Congressional Hearings
SMALL BUSINESSES AND THEIR LIMITATIONS WITHOUT RELIABLE ACCESS TO RURAL BROADBAND
Congressional Hearings
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| hssm00 | H | S | Committee on Small Business |
[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
FIELD HEARING: SCANDIA, MN: SMALL BUSINESSES AND THEIR LIMITATIONS
WITHOUT RELIABLE ACCESS TO RURAL BROADBAND
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CONTRACTING AND INFRASTRUCTURE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
UNITED STATES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
MAY 30, 2019
__________
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Small Business Committee Document Number 116-024
Available via the GPO Website: www.govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
36-465 WASHINGTON : 2019
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HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
NYDIA VELAZQUEZ, New York, Chairwoman
ABBY FINKENAUER, Iowa
JARED GOLDEN, Maine
ANDY KIM, New Jersey
JASON CROW, Colorado
SHARICE DAVIDS, Kansas
JUDY CHU, California
MARC VEASEY, Texas
DWIGHT EVANS, Pennsylvania
BRAD SCHNEIDER, Illinois
ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York
ANTONIO DELGADO, New York
CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania
ANGIE CRAIG, Minnesota
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio, Ranking Member
AUMUA AMATA COLEMAN RADEWAGEN, American Samoa, Vice Ranking Member
TRENT KELLY, Mississippi
TROY BALDERSON, Ohio
KEVIN HERN, Oklahoma
JIM HAGEDORN, Minnesota
PETE STAUBER, Minnesota
TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee
ROSS SPANO, Florida
JOHN JOYCE, Pennsylvania
Adam Minehardt, Majority Staff Director
Melissa Jung, Majority Deputy Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Kevin Fitzpatrick, Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
Hon. Jared Golden................................................ 1
Hon. Pete Stauber................................................ 3
WITNESSES
Mr. Adam Artz, Realtor, Realty Executives, Blaine, MN............ 6
Mr. Marc Johnson, Director, East Central Minnesota Educational
Cable Cooperative, Braham, MN.................................. 8
Mr. Greg Carlson, Executive Director of Partnered & Affiliated
Boards, Cambridge Presbyterian Homes, Roseville, MM............ 11
Mr. Matt Crescenzo, Owner, Bulltear Industries, Inc., Scandia, MN 13
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Mr. Adam Artz, Realtor, Realty Executives, Blaine, MN........ 27
Mr. Marc Johnson, Director, East Central Minnesota
Educational Cable Cooperative, Braham, MN.................. 28
Mr. Greg Carlson, Executive Director of Partnered &
Affiliated Boards, Cambridge Presbyterian Homes, Roseville,
MN......................................................... 33
Mr. Matt Crescenzo, Owner, Bulltear Industries, Inc.,
Scandia, MN................................................ 37
Questions for the Record:
None.
Answers for the Record:
None.
Additional Material for the Record:
None.
SMALL BUSINESSES AND THEIR LIMITATIONS WITHOUT RELIABLE ACCESS TO RURAL
BROADBAND
----------
THURSDAY, MAY 30, 2019
House of Representatives,
Committee on Small Business,
Subcommittee on Contracting and Infrastructure,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., at
Bulltear Industries, 24543 Olinda Trail N., Scandia, MN, Hon.
Jared Golden presiding.
Present: Representatives Golden, Craig, Stauber, and
Hagedorn.
Chairman GOLDEN. The Committee will come to order, and I
want to thank everyone for joining us this morning. I
especially want to thank the witnesses for being here today.
I would also like to thank Mr. Stauber for welcoming me to
Minnesota.
For those of you that don't know, I am Congressman Jared
Golden from the State of Maine. I represent Maine's 2nd
Congressional District, and I am the Chair of this Subcommittee
of the Small Business Committee. Congressman Stauber is the
Ranking Member.
In our short time in Congress together, he and I have
worked together to get things done for small businesses. We are
working on a bill to make sure they have the contracting
opportunities that Congress intended, and I look forward to
working with him on this important topic which impacts Sandia
and towns in my district back home in Maine.
Access to a robust broadband connection is critical for
small businesses and the communities they serve. However, 25
million Americans lack access to high-speed Internet. Many of
these Americans reside in rural parts of the country where it
is more difficult and expensive to build out broadband
networks. In fact, 58 percent of rural Americans believe that
lack of access to high-speed Internet is a problem in their
hometown. In my home district, parts of which are very rural--
in fact, it is the second most rural congressional district in
the United States--37,000 people do not have access to a wired
high-speed Internet connection, and 9,000 do not have a wired
connection at all.
This lack of access is particularly damaging to small
businesses attempting to enter the market and compete with
businesses in more urban areas. Nationwide, 39 percent of homes
in rural areas lack access compared to just 4 percent of urban
households. Without access to reliable Internet, small firms in
rural areas miss opportunities to connect with new customers
and cannot take advantage of cost-saving tools like digital
payment processing and online distribution services. Children
in rural areas also need access to high-speed broadband to
utilize educational tools so we can usher in the next
generation of tech-savvy entrepreneurs.
Rural communities need more resources to close the digital
divide, which is why I wrote a letter to the Chairman of the
FCC calling for policies that foster innovative technology in
places where fiber cannot reach. In Maine, about 5.5 percent of
households are connected to a fiber-optic network. A mixed
technology model and access to unlicensed spectrum is needed to
establish connections in extremely rural parts of our country.
