It was a bipartisan effort Monday when a Minnesota House committee went Governor Tim Walz one better, not only voting for his 75-million-dollar budget request for rural broadband, but also adding 15 million dollars extra in one-time money. Vince Robinson from Lincoln County with the Minnesota Rural Broadband Coalition told lawmakers, “We’re never going to prosper as a county unless we can get the broadband that we need. We have to have access to markets outside of our area, and we have to have information coming in from outside.”
Republicans appear to have changed their stance from previous sessions and now seem to support significant state dollars to bring high-speed Internet to remote parts of the state.