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Inside the Border-to-Border Grant Program with Christopher Mitchell and Danna MacKenzie
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On Wednesday, November 18, 2015, Christopher Mitchell sat down with Danna MacKenzie, Executive Director of the Office of Broadband Development for the State of Minnesota to talk about the implementation of the Border-to-Border Grant program, and one project, RS Fiber. This interview is being released in conjunction with ILSR's report, Minnesota’s Broadband Grant Program: Getting the Rules Right.
The policy brief covers what the program is, how it works, and why funding must be expanded in order to serve more greater Minnesota communities. In its first two years of implementation, the Minnesota Border-to-Border program distributed $30 million to 31 rural Minnesota communities. But Minnesota's need is much greater and the Legislature should allocate more to the grant program.
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