House Appropriations OKs USDA Bill With More ReConnect Funds
The House Appropriations Committee voted by voice Thursday to advance the Agriculture Subcommittee’s FY 2021 bill, which includes a major increase the Agriculture Department's rural broadband funding allocation. The panel urged USDA in a report on the measure to examine how it can address broadband mapping issues separate from the FCC and do more on precision agriculture and connectivity in tribal areas. House Appropriations also released its report on the Legislative Branch Subcommittee’s FY21 bill, which includes $91.4 million for the Copyright Office (see 2007070063).
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The Agriculture bill would allocate $1.055 billion for USDA rural broadband programs, a 70% increase from FY 2020. The ReConnect program would receive $990 million, a 78% increase from the $555 million it got in FY20 (see 1912190068). There’s a separate $6.9 billion allocation for rural electric and phone infrastructure loans. The Financial Services Subcommittee advanced its FY21 bill Wednesday with $60 billion in broadband infrastructure grants (see 2007080064).
House Appropriations’ report on the Agriculture measure says Rural Utilities Service programs “should support financially feasible open access infrastructure projects that meet program goals. The Committee urges RUS to ensure the agency’s criteria and application processes provide for fair consideration of open access projects by accounting for the unique structures and opportunities such projects present in advancing broadband deployment in unserved and underserved communities.” USDA should “allow entities using any form of corporate organization to apply,” the report said.
The report noted frustrations with the quality of broadband coverage maps and believes USDA should “explore alternative map options which use more accurate information to determine eligibility” until Congress and the FCC “are able to produce higher quality maps.” House Appropriations “encourages the Department to conduct a study of how it can improve its eligibility standards to accurately reflect the availability of broadband service in the applicant’s proposed service area.” Financial Services’ FY21 bill allocates $73 million to the FCC to implement the Broadband Deployment Accuracy and Technological Availability Act law (S-1822).
House Appropriations wants USDA to “identify opportunities for public-private partnerships to address the scale of the challenge of broadband infrastructure” and precision agriculture deployments. The committee wants USDA “to publish a report on their efforts to aggregate local initiatives and private partnerships in order to develop the best strategies, and the most effective strategies used by rural communities to deploy internet infrastructure.” The panel urged USDA to “responsibly and efficiently take action to increase access to broadband on rural Tribal lands and supports consultation with federally recognized Indian Tribes, Alaska Native villages and corporations, and entities related to Hawaiian homelands.”
The legislative branch bill report says House Appropriations “continues to support” CO IT modernization work and encourages the Library of Congress “remain sensitive to the specialized requirements” of the CO as that office “implements its IT modernization plan in conjunction with the overall Library IT modernization effort.” The legislative branch bill allocates $17.1 million of CO’s funding for modernization. The committee expects LOC “to continue to defer to the copyright expertise of the Register of Copyrights and to ensure direct consultation between” CO and Congress on copyright policy matters.