Because we know that economic growth--the kind small businesses
provide to communities--will help to revitalize rural areas and
make them attractive places to live, we need to invest in
digital infrastructure, which is why I am happy to raise this
issue to ensure that rural broadband is a top priority in any
major infrastructure package done by Congress.
I am very proud to serve on the House Rural Broadband
Taskforce to advance a transformative agenda to ensure that all
Americans have access to high-speed broadband by the year 2025.
That is the goal. This work will include ensuring Federal
funding goes to the places in our country like Minnesota and
Maine, places that need it most, and identifying innovative
approaches to accomplishing affordable universal broadband
coverage.
And just a quick note, going off-script on that, I will
tell you that in Maine, where I come from, just in the last
couple of weeks traveling around, you probably heard Congress
talk about things like USDA grants and other things that are
available to rural areas to help establish broadband service.
The problem is sometimes the rules that get set up actually
exclude the very people it is meant to help. So I have
municipalities come to me all the time and say we would love to
get a USDA grant to lay down some fiber and establish broadband
for our community, but the FCC says we are not eligible for the
grant because the ISP claims that they are already providing
the service. But if you live there, if you go there, that is
just not really the case. So it is a big issue and one that
Congressman Stauber and I have worked on together.
Before I shut myself down here and turn it over to the
Ranking Member, I just want to say a word about him, and I will
begin by thanking you all here who live in his district for
sending him down to Washington. It is certainly sometimes a
rather hostile environment. I think you are probably all in
agreement that it feels like our politics could be a lot better
and that it is a divisive time in our country, and I have found
working with Congressman Stauber to be just a gift, and I feel
fortunate to be chairing a committee with a Ranking Member like
he is, someone who is thoughtful, civil, and he is there
focused on actually--well, he is mission oriented. The Marine
in me I think would put it that way. He wants to get things
done and not play games. It makes the work that we do on the
Committee that much easier. I am looking forward to another
year-and-a-half working with him.
Thank you again for the invitation. I think this is a great
field hearing, a great topic, one that is critically important
to your community.
And with that, I will turn the microphone over to the
Ranking Member.
Mr. STAUBER. Thank you very much, Chair Golden. I really do
appreciate you coming to our great state of Minnesota to chair
this Committee hearing today.
I want to thank all of you for coming out to this hearing.
For us, this is bringing Washington, D.C. to the local level.
That is exactly where it is supposed to be, and I am really
appreciative of you all showing up here and really talking
about this important issue here, not only in rural Minnesota
but rural America.
So these hearings, this is an official record of Congress.
It will be put forth, and we want to hear what we hear back and
try to legislate for reforms and monies that can help
distribute broadband, deploy broadband throughout the country.
So, good morning, and thank all of you for being with us
today in beautiful Scandia, Minnesota. I have a lot of people
to thank. First and foremost, I want to thank our witnesses.
Each of you have sacrificed an incredible amount of your time
to be with us today, and I can't acknowledge you enough for
sharing your perspectives with us.
I would like to especially recognize Matt, the owner of
Bulltear Industries here, as well as your family and your co-
workers who are hosting us today.
I would also like to recognize the efforts of Melissa Young
and Lauren Fink from the staff of the Chairwoman of the Full
Small Business Committee, Ms. Velazquez of New York, for being
here with us today to make sure things go smoothly.
Finally, I would like to thank all state and local elected
officials for coming out today and for the work you do here in
Minnesota in your respective cities, townships, and counties.
I would also like to thank Congresswoman Angie Craig for
being here today, taking some time. I know both you and
Congressman Hagedorn are very busy today, so coming up and
spending some time with us--and we work on the Small Business
Committee together. So, Congresswoman Craig, thanks for your
time today.
Congressman Hagedorn, I also want to thank you for being
here today. We spend some time, quite a bit of time, as you
know, on the Small Business Committee working on behalf of
Minnesota, in particular rural Minnesotans. So thank you both
for being here.
And before I begin, I want to also thank and recognize my
colleague from Maine, Chairman Golden. I sincerely thank you
for being here and taking the trip to Minnesota to hold this
hearing.
Congressman Golden grew up in Leeds, Maine. It is a small
rural town in Maine's 2nd Congressional District, and after the
September 11th terrorist attacks on our nation, he enlisted in
the United States Marine Corps and served four years in the
military as an infantryman, deploying to Afghanistan in 2004
and Iraq in 2005 and 2006. Like me, he is in his first term in
the House of Representatives, and he represents a very large
part of a very rural state. And yet, again like me, he has a
passion for working on the solutions to the problems that
plague our nation's job creators, our small businesses.
So don't let everything you see on TV and read in the
papers fool you about how broken Washington is. Some things
actually work in D.C. At the Small Business Committee, we work
together in a very bipartisan way to get things done. So I want
to express my gratitude to Jared for being here with us today
and thank him for his commitment to working across the aisle
for America's small businesses and men and women.
