E-Rate Blues
RSSBill to help funding woes
By Joan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 03/01/2007
If Senators Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Jay Rockefeller (R-WV) get their way, schools and libraries that receive discounted Internet service under the e-rate program won’t have to worry about having their services interrupted again.
The two lawmakers recently introduced a bill that would permanently exempt the $2.25 billion federal program from the Anti-Deficiency Act, a budget law that bars federal agencies from obligating funds without cash on-hand to cover those obligations.
The Federal Communications Commission ruled in 2004 that e-rate was subject to the act, prompting a four month moratorium and other delays in getting funding to schools and libraries.
So far, Congress has approved two one-year exemptions from the act, but Snowe and Rockefeller want to make it permanent. The House is considering a similar companion bill. It wouldn’t be the first time a government program has been excused from the act—the National Park Service and the Conservation Trust are permanently exempt.
Snowe—referred to as the mother of e-rate—and Rockefeller created the program in 1996. “This is her baby, this is what she created,” says Kristin Smith, a Snowe legislative aide who specializes in telecoms. “She thinks education is one of the great equalizers and has always believed everybody should have access to information, especially in Maine, which is a rural state.”
The e-rate program provides discounts of 20 to 90 percent to schools and libraries for the cost of education technology, such as telecommunications, the Internet, and internal connections needed to bring information directly into classrooms and libraries.
More than 40,000 schools and libraries apply for the e-rate program annually. It’s not clear, however, whether the proposed legislation will pass this year since Congress failed to adopt a similar bill in 2005 due to more pressing issues.
