Bill > H1059

This bill makes several key changes to the Growing Rural Economies with Access to Technology (GREAT) program in North Carolina: It creates a new Wireless Broadband Grants program within the GREAT program, which provides grants to expand wireless broadband infrastructure in unserved economically distressed areas. The bill defines key terms like "broadband service," "eligible project," and "infrastructure costs" for this program, and outlines the application process and scoring criteria. The bill also increases the annual transfer from the General Fund to the State Capital and Infrastructure Fund for the GREAT program from $15 million to $20 million per year from 2019-2020 through 2028-2029. Additionally, the bill raises the cap on individual grant awards from $4 million to $8 million, and increases the maximum amount of grants that can be awarded to a single county in a fiscal year from $8 million to $32 million. The bill also modifies the county matching requirements and scoring metrics for the GREAT program, and adds provisions to allow broadband deployment in protected project areas under certain circumstances. Finally, the bill appropriates 60% of the state's federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act broadband funds to the GREAT program, and allows the Office of State Budget and Management to reallocate certain unused state COVID-19 relief funds to support broadband infrastructure grants.

Budget and Finance

https://www.ncleg.gov/BillLookUp/2021/H1059