In 2018, 95 percent of Americans owned a cellphone, and 89
percent of Americans used the Internet. It is clear, technology
has influenced nearly every aspect of society, from
manufacturing to education, access to technology. Small
business specifically requires access to reliable and
affordable technology to compete in the market. According to a
recent study, digitally advanced small businesses were shown to
be three times more likely to create jobs and experience
revenue growth, four times higher than small businesses who
didn't employ the technology. Yet despite such outstanding
terms, many small businesses do not take full advantage of the
technologies available to them. Often this is due to the owners
not realizing the benefits of such tools, or they simply lack
access to reliable technology resources as a result of cost or
location.
Today, more than 24 million Americans lack access to high-
speed Internet, the vast majority of whom live in rural
communities. In Minnesota specifically, over 400,000 people do
not have access, and those that are lucky enough to have access
may only have one provider to choose from. In a world where
choices seem abundant, many Minnesotans are left optionless.
When comparing urban and rural broadband deployment, 97.9
percent of urban America has access to both fixed and mobile
broadband, while only 68 percent of rural citizens have that
same access. We cannot continue to leave our constituents
behind just because they chose to live in rural communities.
The lack of a solid business for rural broadband deployment
remains the central reason for what is often referred to as the
digital divide.
Large telecommunications companies have little incentive to
invest in broadband infrastructure in areas with low population
density. Instead, small telecommunications carriers are far
more likely to invest in rural communities, often because they
are their communities. Frequently, however, these small firms
face numerous challenges in their efforts to increase broadband
access.
Without the ability to disseminate the high cost of
deployment or leveraged economies of scale, small
telecommunications companies often rely on assistance from the
Federal Communications Commission and the Department of
Agriculture to mitigate these high costs. Back in Washington,
we have heard from small telecom providers that serve rural
areas that recent improvements to these programs have helped,
but as always more can be done and will likely be done in an
upcoming infrastructure bill.
That is why today's hearing is so important. We need to
know what our communities need to serve them better. I am very
much looking forward to this discussion, and again I thank you
all for being here.
Mr. Chair, I yield back.
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you, Mr. Stauber.
Actually, I am going to hand it right back to you and let
you introduce the witnesses because this is your town, your
district I should say.
Mr. STAUBER. Okay, thank you.
Our first witness is Adam Artz. He is the Owner of Realty
Executives in Blaine, Minnesota. Originally hailing from Grass
Lake, Michigan, he attended Saginaw Valley State University and
majored in accounting. He has applied his trade all over the
United States, working in North Carolina, Washington State, and
New York, before finally seeing the light and moving here to
the best state in the nation, Minnesota.
[Applause.]
Mr. STAUBER. He has been selling real estate in Minnesota
and Wisconsin since 2000. Realty Executives has 20-plus agents
and has approximately $50 million in yearly sales.
Thank you for being here.
Our next witness is Marc Johnson, the Executive Director of
East Central Minnesota Educational Cable Cooperative, a
telecommunications, technology, and distance learning
cooperative of 14 K-12 school districts and Pine Technical and
Community College in East Central Minnesota. Marc has worked on
rural broadband issues since 2011, when the Kennebec Broadband
Initiative began their work. He has worked with Pine, Mille
Lacs, and Chisago Counties in recent years, and currently works
with Isanti County High-Speed Internet Task Force. Marc has
been part of the Minnesota K-12 Connect Forward, working with
the group since its launch in 2016. This initiative is a joint
partnership between the Minnesota Department of Education, the
Department of Employment and Economic Development, and the
National Non-Profit Education Superhighway who together are
working to ensure that all students in Minnesota have access to
the infrastructure and high-speed affordable bandwidth.
Thank you for being here.
Up next is Greg Carlson, the Executive Director of
Partnered and Affiliated Boards at Cambridge Presbyterian Homes
in Roseville, Minnesota. Presbyterian Homes stands on a rich
and dedicated history of service and care for older adults in
the Cambridge community. Grace Point Crossings opened in 1962
and affiliated with the Presbyterian Homes and Service in 2006.
Presbyterian Homes and Service, or PHS, is a non-profit, faith-
based organization providing a broad variety of high-quality
housing choices, care, and service options for older adults.
PHS serves over 25,000 older adults through 46 PHS-affiliated
senior living communities in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa.
PHS has earned the reputation as an innovative leader concerned
with promoting independence, vitality, and well-being for those
they serve.
Thank you for being here.
And last, our final witness today is our host, Matt
Crescenzo, the Owner of Bulltear Industries here in Scandia,
Minnesota. Bulltear was founded in 1989 and has been serving
the auto parts industry ever since, providing custom-built
milled and machine specialty auto parts nationwide. Matt and
his wife Krista have three young daughters, and Krista works as
a nurse at Gillette's Children's Hospital in downtown St. Paul.
In addition to his work at Bulltear, he trains people of all
ages on advanced manufacturing techniques.
Thank you for being here.
And now, Mr. Chair, I will yield back.
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you very much.
I have to say that back in Washington, on the full Small
Business Committee, I didn't really realize just how much
Minnesota had infiltrated the Small Business Committee.
[Laughter.]
Chairman GOLDEN. But sitting up here, it is brutally honest
that Maine is completely outnumbered on the Committee. But I
will say on behalf of my three colleagues, it says a lot if you
choose to be on something like the Small Business Committee. It
is not the most exciting, it doesn't get the most attention
from the press and the media and things of that nature, but it
is a great place to try and do some good work for your
community, so be sure to thank them for that.
