[1st-mile-nm] New Mexico Amendment 2: Passes

[John Badal]

This amendment was intended to work around what has been called the “anti donation clause” in our State’s constitution (wrongly interpreted by many to impede public-private partnerships). It’s a good start but we in the industry need to work closely with the state legislature as it now has the authority to appropriate funding for broadband projects.  As commented already, there is a risk that the “big guys” can run away with those projects, but that could occur if 2 things happen: the local guys fail to communicate with our state legislators as much and as well as the big guys, and the local guys fail to collaborate with our local governments and communities.  The last point is significant because it may be that any legislative appropriation of funding for broadband will be project specific, targeting specific communities.  A question left unanswered by the amendment is who will own the assets of such projects?  My layman’s opinion on that is based on what I’ve heard many a State agency attorney has said: public funding can only go to public entities.

John

From: 1st-mile-nm <1st-mile-nm-bounces at mailman.dcn.org> On Behalf Of Mimbres Communications
Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2022 5:32 PM
To: 1st-Mile-NM <1st-mile-nm at mailman.dcn.org>
Subject: Re: [1st-mile-nm] New Mexico Amendment 2: Passes

On Thu, Nov 10, 2022 at 11:44 AM John Osmon <josmon at rigozsaurus.com<mailto:josmon at rigozsaurus.com>> wrote:
The bottom-up providers that rise to fill niche areas the "big boys"
choose to ignore are an important part of the broadband ecosystem.  If
public money is being used for infrastructure, the "little guys" should
have reasonable barriers of entry to use it.

This is something NM has a chance to get right, but making it actually happen will require significant backbone.  Federal grant programs come with more-than-onerous letter of credit requirements that are essentially impossible for truly small providers to meet.  If NM is willing to accept performance bonds as security for small projects, we'll see robust participation by local businesses.



--

Kurt Albershardt  |  Mimbres Communications, LLC  |  575-342-0042
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.dcn.org/pipermail/1st-mile-nm/attachments/20221111/af0bf734/attachment-0001.html>