When private enterprise cannot — or will not — provide a vital public service, then it is government’s responsibility to step up.
In the last century, a growing California desperately needed reliable water deliveries, so state, federal and local governments responded with massive projects.
When we needed a freeway network to facilitate economic expansion and mobility, the federal and state governments poured pavement.
Some local governments created public power systems to provide electricity when private utilities wouldn’t or charged too much.
Many California political leaders dreamed of a high-speed rail line linking Los Angeles and San Francisco. So the state government began building a bullet train with the permission of voters.
But wait! That last one hasn’t worked out very well. It’s astronomically over budget and way behind schedule.
The slow-chugging bullet train project is one reason the Legislature isn’t jumping to embrace Gov. Gavin Newsom’s ambitious proposal to quickly expand broadband internet hookups to all Californians.
There’s internal doubt that California’s state government can handle such a big, new project.
“Given the state’s past track record on things like high-speed rail, legislators are pretty reluctant to rubber-stamp a big new idea,” says an Assembly insider, who didn’t want to be quoted by name expressing doubts about the governor’s plan.
OK. But surely there’s also another reason — the deep-down reason — why legislative leaders aren’t siding with their fellow Democrat on his bold idea.
Politically powerful AT&T, a very generous contributor to legislators’ campaign kitties, opposes the governor’s plan. So does the cable TV industry. They object to the state creating competitors.
“We need our leaders to stand up to these corporate giants,” former presidential contender Tom Steyer said last week during a Zoom news conference with several broadband advocates who are promoting Newsom’s plan.
I asked Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who previously chaired the state Senate Budget Committee, about AT&T’s influence on the Legislature.
“You make a good point,” she said. “That’s why we need voices like mine and others in local government to speak up.”
She’s a strong supporter of Newsom’s proposal.
“There are so many kids in my community who are far behind in school” because they lack internet access and couldn’t attend online classes at home during the pandemic, Mitchell said.
In one community, Watts-Willowbrook, 35% of kids don’t have internet in their homes because they can’t afford it, she added.
Shameful. It’s simply not a good look for technology innovator California when education-eager children from low-income families must sit with their laptops outside a Taco Bell to access Wi-Fi for remote classwork.
This affects Black and Latino kids disproportionately, studies show.
Mitchell also points out that “fewer and fewer government programs — Medi-Cal, CalWorks — are phone-based. They’re all internet-based. You need high-speed internet to get through.”
“If you don’t have broadband access, you’re not part of the digital economy,” says Graham Knaus, executive director of the California State Association of Counties, which is pushing hard for Newsom’s plan.
California may be the world’s high-tech capital, but it’s behind other states in high-speed internet access.
Newsom wants to spend $7 billion to build a state-owned broadband network along highway rights-of-way into communities up and down California. Any outfit could lease network space and provide internet service to communities. The state would help financially.
Of the $7 billion, $5.5 billion would be federal stimulus money that must be contracted for by the end of 2024.
Carolyn McIntyre, president of the California Cable & Telecommunications Association, emphasizes that her group doesn’t oppose the governor’s goal, just his specifics for attaining it.
Newsom and the Legislature should agree on a plan this summer — something more like the State Water Project than the poky bullet train.
George Skelton is a Los Angeles Times columnist.