Normally, this is the part where I would talk about all the
rules around testimony, mostly about time limits, 5 minutes
each and then 5 minutes of questioning for people sitting up
here, but I think we are going to do it a little more informal
than usual. So we are not going to enforce some kind of clock
on you, but I would just say maybe be mindful of the length of
your testimony so that there is a good opportunity for some
questions and back and forth. That is where I think the real
educational part of the hearing will take place.
So, with that, I am going to recognize Mr. Artz for your
opening remarks.
STATEMENTS OF ADAM ARTZ, REALTOR, REALTY EXECUTIVES, BLAINE,
MN; MARC JOHNSON, DIRECTOR, EAST CENTRAL MINNESOTA EDUCATIONAL
CABLE COOPERATIVE, BRAHAM, MN; GREG CARLSON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
OF PARTNERED & AFFILIATED BOARDS, CAMBRIDGE PRESBYTERIAN HOMES,
ROSEVILLE, MN; MATT CRESCENZO, OWNER, BULLTEAR INDUSTRIES,
INC., SCANDIA, MN
STATEMENT OF ADAM ARTZ
Mr. ARTZ. Thank you. Can everyone hear me okay?
Good morning and thank you. Thank you so much for being
here today on this important topic. It is my pleasure to share
with you my feelings on this topic.
You know, I think too much today people run to the
government for everything. Government can't be all things to
all people. But there are instances when things fall through
the cracks, and that is when I think government can play a
role, and I think that is exactly what this is.
Internet is no longer a luxury. It is the foundation for
the future growth and success of a community. Or it is a common
denominator. Lack of it is a common denominator of failure and
decline via the negative impacts that non-good Internet has.
Personally for me, it has impacted my life in a couple of
different ways.
Number one, it has impacted my family. I have a couple of
daughters that attended North Branch High School. I live in
North Branch. I have offices in Blaine and in North Branch. My
oldest daughter graduated in 2009. It has been a while, but
nothing has changed. And to hear their frustration of getting
cut off the Internet or not being able to get on the Internet,
not being able to do homework, they can't upload a picture, and
hearing their frustrations about that, and even later kids, I
have spent some time in the school up there, and nothing has
changed. My youngest daughter graduated in 2012; same same, and
same same today.
I mean, that is a problem. When they are frustrated, kids
are frustrated and it is a source of stress, when there is
unnecessary difficulty, it negatively impacts their ability to
engage and excel. When that happens, that is a problem. I mean,
there couldn't be anything more important than empowering. You
can't make anybody win, but as a business person I put my
people in a position to win, and I think that is what I think
we need to focus on, making sure our kids have that opportunity
to win instead of the negative impact of making it hard on them
and putting roadblocks in front of them. I think that is an
awesome thing for Congress and all of us to focus on. Certainly
that can be bipartisan, something that we all care about our
kids.
The second way it has impacted me is as a business owner. I
own a small real estate company, like I said, in Blaine and in
North Branch. I have been in business for a while. It used to
be when--I sold my first piece of property in 1985, of all
things. It has been a while. But the first question we used to
be asked was, ``Tell me about the schools.''
Today, I bet nine out of ten times it is, ``Tell me about
the Internet,'' because in my business we don't house agents
anymore. Your phone is your office, and I think that is the
same for all of us today. I mean, our phone, our smart phone is
our connection to the world, and I think that is true with my
real estate business. I just had a situation last fall, a house
in my neighborhood in North Branch--great house, $329,000.
Because of the situation, they bought a house in Forest Lake,
less of a house for more money because of the Internet. So what
that does is it impacts the community, makes it less desirable,
less value, and it just hurts it.
I can't upload pics from my house. I am right on the city
limits in North Branch, right on Highway 5, if you know North
Branch. I am just on the city limits, and I can't upload
pictures to the MLS unless I go into my office, which is right
in downtown. I mean, the core of downtown is okay, but as you
get out, I am maybe two or three miles out of town and I can't
upload a picture. Needless to say, you should hear me when I
have to drive up to the office at 7:30 to get an initial on a
piece of paper. I promised I wouldn't swear, but I promise you
I do then when I have to do that, going into town. I mean, that
is crazy today.
The majority of all paperwork in our industry today is
electronic signature, and stored electronically. When you can't
do that, it makes my job really hard and it impacts my
business, impacts the community. If two identical homes are
available and one doesn't have Internet, that is a huge impact
on values of real estate.
I want to stay brief, and I think you get the gist of what
I am saying. But, you know, negative impact builds, just like
positive. It is a spiral. And we are negatively impacting our
communities with lack of good Internet, negatively impact a
family, negatively impact a business. Those things add up. I
wrote negative impact on family plus negative impact on
business equals rural communities in decline, and you see that
all the time now in the paper about some small town out in
Western Minnesota that is shrinking and turning into a ghost
town.
I think one of the things the Internet does do is it makes
the community smaller and it makes them part of the community.
I just wonder how much of a role that has played in Minnesota,
because the housing out in those areas is very affordable. I
mean, where you look in the core of the Twin Cities now,
housing is really unaffordable to many, many people, and I
think a huge help with that is being able to have people out
where housing is more affordable.
The old saying ``drive until you can buy,'' well, when that
Internet runs out, that becomes not an option, and it is just a
recipe for disaster to do that.
