[A]fter more than a year of review, a special state commission recommended Monday that Vermont sign on with a project by the federal government and AT&T to strengthen public safety communications during the next 25 years.
The Public Safety Broadband Commission voted 9-0-2 on Monday in favor of going with the national system rather than taking federal money to build Vermont’s own. The final decision is up to Gov. Phil Scott, who has until Dec. 28.
The First Responder Network Authority, or FirstNet, was engendered by the difficulties emergency personnel had communicating with one another during the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. AT&T is the government’s commercial partner in the project.
The Vermont commission’s focus “has remained on ensuring the best service and coverage for our public safety community,” said commission Chair Terry LaValley. “… The establishment of a single, interoperable network for public safety nationwide means Vermont’s first responders will have access to a reliable, highly secure and technologically robust cellular network.”
LaValley added, “The commission believes taking full advantage of the federal solution, rather than partnering to build our own network, will best serve the long-term needs of Vermont public safety.”
He said the commission found key advantages to what FirstNet and AT&T were offering.
• “Immediate access to all bandwidth owned and operated by AT&T in Vermont and immediate access to priority calling.” Priority calling means first-responder communications would take precedence over routine calls.
• Pricing. AT&T is expected to provide favorable cellphone rates to first responders to entice them to switch to it as their provider. FirstNet has said it would penalize the company if it doesn’t sign up enough emergency workers, creating an incentive for the company to treat them favorably.
• Expanded coverage. AT&T has promised to build out its network in Vermont and other states.
Those promises were described in a plan presented to each state by FirstNet and AT&T, but have been greeted with some skepticism from critics who have called them nonbinding and unenforceable.
AT&T was announced as the winning nationwide bidder March 30, and states were asked to decide whether they wanted to opt in, with AT&T as their vendor, or find their own vendors and build out public safety networks that could meet the standards laid out in the 2012 legislation creating FirstNet.
More than 30 states have opted in, according to a news release issued Monday by the Vermont Department of Public Safety, which has been deeply involved in the state’s planning for the project.
Whether to do so has been the subject of some controversy in Vermont. Some members of the state commission said they lacked sufficient information to recommend a decision on a program that could see upwards of $100 million in spending from various sources during the next 25 years.
In New Hampshire, a parallel panel to Vermont’s has recommended to Gov. Chris Sununu that the state opt out of the AT&T plan and go with a different contractor.
Much of the criticism of the FirstNet AT&T plan has concerned a lack of transparency. States still have not been able to see the contract between the federal program and AT&T, leading some critics to question what Vermont can expect from the telecom giant.
“It’s unclear what the penalties are for AT&T if they don’t deliver on their promises,” said Ron Kumetz, of Alburgh, a representative of a statewide volunteer firefighters’ group on the commission who abstained from Monday’s vote. “They have no contractual obligations.”
Kumetz added, “You wouldn’t go to a car dealer and buy a $30,000 vehicle with no warranty whatsoever. … Yet we’re going to buy a multimillion-dollar communications network, and that’s exactly the deal we get.”
Questions about a lack of transparency continued right up to Monday, with commission members not allowed until shortly before the vote to see copies of reports by two consultants hired to help guide Vermont’s decision. In the end, both consultants recommended opting in, as did state Treasurer Beth Pearce, said LaValley.
Pearce’s recommendation came in a letter Nov. 9, four weeks after VTDigger reported exclusively on a confidential FirstNet document saying that if Vermont opted out and then failed to build a public safety network that met FirstNet standards, it could face penalties of up to $173 million. Opting out would require Vermont to promise its “full faith and credit” to the project, the document said.
In the Nov. 9 letter, which Pearce’s office released to VTDigger on Monday, the treasurer wrote, “I have recently begun to research this issue after learning that a decision to opt out could carry significant financial penalties.” She warned about harm to the state’s credit rating if it took on such a new potential liability.
