Think Out Loud

Oregon not ready to make best use of millions in federal broadband money, says audit

By Rolando Hernandez (OPB)
Jan. 19, 2023 12:15 a.m. Updated: Jan. 19, 2023 9:13 p.m.

Broadcast: Thursday, Jan. 19

File photo from August 24, 2021. A recent audit found that the state's Broadband Office would likely be prepared to receive federal funding to close the broadband gap, but believes the office needs more work to ensure they appropriately and equitably distribute funds.

File photo from August 24, 2021. A recent audit found that the state's Broadband Office would likely be prepared to receive federal funding to close the broadband gap, but believes the office needs more work to ensure they appropriately and equitably distribute funds.

Hanin Najjar / OPB

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Over the next several years, Oregon could receive up to $1 billion in federal funding to increase broadband access, but a recent audit from the Oregon Secretary of State’s office shows the state may have some difficulties distributing funds equitably. Inaccurate data, inadequate staffing and a lack of long-term planning are just a few issues facing the Broadband Office. Kip Memmott is the Director of the Secretary of State’s Audits Division. Matthew Owens is the principal auditor. They join us to share what their audit found and what changes the office needs to make to be able to use federal dollars and increase broadband access.

Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Oregon could receive up to a billion dollars in federal funding to increase broadband access in the state over the next few years. But a recent audit from the Oregon Secretary of State’s office shows that the state may have some difficulties distributing those funds equitably and effectively. The audit found that inaccurate data, inadequate staffing and a lack of long term planning could all get in the way. Kip Memmott is the Director of the Secretary of State’s Audits Division. Matthew Owens is the principal auditor. They join us now to talk about what their audit found and what changes they are recommending. It’s good to have both of you on the show.

Kip Memmott: Thanks for having us Dave. Really appreciate the opportunity to present this audit.

Miller: So Kip Memmott, first, what prompted this audit? Why look at the broadband office in the first place?

Memmott: One thing that is really core to the Secretary of State Fagan and to the audits division is our focus on everybody in Oregon, including those who may have the most disadvantage, economically or otherwise. So that’s kind of our philosophy and a lot of the audits we do is kind of looking at all Oregonians that are interested. With the pandemic and all the effects that we all experienced with that, the need to have broadband access, the ability to access things like government services and telehealth and emergency response information and all the other things that those of us who use the internet know. So we knew this was an important area for the government to look at. And we also knew that there was probably a likely gap of equity there. So this really fits into our strategy of helping Oregonians that need the most help.

Miller: So it’s fair to say that, to some extent, the pandemic forced this issue. It increased the likelihood that your office would actually look into broadband access statewide.

Memmott: Yes.

Miller: Matthew Owens, just broadly speaking, what does broadband access look like right now throughout the state?

Matthew Owens: Well, it’s kind of a mixed picture and we don’t really have an accurate picture at that, but really what we’re finding is that less than 50% of households with income in the bottom 20% even use internet at home compared to 95% of households with income in the top 20%. So it’s really kind of a haves and haves not when it comes to internet in Oregon.

Miller: When you say use internet at home, that’s a surprising statistic given how central internet is for so many Oregonians, so many people around the world right now. That would include even not having fast enough internet, say, on a cell phone to get online?

Owens: That is potentially correct. What we’re looking at here is more of the broadband infrastructure, not necessarily like cell phone towers, but it’s a systemic issue in Oregon, where people really just are lacking that basic infrastructure.

Miller: You noted though that the data isn’t actually great. So why not? Why don’t we have a better picture of levels of broadband speeds and access statewide?

Owens: Well, that’s been the real challenge and the maps that Oregon uses currently, they rely on FCC data and the FCC data doesn’t necessarily look at broadband access out at the address level. Historically, they’ve looked at census block level data. And so let’s say there’s just one person or one home in that census block that has adequate broadband access, that entire census block is considered to have broadband access, where that may not be the case at all.

Miller: Is that really sort of a gross or overarching way to think about and to map out broadband access? Is that an even bigger issue, a more problematic way to map things if you’re looking at a really large census area? I mean, I’m thinking about rural areas in particular.

Owens: Yeah, absolutely. And we’ve seen in other states like Idaho, where they do crowdsourcing and have people send information on what their internet access looks like compared to what the FCC maps are showing. And we didn’t really see much of that in Oregon. In Oregon, we were just relying solely on what the FCC would provide and not taking any other information sources to be able to augment or supplement that information, to provide a more accurate picture of broadband in Oregon.

Miller: Kip Memmott, this gets us to the office that this audit looked into. Why was the broadband office created back in 2018?

Memmott: It was to address this issue. Obviously, as we already discussed, the pandemic exacerbated the need and an obvious requirement to have this in your house. But I think it was obvious that the internet is a core part of all of our lives and I think the office and many states have set up these offices but, again, the idea was to get this internet out to everybody. As we pointed out in the audit, staff - I think one or one and a half [positions] at the time - did not really line up, correlate with the urgency of the issue. But again, I think the state audits bring a lot of critique. They were alerted to this and just tipping my hat to the office with their limited resources. They really have tried to do the best they can, but yeah, I think we saw this coming to the state, but we may have seen it a little bit later than other states.