Top-notch Internet is a foundation for growth and success,
or a huge roadblock, and we all get to choose.
And I am going to leave you with this one last thing.
We have a remote-controlled vehicle on Mars, but I can't
get on the Internet in North Branch. I mean, see what I am
saying? So I would really appreciate anybody's help in fixing
this as soon as possible. And I brought a map of Mars with me,
but Miranda wouldn't let me show that to you guys.
[Laughter.]
Mr. ARTZ. So I gave it to her. I will give it to her as a
souvenir.
But thanks again so much for being here, and please fix
this immediately.
[Applause.]
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you very much, sir. That was great.
Mr. Johnson, you are up.
STATEMENT OF MARC JOHNSON
Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Chair Golden, Representative
Stauber, Representative Craig, Representative Hagedorn,
members, staff, guests. Thanks for holding this hearing today
and for the opportunity to speak before the Committee this
morning.
Small businesses are the lifeblood of communities and rural
areas in East Central Minnesota, as you have heard, throughout
the state and around the nation. Agriculture, tourism,
hospitality, manufacturing, healthcare, retail, and other
sectors rely on the Internet to communicate with suppliers and
customers, to provide their services, and to stay viable. These
businesses also need an educated workforce willing to live and
raise families in the rural areas.
Without access to affordable high-speed Internet,
businesses cannot thrive, families are less likely to locate in
the area, and it is difficult to provide a fair and equitable
education. Those of us who commit to life in a rural community
are sort of forced to get by and make do with what we have.
Northland Automation and Engineering is an engineering and
manufacturing company located in rural Kanabec County just a
few miles from Mora, Minnesota. The business is located on the
farm of the company owner. If he or one of his employees wants
to utilize simple video conferencing to meet with a client,
perhaps show some parts, talk about customization, they often
must make a 30-minute round-trip into town to utilize an
available location with high-speed access capable of providing
a stable video connection. He gets by, but he comments about
the limitations his company has for expansion and taking on new
clients due to when he is hampered by poor broadband access.
And there are all kinds of stories like that, similar to
this one, and as you just heard from Mr. Artz, people will
decide not to locate in areas with poor broadband access and
services. If we want a diverse workforce, strong communities,
and ample opportunities for everyone to reach their potential,
we must move beyond just getting by.
How does education fit into this scenario? We live in a
digital world, and education is no different. The Internet is
routinely used for research, collaboration, communication, and
general learning. We also know that learning does not take
place only within the walls of a school building.
In education, we cannot just ``get by.'' It is not okay for
us to leave 20 percent or more of our students without the same
learning opportunities as the other 80 percent. In the world of
digital learning, that is exactly what is happening. In
reference to one of the maps that I have included in the
packet, according to statistics from the Minnesota Office of
Broadband Development, eight of the twelve school districts in
the Region 7E economic development area, East Central
Minnesota, are below 80 percent for percentage of households
served by broadband speeds that fit the FCC definition of
broadband, and two of the districts are below 50 percent.
So essentially, in these areas, we are leaving 20 percent
to 50 percent of our residents behind, many of whom have
children, some of whom are trying to run a farm or a small
business from their home, and others who may be accessing
online courses or completing assignments from higher education
institutions. We have several technical and community colleges
in this area who have many students who are not able to get to
campus to access the Internet. They need to be able to do their
assignments and so on from home. That is difficult when you
don't have good access.
Most of the K-12 school districts in our region, have
placed mobile devices in the hands of their students intended
to be used both in class and at home, and they are often cited
as one of the most impactful technology-related tools for
teaching and learning.
Troy Anderson, Principal at Pine City High School, says:
``Without a doubt, Chromebooks have been the most impactful for
our district. They have started to replace textbooks and are
used for communication between students and staff.''
Dr. Ray Queener, Superintendent for Cambridge-Isanti
School, adds: ``As curriculum continues to migrate to digital
and as more and more resources are available digitally, our
Chromebook 1:1 initiative has greatly impacted teaching and
learning in our district.''
Minnesota has a grassroots project called the Minnesota
Partnership for Collaborative Curriculum. I am proud to say
that the schools in ECMECC were pioneering members of this
collaborative, and it has grown to involve over 225 school
districts. The goal of this project is to create a
comprehensive collection of digital open resources in the four
core subject areas for grades 3-12. These resources are created
by educators and centered around Minnesota's content standards
and made available to Minnesota schools at no cost. They are
designed to be used with the mobile devices that students are
using and have the potential to replace the use of expensive
textbooks and purchased content.
However, in our region, expensive and slow broadband
hampers our ability to fully utilize these resources that our
teachers helped create.
Dean Kapsner, Superintendent of Isle Schools, comments on
this, saying: ``The lack of reliable Internet access affects
how we can deliver curriculum and assignments outside the
school day and has stalled our efforts to create a viable e-
learning plan.''
Steve Bistrup, Technology Coordinator in Milaca, agrees,
writing: ``The lack of rural broadband has played a significant
role in limiting our ability to fully transition to digital
learning.''
