Information Superhighway to Nowhere

When the District of Columbia’s city government proposed its broadband expansion plan to the Trump administration, it sought nearly $4 million to connect 55 physical addresses—about $70,000 per location—in one of the most broadband-saturated cities in America. Today, we’re approving $0 in federal broadband funds for D.C. That reduction didn’t come from a new law or funding formula. It was thanks to old-fashioned on-the-ground oversight. This is what real oversight looks like. The previous administration greenlighted projects with astronomical costs and little scrutiny. The Trump administration’s rigorous oversight, by contrast, has driven down costs and prevented money from being spent where it wasn’t needed. In this case, it meant turning a $4 million broadband project into a $0 one.