Minn. House and Senate Will Confer on Broadband Labor Measure

Minnesota won’t craft a law that might put the state's $652 million allocation from NTIA’s broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program in jeopardy, Senate Broadband Committee Chair Aric Putnam (D) pledged shortly after midnight Tuesday. Up late considering a labor budget bill that included an industry-opposed broadband safety proposal, senators voted 35-32 to reject amendments from Sen. Gene Dornink (R) that would have scrapped the worker safety plan.

The state Senate passed the full labor omnibus (HF-5242) 36-31. However, the Senate approved just one section of the original broadband proposal from the House. Because of that and other changes, a House-Senate conference will meet about the bill before it arrives on the desk of Gov. Tim Walz (D). Earlier Monday, the Senate voted 36-30 to pass a commerce omnibus (SF-4942) with language from Minnesota’s comprehensive privacy bill (SF-2915/HF-2309). The House received the commerce omnibus on Tuesday and referred it for comparison with its version (HF-4975).

"If there is the slightest chance that this bill will compromise the resources from the federal BEAD program, this ain't going to happen,” Putnam said during a webcast floor debate on the labor bill. The Minnesota Telecom Alliance (MTA), Minnesota Cable Association (MCA) and the Wireless ISP Association raised that concern in a Friday letter to Walz that was shared with legislative leaders (see 2405060053).

Both Dornink amendments would have deleted the remaining broadband section on installation requirements and certification standards; the second additionally would have set up a task force on underground infrastructure to study problems related to digging and line strikes. "We're moving too fast," said Dornink, ranking Republican on the Senate Labor Committee. His committee heard testimony on the bill at its final hearing of the session and the Broadband Committee never considered the broadband bill, he said. "Let's take the time to have many different people looking at the problem and come up with a solution."

Labor Committee Chair Jen McEwen (D), who sponsored a stand-alone bill on which the budget proposal is based, will consider the task force option during the upcoming House-Senate conference, she said. But McEwen doubted there’s time for studying. "The [broadband] work is already under way and a lot more work is going to be happening in very short order." Putnam said his broadband committee didn’t need to hear the bill before it was added to the budget bill. While the original proposal might have implicated laws in his committees’ jurisdiction, what’s left of the bill in the labor omnibus affects only Minnesota labor laws, he said.

MTA remains concerned with the Senate’s shortened proposal, CEO Brent Christensen said in an email Tuesday. Anyone involved with underground installation of broadband facilities would have to be “certified to operate a directional boring machine, whether they do that job or not,” he said. MTA has run telecom-specific trainings for more than 40 years, he noted. “We would like to see a legislative study to create a comprehensive bill that will actually address safety concerns across all utilities and not just single out our industry.”

However, Communications Workers of America supported the proposal's broader House version, which additionally could set aside a portion of BEAD funding for companies that agree to workforce “best practices,” including paying prevailing wages and offering annual skills training. “Multiple states are requiring prevailing wage as part of their BEAD programs, including Washington, California, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New York -- and the provisions in the Minnesota bill offer even greater flexibility than in these states, creating an incentive for prevailing wages, not a set-in-stone requirement,” CWA Local 7201 President Christy Kuehn said in a Tuesday statement. “By holding all contractors and providers to high labor standards, Minnesota will ensure that BEAD funds are used to build the high-quality broadband infrastructure that our state deserves without endangering our workers and our communities.”

The state cable association is “still very concerned with the Senate language that creates a new burdensome and onerous training and certification program for broadband installers,” MCA Executive Director Melissa Wolf said in an email. “The language of this section is not limited to providers that apply for and receive state or federal broadband grants, but will impact any deployment of broadband services by a provider.” If the bill becomes law, providers will be encouraged to invest in different states, she said. However, Wolf said MCA would support creating a task force “to specifically look into safety and training issues for our industry and make recommendations to the legislature on next steps.”

“The safety certification is vital in improving worker and public safety and does not impede the goal of deploying broadband in every corner of the state,” countered a spokesperson from the Laborers International Union of North America: LIUNA Minnesota is working with the legislature, governor’s office and industry “to ensure that what moves forward fits within the four corners of what the federal government allows and will not impede the allocation of the $652 million BEAD funding.”