If you are going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars of state money on a program, clearly the goal is to do it right. New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli says New York’s broadband program didn’t do it right.
In a new audit released earlier this month, he says a core mistake was to rely on a system which measured success in providing availability and which isn’t accurate.
“Even where they were successful with some of these connections providing the service, they relied on a satellite technology which does not provide the kind of speed of broadband access and internet use that people depend on today," DiNapoli said.
Orleans County Legislature Chairman Lynne Johnson says that’s how her county received slow satellite service.
“After applying to all three rounds and being rejected because our coverage according to the Census blocks analysis we were covered," Johnson said. "We ended up with satellite availability, dish satellite internet availability, and we're told: Now we're covered.”
Now, Orleans is making its own way by building a network on that satellite service and 911 towers and municipal service towers. The promise is availability to every home and business in the county next summer. The build out uses federal COVID money.
Chautauqua County Executive P.J. Wendel says he’s also fighting those bad numbers.
“You gotta get sick and tired of fighting those, 'Yeah, well these are our numbers and we stand by them'" Wendel said. "Yeah, you can balance an elephant on a quarter, too, but that doesn't necessarily mean it could happen. Physics can tell you that.”
A retired teacher, Wendel says it isn’t just making sure kids can do their schoolwork with good web service. It’s an economic development issue since companies which might locate in his county demand high-speed web service and will look elsewhere if it’s not there.
DiNapoli says it isn’t just the delays of COVID or bad data.
“Looking at where we were in 2021, they were still short of the goal that was stated back in 2015," he said. "So, this really was a program where, as you point out, a lot of money was dedicated to it. Everybody certainly understands now more than ever the importance of broadband service and this clearly is a program that fell very short of its goal.”
The New York Broadband program started out as a $500 million program and went up from there, with another billion dollars in this year’s budget.
DiNapoli says there have been serious problems with contractors running up to four-years behind schedule, state-wide.
“Particularly, we saw that in parts of Western New York, Cattaraugus and Allegany particularly, there was a signal provider that had a lot of delays," he said. "I'm not sure that all those have been resolved, but I think that was really the point of the audit.”
DiNapoli says the projects in that original half-billion dollars were supposed to be finished in 2018 and some still aren’t.
