This should get interesting, I hope:
The head of the firm that won a $64 million federal stimulus grant to install a new fiber-optic network in Gallatin County is part of a Pittsburgh family that owns property at the exclusive, gated Yellowstone Club at Big Sky and is involved in a similar development nearby.
James Dolan Jr., the manager of Montana Opticom, also owns property at Big Sky, including a lot at the private Spanish Peaks housing and golf course community - which, so far, is home to the only customers served by Opticom, a small broadband firm based in Gallatin Gateway.
Opticom, which won the $64 million award Aug. 4, serves about 300 customers at the Spanish Peaks development.
The Bozeman Chronicle explains the specific objections to Opticom's deal:
...in the days after the award announcement, local Internet service companies began to question the wisdom of the government's funding decision.
Those companies say the area in question is far from underserved and that the feds have wasted stimulus funds on a project that will only duplicate work they have already done to lay broadband infrastructure in northwestern Gallatin County....
The size of Opticom's award and the company's ties to a Pennsylvania firm did not sit well with Scott Johnson, president of Global Net in Bozeman.
"For $64 million, they could fill in 90 percent of the (broadband coverage) holes in this state," Johnson said. "There can't be a single person with any kind of background that looked at this and didn't go, 'Wait a minute'"...
Johnson also said giving the money to a company with out-of-state ties is a slap in the face to purely Montanan businesses whose infrastructure work is not being subsidized by the government....
Garrett Talbot, general manager of Bridgeband Communications in Bozeman, said he couldn't understand how the USDA could look at northwestern Gallatin County and deem it either "unserved" or "underserved" with broadband.
"I'm questioning how the USDA awarded it when the services already exist," he said. "That area is already lit up."
As Dennison's report points out, Dolan and his father are big political donors - mostly to Republicans. Both Denny Rehberg and Max Baucus wrote letters to federal officials in support of Junior Dolan's telecomm bid, despite his company's size and inexperience.
Rehberg's hypocrisy on this is especially glaring. As Dennison noted, Rehberg both "voted against the stimulus funding bill and has criticized it as wasteful spending." But then how can you let slip by an opportunity to do a party donor a big favor? Rehberg also forwarded a million-dollar earmark for Junior Dolan's company, despite his avowed antipathy of all things earmark-y.
As for Baucus' motivation? Maybe he just prefers the Yellowstone Club set. That would go a long way in explaining a lot of his policy decisions.
The Bozo Chron's Michael Becker wonders why the Dolan family political contributions are relevant - "since there's no apparent evidence of misdeeds, why are the Dolans' political donations news?" - but because the earmark was so egregiously misappropriated, it would seem Dolan family connections landed them a slab of pork to gnaw. It may not be illegal, but that doesn't mean it doesn't stink. |
