Rural Schools, Libraries Shorted by Urban-Skewed E-Rate Program, Pai Says
With an FCC vote on changes to the E-rate program expected at the agency’s July meeting, Commissioner Ajit Pai is questioning whether the program is shorting rural schools. Pai visited Sioux Falls New Technology High School Wednesday and issued a statement Thursday. The school is in South Dakota, the home state of Sen. John Thune, likely the next chairman of the Commerce Committee if Republicans regain control of the Senate in the November elections. There is too little E-rate money going to libraries, ex-FCC Chairman Reed Hundt told us, while in another interview a library official said many small libraries are dissuaded from seeking the federal money. Ex-Commissioner Robert McDowell predicted a growing rural-urban library divide on E-rate funding.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
"It’s amazing what schools and libraries across South Dakota have done with so little,” Pai said (http://fcc.us/1kkprTr). “Even though promoting broadband across 77,123 square miles is the definition of a high-cost endeavor, South Dakota schools have received about 30 percent less per student than New Jersey schools.”
Library officials say they have stopped applying for E-rate funding “because the process is so burdensome and the rewards for rural libraries so few,” Pai said. He said it’s time for real reform since the program isn’t meeting the needs of rural America. The E-rate funding formula “favors larger, urban school districts that can afford to hire consultants to navigate the administrative process and draw every dollar E-rate makes available to them,” he said. “E-rate offers smaller, rural schools and libraries less funding, even when broadband costs more for them and they don’t have the resources to hire outside help."
Pai said the FCC should make E-rate more “user friendly” and target the needs of students and library patrons. “We cannot expect those who teach our children and serve our communities to master arcane rules that few lawyers or accountants can understand,” he said. Any revamped E-rate program must reduce bureaucracy, end “funding inequities” and bring more transparency to the process, Pai said. FCC officials say E-rate reform is a likely topic at the FCC’s July 11 meeting.
Hundt told us the problem isn’t bureaucracy, it’s that there’s far too little money flowing to any library. Pai is “absolutely right to worry about how the E-rate is working for libraries” but public libraries have received only 3 percent of E-rate funds, less than $70 million per year, said Hundt, who represents urban libraries on E-rate. Libraries don’t apply because they don’t get any money, he said. “This is a problem that you have to throw money at.” The big problem is E-rate doesn’t pay for Wi-Fi, and the FCC won’t pay for internal connections, Hundt said.
Hundt said proportional to schools, libraries should be getting $240 million per year, or $400 million indexed to inflation. “If that was the amount of money that was available to them then 100 percent of public libraries and all the libraries in South Dakota and all the libraries in Parsons, Kansas, would all be applying and they would all get what they need,” Hundt said. Pai is from Kansas.
Marijke Visser, assistant director of the Office for Information Technology Policy at the American Libraries Association, told us the application process keeps many small libraries from applying. “It’s more critical for the smaller and rural libraries,” she said. ALA urges that the FCC remove federal E-rate rules in favor of local and state requirements to qualify for funding, she said. The director of an Arkansas library recently told ALA officials “the road to hell is paved with E-rate applications,” Visser said.
"Over the years, some have tried to skew subsidies away from rural areas in favor of urban constituencies,” said McDowell, now with the Hudson Institute. “In recent years, the commission has even gone so far as to try to include some urban broadband users in the definition of ‘rural’ to expand the pool of eligible recipients and divert funds from rural interests. Assuming this trend continues, we will see a growing divide between rural and urban interests, especially among members of Congress.”