As with small businesses trying to thrive in this
environment, schools find ways to make do. Long route buses in
some of our districts are equipped with onboard Wi-Fi. Schools
have purchased mobile hotspots to provide to students without
adequate home access. But these solutions only work in areas
where there is a reliable cellular connection, which cannot be
assumed in many rural parts of our area. In fact, when I drove
up, I didn't have a cell connection, or a very minimal one when
I got here. We are not very far from a town. Other
accommodations include keeping areas of the school open longer,
providing printed or other offline materials, extending
deadlines, et cetera. All of these accommodations result in
some students not receiving the same, or in some cases even
similar, educational opportunities.
The Minnesota legislature passed a law in 2017 that allowed
schools to use e-learning days in lieu of weather-related
school closings, which around here we have quite often. You
probably do in Maine, as well. To count as an instructional
day, students need to be able to access assignments and
resources online, and teachers need to be available online to
answer questions. That is written into the law. This winter,
some Minnesota districts utilized more than five of these days.
In our region, no schools were able to take advantage of this
opportunity because they could not count on all students or
staff having adequate Internet access.
Superintendent Robert Prater of Hinckley-Finlayson schools
indicated: ``We do not use e-learning days because broadband is
not reliable enough or widespread enough.''
Amanda Thompson, Technology Integration Specialist at East
Central Schools, agrees, saying: ``I have concerns about both
students and staff being able to access the Internet from home
to fully engage in an e-learning day.''
Our students and families are being left behind in the
digital age. Craig Schultz, Superintendent of Schools in Mora,
asks: ``Is it truly a free and appropriate education when there
are significant broadband issues between families just miles
apart within a district, let alone across districts in the
state?''
We need to resolve this issue or families will move away
from rural areas with poor access and inequitable educational
opportunities. There will be fewer people to fill the jobs in
small businesses that have tried to get by, and our rural
communities and way of life will wither away. Like rural
electrification and telephone did for rural areas in their
times, we need rural broadband to make rural living viable and
a choice that people want to seek out rather than flee.
Thank you.
[Applause.]
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Carlson?
STATEMENT OF GREG CARLSON
Mr. CARLSON. Representatives, I would thank you for hosting
this, and Committee members, thank you for your time here and
the opportunity to address this issue. We are going to come at
it from a health care perspective.
For most of us, the word ``home'' holds a special meaning.
You may recall the song recorded by Elvis Presley, ``Home is
Where the Heart Is.'' Now, I am not going to sing it for you,
but he describes home with the following lyrics: ``I don't need
a mansion on a hill that overlooks the sea, anywhere you're
with me is home. Maybe I'm a rolling stone who won't amount to
much, but everything that I hold dear is close enough to
touch.''
And near the end of the movie The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy
clicked her heels and stated, ``There's no place like home.''
She longed to leave the wonderland of Oz for her simple, dusty
old farmhouse in rural Kansas.
As healthcare providers, we are called to help individuals
and their families live well in the place they call home, and
in our rural county that may be the family farm, or in mid-
winter Minnesota it may feel more like an igloo, cold outside
but warm inside. The idea of living a long, healthy life at
home hits a home run for the people of rural Minnesota.
Imagine for a moment a seamless coordinated care model made
possible by new technology resulting in better patient outcomes
and a purposeful, cost-effective, self-fulfilling healthcare
experience. One way to accomplish this objective is to reduce
our reliance on our acute care, rescue-oriented health system
while reinvesting those dollars in life enrichment and
purposeful living in the place one calls home.
Data provided by Kaiser Health shows that long-term, only
about 10 percent of our individual overall health is driven by
our health system. Not surprisingly, most of health is driven
by where we live, our home environment, our genetics, and our
behaviors.
Approximately 40,000 people live in Isanti County. Nearly
60 percent reside outside the city limits of Braham, Cambridge,
and the City of Isanti. Most of these rural households have
less than adequate Internet, making it difficult to access
preventive healthcare services, leaving them susceptible to
fragmented, episodic care and poorer health outcomes.
Electronic health records, technology-based patient
engagement strategies, health information sharing, and remote
monitoring technologies all require high-bandwidth broadband
connections. Such telehealth technologies help overcome many of
the obstacles to healthcare delivery confronting our rural
communities. In particular, we see enormous potential to expand
access to certain services and improved patient outcomes,
including what we hear a lot about today, mental health and
addiction services.
Telemedicine and mobile health are rapidly emerging as
cost-effective solutions to overcoming many of the obstacles to
healthcare delivery. The proper infrastructure must be in place
to allow for these and other technologies to be implemented in
the home.
Consider the potential of a simple array of sensors
strategically placed throughout a residence of a home-bound
adult. Without infringing on their privacy, these sensors link
to a computer program and could monitor things such as room
temperature and/or whether the refrigerator door has been
opened or not, usual patterns of motion, lighting and various
home safety devices. Any unusual interruption or change in
pattern would alert the designated family member, a friend, a
neighbor, or a healthcare person that would be able to respond
if appropriate and necessary.
For the Cambridge Medical Center, planning involves
leveraging technology for the patient-facing experience and
interaction. The objective is to enhance the online experience
by expanding the reach of telehealth and mobile health
technology with improved access to online scheduling, video
visits, medical messaging with patients, and online video
education. This, in turn, leads to shorter wait times,
screening concerns before an emergency occurs.
