Wicker, Rodgers Urge NTIA to Seek Permit Streamlining for BEAD Recipients
Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and House Commerce Committee ranking member Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., urged NTIA Friday to encourage streamlining of permitting processes for recipients of money from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’s $42.5 billion…
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broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program. “With inflation already raising costs, we cannot afford to waste time and resources on needless bureaucracy when we should be building networks,” the GOP leaders said in a letter to NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson. “Without action, we worry that deployments will take longer and be more expensive, leaving more Americans on the wrong side of the digital divide.” NTIA should “require states and territories to work with their local governments to streamline permitting processes to expedite and reduce barriers to deployment,” Rodgers and Wicker said: “We are encouraged” that BEAD’s notice of funding opportunity (see 2205130054) “asks states to identify steps to reduce deployment barriers, including streamlined permitting processes, and encourages state and territorial governments to expedite permitting timelines," but “merely encouraging and promoting these actions … is not enough.” NTIA should “require states and territories to work with local governments to adopt streamlining policies that reduce the burdens associated with obtaining permits,” the lawmakers said. The agency “should also set a high bar for the ‘other critical policy goals’ that states and localities can use to justify burdensome permitting regulations so that the exception does not become the rule.”