Reynolds has proposed investing $150 million each of the next three years to establish affordable high-speed broadband access, the need for which has been made increasingly apparent by the pandemic, throughout Iowa by 2025.
Addressing a group of more than a dozen community and business leaders gathered in a conference room of the Greater Burlington Partnership, Reynolds said the $450 million in state funding combined with private sector funds and grant money made available through the Federal Communications Commission "gives us a real opportunity to scale and have the largest broadband buildout in the country if we're able to get done what we're trying to do with this aggressive investment."
Bryan Bross, vice president of engineering firm Klingner and Associates, said high-speed broadband access is critical in attracting and retaining populations in smaller towns like Burlington and likened it to a utility. "I think it's critical not only to economic development, but as we see these trends of young people maybe not going to the big cities, maybe they want to stay in great places like Burlington, and throughout Iowa, we've seen through our work trying to make sure that we can communicate with people as an engineering firm regardless of their location is dependent on broadband," Bross said.
"We need to see it as important as highways, water, sewer, power."
According to BroadbandNow, Iowa now ranks 45th in the nation in terms of broadband access; just 18.5 percent of Iowans have access to affordable internet plans, putting it will below the national average of 50.1 percent.
"We're ranked relatively low right now from that perspective," Reynolds said. "But the thing I think we need to be mindful of is other states are trying to do exactly what we're trying to do, because they've just all gone through COVID, they've gone through 2020 as well, so if we're going to be competitive and really continue to grow as a state, we need to make investments like this."
Key to Reynolds' proposed legislation, House Bill 133, is that the money would fund up to 75 percent of projects establishing broadband access with upload and download speeds of 100 megabits per second in areas with no service or lower-speed service. The state's current average download speed is 78.9 megabits per second — the second slowest in the nation.
The high speed requirement has drawn criticism from some who believe establishing such speeds in rural areas would be too difficult.
Tim Fencl, CEO and general manager of Danville Mutual Telephone Co., however, said the 100/100 requirement ultimately will save money in the future in that the infrastructure to support even higher speeds already will be in place.
"We support that bill so much because the cost of building future proof networks is very expensive, but it's less expensive than having to build the same network two or three times, so when we set that criteria that high of 100-by-100, we're future-proofing our networks," Fencl said, explaining the same network that provides the 100/100 service can be upgraded to provide gigabit by gigabit service by changing electronics. "You don't have to build new construction to get that done."
Danville Mutual Telephone Co. received $2.9 million in July through CARES Act funding that allowed it to accelerate its Fiber to the Home project, which will provide fiber speed connectivity to 998 homes in a 170-square-mile radius in Des Moines County and a a portion of Henry County.
Initially, the project was expected to take 3 1/2 years to build, but with the CARES funding, its anticipated completion date has been pushed up to June.
The company has applied for additional grant funding through the state's second round of CARES funding. If granted, Danville Mutual Telephone Co. will use the money to provide connectivity to another 30 homes just outside the Danville service area that now have speeds of only 1/1.
"The 100 meg by 100 meg is critical for any business, any homeowner, students and more so now that we're doing Zoom calls and those types of things," Fencl said, explaining high download speeds but low upload speeds often cause outages because upload speed won't work if the download speed is saturated. "That synchronous upload speed has to be there."
Reynolds previously requested the Legislature approve $20 million to be put toward broadband access, but only $5 million was approved. Asked if she is concerned about gaining enough support from legislators, Reynolds said she hopes enough people will voice their support for the bill to their representatives that they will see the need to fund it.
"When you look at rural Iowans and how they're being left behind and with the opportunities to work from home, telehealth, education, if we have to go through anything remotely close to what we just did, we have the ability to prepared," Reynolds said. "We just have to do it."
Broadband was among the top three needs identified by groups comprised of Reynolds' Economic Advisory Board and 350 volunteers from throughout the state.
"We have an opportunity to invest in broadband and childcare and affordable housing," Reynolds said. "I think those are three really big issues that are barriers to continued economic growth, and we're going to continue our focus on healthcare and workforce training as well as education, and we believe by doing that, we can kind of set the state on a solid pass for economic prosperity for years to come."
Senate Study Bill 1142 would create $15 million in state low-income housing tax credit program to use as a match to the existing federal low-income housing tax program, double the workforce housing tax dredit program to $50 million per year, increase funding to housing trust funds for every county by between $4 million and $5 million per year and double the grayfield/brownfield tax credit to help with costs of renovating housing with environmental issues.
House lawmakers passed half a dozen proposals Wednesday that, if they make it through the Senate, would double the income threshold for a pair of child care tax credits; allow families to gradually phase out of a state child care assistance program as their incomes increase; raise reimbursement rates for child care providers; create tax incentives for businesses that offer child care to their employees; and create a new matching grant fund for communities that participate in child care workforce programs.
Reynolds also spoke on mental health funding, explaining her recommended budget allocates $15 million go toward funding the state's mental health regions "so that we can make sure we have sustainable funding to support the comprehensive development of healthcare reform that we put in place in our regions as well as the children's." She said the second installment of CARES Act will make available an additional about $26 million toward mental health funding in the state.
"We know with everything we've just gone through, we've worked really hard to adjust and adapt a really strong adult mental health system," Reynolds said. "We've worked to create a children's mental health system with the regions that we've put in place, the access centers that act as treatment teams and crisis centers."
Des Moines County supervisor Tom Broeker, however, pointed out that low Medicaid reimbursements are making it difficult for regions to attract the workforce needed to provide more complex mental health services.
"Our region is pressing currently with workforce development issues to increase the capacity to provide some of those complex-need services and I suspect every region in the state is wrestling with that," Broeker said. "I know every rural region in the state is wrestling with that, so I guess the one thing we'd like to look at is Medicaid reimbursement rates. We have to incentivize providers to create those services."
Reynolds said Iowa Department of Public Health Director Kelly Garcia is in the process of comparing other states' reimbursements in an effort to find ways that Iowa can increase its Medicaid reimbursements.
"We know it's an issue and we just have to figure out how to address it moving forward in a sustainable manner," Reynolds said.
(c)2021 The Hawk Eye (Burlington, Iowa) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