Limited access to high-bandwidth broadband connections is a
concern for physicians. Specialists are often required to
access files or view images initially from home to expedite a
medical intervention such as urgent care or emergency care
services. Dr. Amy Haupert, a family practice physician at the
Cambridge Medical Center, shared with me that in addition to a
full day of meeting with patients, she spends two or more
additional hours completing required documentation. As a
result, accessing patient medical records at home is essential
for her to balance work and family life. Reviewing progress
notes, completing insurance forms, scheduling, responding to
patient concerns, these issues require physicians to have
access to medical records 24/7.
It is no secret that resources are being stretched in
healthcare. Labor is tightening, and providers are being asked
to do more with less, while assuring patient safety and
satisfaction. Healthcare is quickly moving from fee-for-service
to a value-based delivery system. Success will require the
ability to deploy telehealth, particularly as part of care
management programs.
Ensuring communities in rural areas can take full advantage
of the benefits of telehealth solutions requires access to
reliable and affordable broadband connections. Telehealth
offers a wide range of benefits, immediate access to care,
reduced cost, and offers more convenient care options and
improved care outcomes.
The Isanti County Broadband Task Force and area health care
providers appreciate your focus on expanding broadband
connectivity, and we are grateful for the opportunity to share
our rural perspective. Thank you.
[Applause.]
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you, Mr. Carlson.
Mr. Crescenzo, thank you for hosting us here in the shop
today, and we look forward to hearing what you have to say.
STATEMENT OF MATT CRESCENZO
Mr. CRESCENZO. Hello, friends and neighbors. My name is
Matthew Crescenzo. I am a 44-year-old father of three young
girls and a husband to my wife Krista. Krista is a nurse at
Gillette Children's Hospital, located in St. Paul, Minnesota,
and works in the child brain injury rehab unit. I work in this
building designing automated machines like our Star Lab CNC
plasma machine. The Star Lab is a CNC machine that uses the
fourth state of matter to cut materials along a computer
program path. I am the chief engineer of the machine, and
together with our partner Hypertherm, we offer an outstanding
machine in this market.
I train folks at universities, high schools, businesses,
and garages, and I have trained well over 700 times across the
USA and have been fortunate enough to train the deaf and have
quadriplegic customers who are among the sharpest minds.
The place you are sitting at was only possible through use
of the Internet, a unique gift of communication between people.
We would be having this meeting near a 100-year-old barn ready
to collapse; wouldn't that be exciting?
When I suffered a spinal injury on the job, my world became
small. Frustration and desperation were weighing heavily on my
heart. I pooled my resources and stretched my mind's capability
beyond my expected personal limits. With the help of my good
friend David Boucher, who currently works at Toro company and
who set up a website for me, I was able to take my ideas and my
dreams of machine products, bringing them to the Internet and
discovered a vast amount of interest in these parts that I
dreamed and engineered. I was able to take my passions to
market.
It was the Internet that allowed this to exist out of the
idea of offering something awesome for a good price. I could
not have done it without the Internet and without my father,
Peter Reed Crescenzo, who challenged and supported me,
sometimes challenged more than supported.
[Laughter.]
Mr. CRESCENZO. But that is a father's burden. I love and
respect my father.
Where this company has come so far today I could not have
imagined years ago. We have seemingly unlimited potential for
growth here. We are ready to take the next steps, and I am
ready to take a paycheck.
We fumble through our day using the local Internet. It is
as important now as it was when I started this business. We
even have a dedicated line of 10 megabits up and 10 megabits
down, which really wouldn't get you a hot dog in the Twin
Cities, and that is nearly $300 a month. That is the very top
capability of our monopolized service provider.
We deal with dropped calls when using the Internet and
rebooting our modem several times a day. I thought I was alone.
For years we were rebooting our modem in the house, in the
shop. It wasn't until my friends and neighbors told me they do
the same thing.
Our business relies on positive customer experience, not
volume, but the network of very happy customers has kept us
busy--and boy, are we busy. We are grateful for that.
It is crucial to our success that we can upload training
videos, download customer files, and talk on the phone without
interruption. The infrastructure is toast out here. We need a
way forward.
The technology has moved beyond our rural areas 20 years
ago. I have seen businesses close because they cannot have a
robust security system tied to the Internet or really cannot
develop without access to high-speed Internet.
Businesses are moving out of state not only because of
local ordinances but because of the vast desert of little to
no-speed Internet that we have here.
Friends and neighbors, we need real help for our community
to prosper. I commend you folks before us for shining a bright
light on our dimly lit network.
Communication between people is what makes good communities
and binds the heart of mankind. The invention of the Internet
was brilliant, and I believe it was inevitable.
However, without bolstering our community and supporting
ideas like this, we remain in a very dark age.
The industrial revolution is not over. It has changed, and
we compete with the world now. In many ways, industries have
gotten cleaner, better, and smarter. For example, our partner
Hypertherm is a gleaming example of an employee-owned Fortune
500 company that takes green to the next level without
sacrificing quality.
But we need faster Internet out here. This business needs
to get training videos online, download customer videos, and
get our service and support to today's standards. We are
struggling daily with this.
In ending, I would like to thank you for coming out to our
field of dreams, and I look forward to your comments and
questions. Thank you.
[Applause.]
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you very much for that, sir. And
thanks again for having us here.
I can't help but listen to the four of you and think about
back home. The similarities are quite striking. So I thought I
would just throw out a couple of questions to you to kick it
off. There are no right or wrong answers here. We are really
here to listen and learn.
