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Editorial: Idaho broadband mess yields old lesson: Local is best
Local school districts are benefiting from a scandal that disconnected the statewide network for broadband. This happenstance should be a giant signal to the Idaho Legislature that state control was a bad idea from the beginning.
Lawmakers were forced to approve $3.64 million in emergency funds to keep broadband service in schools when a judge, on Feb. 11, voided a $60 million state contract. At least five North Idaho school districts have turned that money into faster broadband service at a lower price, with deals they’ve cut with Ednetics, a Post Falls business.
The Post Falls School District is saving the state $8,000 a month and getting service that’s 10 times faster. Mullan district payments went from $7,800 a month to $1,000 a month, with $2,000 for equipment as part of the deal. These changes were made in a matter of weeks.
Under the old state-knows-best contract, school districts weren’t trusted to make such arrangements.
In a vast understatement, Senate Finance Chairman Dean Cameron, R-Rupert, said, “It appears we were being overcharged for the services provided.” Indeed, but he added, “And obviously one of the silver linings in this whole issue is that not only will we reformulate what the IEN looks like, but we’ll have an opportunity for it to be more competitively bid.”
Better to just blow up the Idaho Education Network, and send the money to local districts, which are proving to be far savvier with taxpayer dollars.
To recap, the Legislature established the IEN in 2008, with the goal of getting all of the state’s high schools online. Bids were put out, and the Idaho Education Alliance, made up of Syringa, an Idaho company, and Education Networks of America, a Tennessee-based company, received the highest scores. Qwest, which would become Century Link, was a runner-up.
The Department of Administration, run at the time by Michael Gwartney, a longtime friend of Gov. Butch Otter, initially chose all of them. But the terms of the contract were amended, and Syringa was excluded. The company filed a lawsuit, and won.
Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission, which was to pick up 75 percent of the financing under the E-rate program, took notice of the state’s illegal contract and suspended federal funds in January 2014. This forced the Legislature to come up with $4.8 million last year and the $3.64 million just allocated to keep the schools online.
The U.S. Department of Justice and the FCC are investigating the Department of Administration, and key officials have been placed under gag orders. The state has responded by moving the broadband program to the Department of Education. Currently, each school district is cutting its own broadband deals, and must apply to the FCC for the funding that was cut off.
The state would be wise to make this a permanent arrangement because the local districts aren’t tainted by scandal, and they’ve proved they can drive a better bargain.