Colorado Open BEAD Draft Commentary Could Influence Other States

Colorado Open BEAD Draft Commentary Could Influence Other States

As states continue to receive final BEAD Volume II approvals, eyes across the country are turning to Colorado and its process, seeing an opportunity to provide clarity not only for that state and its grant applications, but others as well.

“Colorado is the first that I’ve seen to have a public notice on a draft grant agreement under BEAD,” said Ryan Roberts, Partner at SheppardMullin. “We wanted to highlight some of the key points, our main takeaways, in part because you’ll have an opportunity to weigh in. Typically, you draft an agreement, you mark it up, go through that song and dance. This [Colorado] public notice and comment period is a little unique. Anyone on the line can submit public comments on any aspect of the agreement.”

Roberts believes that the Colorado comment period for the grant application could provide clarity for different aspects of the BEAD funding process to the state, NTIA, and other states, especially in areas where there are questions or concerns. For example, NTIA provides multiple options states can use to pay grants, with the most likely option grantees would prefer is receiving partial payments upon completion of certain milestones in the contract.

“We’re looking to see what those milestones are going to be, so you can get interim funding to continue funding your operations,” said Roberts. “The agreement is really lacking in this respect, it’s circular. There’s a mean agreement and statement work attachment. The mean agreement says to look to the statement work attachment to figure out when you’re going to get paid. The statement work attachment says you’re going to get paid in accordance with the mean agreement. Nowhere do they actually say how you are going to get paid upon achieving X milestone or X timeframe, whatever it might be. For me, that’s one of the things I would really seek clarification on.”

Roberts believes the intent was for the state to establish milestones in the process with the milestones being determined upon negotiation or final agreement. The open comment period provides an opportunity for discussion with the state as to how the process should work as one area for improvement.

To learn more about Colorado’s draft BEAD grant agreement comment process, other areas of clarification network providers might want to review and comment on, and how that could influence NTIA and other states in their processes, tune into the latest Fiber For Breakfast.

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