have to get it right with the unified front as we look for funding thank you madam chair okay thank you and committee we've got one more thing if is abby still available I am looking abby are you with us I am sorry you are thank you I am okay madam chair if I could yes I didn't get my question answered oh I'm sorry can you repeat the question senator valent yes it was about the uh broad band yeah the grants I just wanted to know whether the two other we're supposed to have one go out in February and April and here we are in the pandemic I just wanted to get a sense of what's happening with that yeah clay if you wouldn't mind sure um the the February one was the grant to electric distribution utilities so we awarded that we're finalizing the contracts now we issued an RFP for the remainder of the broadband innovation grants I believe that would be seven grants we put an early and a late decision period in that RFP because of the COVID emergency so grantees or respondents could propose early if they wanted to and we I think we've gotten four just the other day and there's another due date at the end of May um for anyone else who wants to apply so um that's still moving along um very well great thanks for the update okay thank you okay abby we had a couple questions for you mostly on what kind of legal curtailments were on our ability to treat different classes of taxpayers differently or perhaps different within one classification say non-residential to treat in-state out-of-state or less than or you know values less than or greater than senator mcdonnell you're looking pain do you have another that was it I think it was your question okay you're muted I love that currently we are permitted to treat homeowners differently in how we tax their homesteads or the house two acres where they live because that's a state a legitimate state interest recognized by as being constitutional to what extent do would would we be able to have that same interest show up in our actions towards homeowners in this COVID and COVID environment sure so um abby shepherd office of legislative council the way I framed your question was pretty broad and I laid out the definitions for homestead versus non-homestead it's no longer non-residential to really make it clear the way that property uses are classified under vermont law and I laid out different constitutional limits and protections that are placed on taxation and divvying up who's taxed and how and what rates are applied so I have a fairly dense memo that I shared with faith that should be posted um I apologize it took a good job yeah out to you but it is there is a fair amount of case law and it's really it's um good news and a lot of ways for you because you do have a lot of latitude to determine how you want to tax property um owners um really the the hard limit that you have goes towards residency because of the u.s. constitutionals prohibition against treating non vermonters differently um and essentially discriminating against them in taxation um compared to vermont residents the way that um the state education property tax splits up taxpayers currently doesn't create any of those issues because non homestead is not explicitly targeting non residents non-residential is very broad so it includes anyone that's not um a prior for which that property is not their principal dwelling so any second residences so those could be both vermonters or out of state residents it's also commercial um then there's also the whole category of exempt properties I didn't get into that in this memo um but really those two those two distinctions don't uh bring up the constitutional issue of treating out of state uh owners differently the way that you could um if the I'm not sure if the proposal was to provide the way I'd framed it in this memo was providing relief just to homestead so just to um property owners for whom there are properties that are principal dwelling or potentially just I think you'd mentioned possibly parceling out non homestead owners um that's where there might be some challenge um a constitutional challenge about that being you know you couldn't say it's only for vermonters for example um but otherwise there is quite broad latitude for the state to determine or the legislature to determine how it would tax different property owners um so the within that you have both the common benefits clause and the vermont constitution and the proportional contribution clause and and those again are pretty broad you just have to show rational basis so rational basis requires a classification so distinguishing between different taxpayers there must be a reasonable relationship to the purpose of the tax so the education property tax is providing um substantial quality and access to education for all vermont students and the classification has to be fairly and equitably applied among like classes of taxpayers so you you have a fair amount of latitude there um yeah and I think I think I'll stop there and there's a lot within my memo and I apologize I tried to make it as succinct as possible but with as much legal background as you needed so I'm not sure that that answers your question though senator mcdonald so we can senator mcdonald you muted okay thank you thank you should the legislature and its wisdom choose to send a greater level of relief during this time of of pressure again on the local education taxes um it would be legally free to direct a disproportionate amount of money to um resident homeowners who who's primary who living in their primary dwellings as we do with the ability to pay your school taxes based on income and not to other taxpayers now that would it might not be a wise