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Miller: What is this office’s mandate? What is the office supposed to be doing?

Owens: In terms of equity, the main purpose of this audit is to close that digital divide in Oregon, to be able to identify those areas where broadband either doesn’t exist or it exists at such a slow speed to where it’s really not usable for today’s needs. The office was put in place to start making those connections with internet providers and with communities in various organizations, just to help close that gap. And that’s really the sole purpose of what the Oregon Broadband Office is about. They have, I believe, 14 statutory responsibilities, but overall it just all comes down to closing that digital divide.

Miller: Kip Memmott just mentioned one and a half positions at one point. Matthew Owens, can you give us a sense for what staffing has been like over the last four or five years?

Owens: Since its inception, the office has been an office of one. I mentioned the 14 statutory responsibilities. It’s been one person having to balance all of that and it really just was not feasible. They were not given the resources, the office was not given the resources it needed to adequately perform their duties. In the last year, they’ve increased staffing from one to four. And as of September of last year, they now have approval to ramp up to 12. But this current grant cycle - which everybody’s talking about, up to a billion dollars coming to Oregon - while that money’s coming in, now they have to staff up to potentially 12, get them hired, trained and up to speed, all while they’re operating without any kind of formal office structure, policies and procedures, internal controls, things like that that we would normally expect in a state office.

Miller: So what is the worst case scenario in terms of this office’s ability to actually effectively send out up to a billion dollars in federal money if they don’t make the kinds of changes you’re calling for? What’s the worst case scenario?

Owens: Well the worst case scenario is really that the money won’t go where it needs to go. We have every confidence that they’ll be able to facilitate the grant money coming in and and get it out the door in Oregon for various projects. But will those projects be in areas where it’s most needed without the staffing and resources and data to be able to identify those locations and work with those communities? We may just be in another position like we were in the 90s, when something similar came around, where it just increased the availability for the haves and left the have nots more and more behind. We really want to focus on closing that digital divide to make sure that even the most impoverished, impoverished communities have the ability to connect online for things like telehealth and remote working and school and everything the pandemic brought to the forefront of why broadband access is necessary.

Miller: What exactly are you recommending and what’s the pace at which these changes have to happen?

Owens: We are recommending them to take aggressive action. They need to look at their staffing levels. They currently have approval for 12, like we’ve mentioned. Other states such as Vermont have 20 staff members, already dedicated and trained to this, so they’re really going to have to focus on ramping up, working with the various communities, and identifying where those opportunities are. Our audit had 10 recommendations overall and they were to address the insufficient staffing, the ad hoc processes, the lack of internal controls. But then also a major focus on equity, having somebody whose responsibility is to identify those areas where it’s most needed and working with those communities and developing strategic plans and supplementing the map data. Those are all things that our recommendations focused on.

Miller: Is there time to do everything at once? In a sense, it seems like you’re saying they need to do all this work to figure out the best way to spend the money, at the same time that I would have assumed they would be spending the money. I don’t know how you do both of those things at once.

Owens: It’s definitely a juggling act. In our conversations with the office, one of the things that they said is they really feel like they’re in a position where they’re having to “build the plane while flying the plane” and that’s definitely not a position that we’d like to see any of our state offices in.

Miller: At the same time, my understanding is that the office has agreed with all of your recommendations. Is that right?

Owens: That is correct.

Miller: Has the question up till now been more about the legislature? I mean, can we see this as a kind of unfunded mandate if an entire office has been staffed for most of its short life by just one person. Is that the fault of the legislature?

Memmott: I’ll jump in on that one. Yeah, there’s some accountability there for sure. Matt, you can definitely add to this. But yeah, I know that the office has asked for resources over the years and has elevated issues of concern for the legislature. We’re engaged with the legislature now, I want to let your listeners know that, about briefing them, this audit and pushing that sense of urgency because, as obvious as it sounds, every day a child in rural Oregon or in tribal lands, can’t access educational materials is one day that they’re lagging behind everybody else.

Miller: Just briefly before we go, Matthew Owens, since Kip Memmott just mentioned tribal land, what would it take specifically for the state to improve broadband access on reservations? I know that this has been a place, in Oregon, and around the country, these are places that have often lagged far behind non-tribal land?

Owens: Absolutely, and it’s really going to take some solid partnerships between Oregon and the various tribal governments in Oregon. One of the things that’s going to really help change things is the grants that are coming through now. They’re not going to require upfront funds for tribal communities and other impoverished areas. Traditionally, what we’d see is it would require up to a 25% matching fund. If it’s a like $10 million grant, I’m doing math here in my head, a tribe would have to come up with $2.5 million dollars just to get the project off the ground and we don’t see those kinds of resources in most tribal communities. So not having that grant, that upfront requirement for the upcoming grants, that’s really going to go a long way to making sure that the tribal lands receive broadband access.

Miller: Matthew Owens and Kip Memmott, thanks very much.

Owens: Thanks for having us.

Memmott: Thank you.

Miller: Matthew Owens is a principal auditor for the Secretary of State Audits Division. Kip Memmott is the Director of that division. They joined us to talk about their recent look into the state’s broadband office, and the problems that are potentially even more serious, because of the billion dollars of federal funds that could be coming to the state soon.

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