State Rep. Jaime Greene, R-Richmond, recently presided over a committee meeting of public officials, stakeholders, and industry experts working diligently to expand access to broadband internet services in Michigan\u2019s rural areas. The committee heard testimony on the ongoing efforts to increase broadband availability from Eric Frederick, head of the Michigan Office of High-Speed Internet, or MIHI.<\/p>\n
\u201cI appreciate Mr. Frederick sharing his office\u2019s work to expand broadband access,\u201d Greene said in a news release. \u201cMuch of MIHI\u2019s efforts target rural areas like the ones that make up most of my district. During Mr. Frederick\u2019s testimony, he showed us a display of Michigan locations that lack internet connectivity, qualifying them for funding under MIHI\u2019s broadband access program. Nearly my whole district is included under those locations; it is very apparent that people that I represent need this service. They can be certain that I will work tirelessly until we\u2019ve delivered them results.\u201d<\/p>\n
The May 20 committee meeting occurred just a few weeks after Rep. Greene sent a formal letter to Frederick requesting additional details on a sudden and undisclosed change to their scoring system used to evaluate funding applications for their Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment, or BEAD, program. Without publicizing the change, MIHI lowered its scoring threshold required for applicants to receive BEAD funding from a 50% score to 25% after the pre-application window closed. Greene said this likely prevented several internet service providers who would have otherwise qualified for funding under BEAD from applying for the program.<\/p>\n
Frederick responded to Greene\u2019s letter with an explanation for the change and was candid about the reasons for it during his committee testimony. Though Greene expressed her appreciation for Frederick\u2019s honesty, she also stressed her desire for more transparency regarding the rural broadband project moving forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re just asking for clear communication and trust here,\u201d Greene said to Frederick during the committee meeting. \u201cI am heavily invested in this program, which is probably one of the major reasons why I\u2019m the chair of this committee. I hope to hear an update again in a couple months.\u201d<\/p>\n
Greene serves the 65th House District, which includes portions of Macomb, St. Clair and Lapeer counties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"State Rep. Jaime Greene, R-Richmond, recently presided over a committee meeting of public officials, stakeholders, and industry experts…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[712,728,726,214,50,727,158,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-443","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-internet","9":"tag-local-news","10":"tag-macomb-county","11":"tag-michigan","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-st-clair-county","14":"tag-technology","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114718090693421172","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}