political idea but it would be a based on your research a legal option that we might exercise correct so I pointed out the property tax credit only is available to homestead property owners so if you wanted to base your relief on a similar structure there's already precedent for that um not being a problem constitution right just up that rate at some point okay thank you thank you welcome and uh committee we've got a briefing on thursday uh joint meeting with appropriations tom cavett is going to give us a semi official uh somewhat more detailed he's been updating things every monday uh so that the money or joint fiscal uh no money chairs have gotten a briefing but this is the first really complete revenue briefing our forecast we are believe it or not moving towards having to make decisions about budgets um to that end tomorrow i'm going to meet with steve kline and the treasurer just on the hunch we might not be able to cut or raise enough money to cover the 150 assuming everyone pays their taxes the 250 million dollar deficit we've been told we could have next year so what i want to know is what we've been told borrowing is an option and my question to them is who do we borrow from what is it cost um so as we work through this i i at least want to know if it's possible and get some ideas before we um you know start discussing it um but no the the parameters so i thought i'd let you know i'm doing that and then we'll have them in um probably next week we are running out of time because we do need to to get this moving we do have the requests from the towns that we do away with the requirement that they pay the property taxes in i know the treasurer has suggested that we require them to pay it and that we if we want to do anything subsidize their borrowing cost which would be a lot cheaper than having to and it would spread out the the kind of the pain so we're going to be working through that um i think tom cavett will have some other numbers both for what we're looking at in the general and in the ed fund we haven't heard from the administration they still are not prepared to come in i guess and talk about budget adjustment um that's just not where their focus is up until this point so we're going forward joint fiscal is going forward we passed yesterday the three buckets tranches whatever you want to call them to put the uh covid relief fund money in we've been very clear that if the administration doesn't think it's the right number in each bucket that to come back and tell us but they couldn't give us any hard numbers yesterday or even ranges so we said well when you get your numbers finalized tell us to you know when you know what you've spent and what you're going to charge FEMA for let us know and the goal is that for the bulk of the money that will go through the appropriations process so things that are not an emergency i assume broadband if we're going to look at that fund we go in that we go through the legislative appropriations process probably an abbreviated form um that's all i know right now so once we figure out how to cover our pay our bills we still haven't heard where the 27 30 million dollars that the schools are getting is going to go uh we don't know if their budgets are going up down it sounds like on average they're going to be about the same so that's where we are senator pierson ma'am chair have we heard that the money directly to the schools um is that uh something they invoice against in other words they say we had to buy 25 chromebooks and you know 45 whatever's or is that just a grant and maybe we could encourage them to help us soften next year i think it's a grant but uh the most up-to-date information is what we got today from the secretary i mean i have most certainly been suggesting that as we work through this whole process that those millions of dollars be figured into the final equation if they've spent it that's fine if they haven't then it's available and maybe the amount of money we need to send to some school districts would be down um this isn't a time when anybody's going to be getting a windfall the other thing i'm not sure of and i'm thinking you know my county that has many state employees most of whom have been working and being paid i don't know how many people aren't going to be able to pay their property taxes some won't but some will uh you know the lower income range tends to be people who can't afford to own homes and rent so i think that is a question that's still out there we don't know and it'll probably vary from town to town madam chair yes um i gotta jump off to go on this unemployment call yes i think we all want to get there do you have a copy of the joint fiscal letter that somebody could email me that you sent to commissioner harrington does faith have it or do you have it i don't i think tressa utton sent it out yeah tressa would have it okay thank you if you drop her an email tressa will have it to you before i find it in my email i understand thank you bye bye bye bye we'll see you there or at least hear you there okay committee thank you i think this was probably one of the more pleasant encounters we've had with the department maybe it was the effort but i think this was probably the most progressive thing we've seen so that was good i think we're on a good footing at this point well i restrained myself today i still have a lot of questions i know and i appreciate it we actually got something though that yeah we should mark the date it was helpful yeah we did get something and it is what we were asking for is that so you know now the devil is always in the details but we at least have some broad strokes that we can start looking at okay thank you