Michigan is finally accepting applications for its convoluted plan to spending the state's $1.5 billion share of federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment funds. The Michigan High-Speed Internet Office opened the application process for projects to build internet infrastructure January 9. The application period will end April 9. After years of delays, the office now appears determined to rush the spending that Congress authorized in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Ironically, just as MIHI is demanding that all funding proposals be received within this three-month window, the Trump Administration appears poised to bring it all to a halt. The president's nominee to head the National Telecommunications and Infrastructure Administration, the federal department that oversees the BEAD funding process, is likely to raise significant objections to the way Michigan proposes to spend its BEAD funds.

President Trump has nominated Arielle Roth to head up the NTIA. So far no confirmation hearing has been scheduled. Roth is currently the policy director of telecommunications for the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

Cruz has probably been the most outspoken opponent of the BEAD program in Congress. He has criticized BEAD programs for picking winners and losers among internet technologies (i.e., imposing a strong preference for expensive fiber technology), for imposing rate regulation on internet plans sold by recipients, for dictating hiring policies for workers who install internet infrastructure, and for mandating that recipients perform climate change assessments. All of these criticisms apply to the MIHI funding approval process for Michigan.

Roth shares Cruz’s concerns. “The NTIA has just been preoccupied with attaching all kinds of extra legal requirements on BEAD and, you know, honest to honest, a woke social agenda, loading up all kinds of burdens that deter participation in the program and drive up costs,” Roth said at a public forum in June 2024. “Requiring states to choose a statewide low-cost, low-income rate is just one of the ways that they’ve imposed extra legal requirements. There’s also climate change regulations, union mandates, wholesale access requirements... all kinds of left-wing priorities on the program that just divert resources away from the overall goal of closing broadband gaps.”

Roth also has stated that BEAD requirements favoring fiber technologies over satellite fixed wireless and other delivery technologiess, including the requirements from MIHI, are not authorized by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. She argues that Congress expressed its intent that BEAD projects be approved in a technology-neutral manner.

The Michigan High-Speed Internet Office will be severely limited in whether and how it distributes BEAD money after its April 9 application deadline. That is because President Trump has issued an executive order pausing the delivery of federal funds earmarked by the Biden administration for infrastructure projects, including BEAD-funded projects. States did receive a portion of the funds during the Biden administration, but the bulk of BEAD money is still with the federal government. It seems likely that Roth, once confirmed, will require states like Michigan to make changes before receiving any more BEAD money.

Michigan’s whole approach to BEAD-funded infrastructure projects has been a fiasco. First the state inserted so many unrelated mandates on fund recipients that it didn’t distribute any BEAD funds before the Biden Administration left office. That means no Michigan households or businesses have been connected to the internet as a result of a BEAD program that was authorized in 2021. Now the Trump administration has paused the funding distribution and likely will require that Michigan back off on many of mandates that are unrelated to connecting people to the internet.

Because the Trump administration is putting future funding on hold, at a minimum MIHI should abandon its hard deadline of April 9 for BEAD applications. MIHI also needs to start making plans for getting rid of all of its program mandates that are likely to be opposed by the new NTIA management. While more delays are unfortunate, MIHI has an opportunity to redesign its BEAD program to get away from unrelated agendas and connect more people to the internet.

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