In a Tuesday press conference, frustrations readily showed on the faces of some of the state’s greatest crusaders for fair and equitable allocation of available resources.
Oleta Fitzgerald, regional director of the Children’s Defense Fund, spearheaded the press conference that shed light on the distorted approach to broadband expansion in the mostly rural and heavily Black areas of Mississippi.
While the office of the Broadband Expansion and Accessibility of Mississippi (BEAM) is the creation of the state legislature, it is run out of the governor’s office. The recently allocated $1.2 billion in federal money for broadband expansion in rural Mississippi will likely line the pockets of the internet service providers in the rural areas. And it should not be looked upon as a program especially designed to help the underserved and unserved internet users in those rural communities, Fitzgerald pointed out.
Organizations like the Children’s Defense Fund depend on federal grant funds like this one to support their community efforts. But many times, they only see the money squandered, diverted to political cronies, or outright rejected by Gov. Tate Reeves, who has a craven animosity toward any government money that goes directly to the poor.
Reeves, a lapdog of anti-tax, ultra conservatives like Grover Norquist, sits like a chubby Don Quixote atop his noble steed in the state capital and slashes away at all the windmills that might bring relief or hope to the state’s underserved and outright poor.
MONEY RETURNED
Reeves famously sent $130 million in rental assistance (RAMP) funds back to Washington in 2022. And as recently as January 2024, he rejected federal money that was available for summer supplemental food assistance for school kids. He returned the money to Washington because he wants to minimize “poverty programs.” Reeves even scoffed at President Joe Biden for “trying to expand the welfare state.”
Fitzgerald has witnessed the coldhearted chicanery against the poor many times during her thirty years with the Children’s Defense Fund.
“When it comes to people who truly need assistance, that’s the kind of reaction you’ve gotten from the Reeves administration,” she said. “In this instance – the broadband expansion issue – this is welfare of another kind. This is over a billion dollars that internet service providers will get in grants that they won’t have to pay back.
“If it were poor families receiving the money for broadband expansion, Reeves probably would have tried to send the money back,” she said. “It’s not that he’s concerned about low-income, minority, or rural families having internet services. He can dole out $1.2 billion to his cronies. And nobody has to pay any of it back. But that’s okay.”
Fitzgerald adds, none of that money goes to organizations representing the poor and needy.
“That money goes directly to internet service providers to expand their companies and to expand their company roots into areas that are uncovered.”
INADEQUATE SERVICE
During the press conference, it was reiterated that the mostly Black and rural communities are not being adequately provided for regarding broadband.
“These companies, however, and the BEAM team, claim these communities are being adequately served. That means their areas will not receive any money. They will show up on the map as being covered, whether they are or not. And the money will go elsewhere. That’s where we are now. The money will get used up and we won’t have anything. Our infrastructure will look the same. And that’s the way it happens.”
Depending on the number of contracts that are let. and the pace of work of the contractors, the rural broadband expansion program will continue to develop in jumps and spurts.
“They have until 2028 to spend this money,” she said. “They’ve got to bid them out, and then they’ve got to let the contracts. Then the contractors have to build the system, lay fiber and all that.
“It’s going to be a continuing story,” Fitzgerald said. “It’s not going to end. We’ve just got to keep monitoring it all the way through.”