Just so you all have a sense of the types of things that we
think about on the Small Business Committee, Congressman
Stauber and I, it is not just things like having broadband
access that we think about. It is also the ways that government
sometimes makes decisions that get in the way, makes decisions
not really understanding areas like this one.
Back home in Maine, just as an example of that, Madawaska,
Maine is a paper mill town up on the northern border, right on
the Canadian border, and up there I was talking to a gentleman
running a small business. It wouldn't be there if it wasn't for
the paper mill, and he is a big part of their supply chain. But
having access to faster Internet is one of the chief challenges
that holds him back from growing.
He does a lot of work with the SBA historically, when he
needed a loan or something of that nature to make an extension,
make a good investment in his business, and lately he stopped
working with them because SBA has gone ahead, in their infinite
wisdom, and said, well, we are in a digital age now, so we are
going to move everything online. He used to fill out all the
forms and applications by paper, and he finds it so much slower
and frustrating now because his Internet speed is so much
slower than advertised, and he finds it frustrating. He will be
halfway through the process and all of a sudden the thing stops
working and he has to start all over again. It drives him nuts.
So now he is going to other lenders instead of using an SBA
program that is there to give him a lower interest loan and
help a small business grow.
So those are the types of small decisions that we are also,
I think, always looking to see how can we make sure that
government is making decisions with an eye on you all.
I just wanted to ask you, I know you are not going anywhere
because you love this community, but back home in Maine
recently I listened to three different towns in western Maine
talk about how they are all competing for a manufacturing firm
that is looking to move into western Maine, and the source of
competition, the final decision is where can they get the
fastest Internet. A couple of them are trying to compete for
grants to get that last mile because there is some backbone
pretty close to where they are but it is not quite coming into
their town. These are the types of towns that have lost a lot
of manufacturing through the years, so they are desperate to
get something back.
I am just curious, you seem to talk a little bit--you are
in the weeds compared to me. You talked about 10 up, 10 down,
25 and 10. I don't know what all this stuff means, to be honest
with you, but I listen to people like yourself. If you were
starting over again, what is the Internet speed that you would
be looking for if you were talking to someone about buying some
property to build a business?
Mr. CRESCENZO. If we were to look at the broad scope of
starting over or building a building, we wouldn't do it with
this Internet. It would be the kiss of death for our business
model. You really use a lot more bandwidth as you grow. So
having the bandwidth available is like having the land
available, having the construction company available to build
your building, or somebody to do concrete. It is very
important, and it is amazing in this day and age that it has
become so important. But it has a huge positive impact on our
business when things work correctly; and when they don't, we
are spending an enormous amount of resources trying to get them
to work correctly.
So I would look at that and say where we are at today, we
would not start fresh here.
Chairman GOLDEN. So, I am curious. Some people are happy
with where their business stands, and it sounds like you have
been very successful, and you have the dream job that you have
created here. But if you had access to faster Internet, could
you and would you grow and create more jobs in this community?
Mr. CRESCENZO. That has been my goal, to grow in this
community and create jobs. So we are working with the county to
allow light manufacturing. Where we are at, to be able to
expand and be able to move into the greater industrial parks--
and I am a big, firm believer in this county. We have a lot of
great talent pool to choose from, and we want to support the
local businesses here. We are here, our heart is here, my
family is here. We want to stay here.
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you very much.
I wrote a little note here, Mr. Artz and Mr. Johnson, while
you were giving us your opening statements: Ask them if there
is a workforce shortage in this district. I figured I knew the
answer, but he wrote ``yes'' with two exclamation points, and I
am not surprised at all.
I am just curious. Our problem in Maine, Mr. Artz, often is
that as we try to address our workforce shortage, and it is
often things like lack of broadband that leads a lot of our
graduates and young people--they go away for college, and when
they start thinking about going back, it is lack of these types
of things when they start thinking, oh, maybe I will settle in
southern Maine instead of northern Maine, or not even come back
to the state at all.
But often we hear a lot of people talk about, well, you
know, I found that dream opportunity to come back home to
Maine, or someone looking to take a job in Maine, but they had
a spouse who also needs an opportunity to work, and the
Internet figures in a big way in a lot of cases to the ability
to work from home, work remotely, maybe even keep the job they
have so that they can move the family and take that other
opportunity for their husband or wife.
I just thought I would give you an opportunity to maybe
tell us if you have heard those stories as a realtor and what
types of missed opportunities. I don't know if you have any
specifics, but we would love to hear them.
Mr. ARTZ. Yes, I do. You know, it is true. Last fall, the
City of North Branch was working with the Minnesota design team
on some reconfiguring of North Branch and what opportunities,
because it faces those challenges you are talking about.
And it was interesting because we went to the school and we
asked the kids questions about the future, because one of the
questions that was in everyone's mind was what would keep you
here. So one day my 25-year-old daughter and her friends were
hanging around and I said, you know, girls, what would keep
you? What would keep you in North Branch versus moving to the
Twin Cities or somewhere else? And it was interesting because a
lot of times you think you might know the answer, and when you
ask a kid you get the real answer.
And she said, you know, dad, affordable housing, affordable
housing and opportunity, and that is not there without the
Internet. They are not going to go anywhere where there isn't
affordable housing. And like you said, the spouse that can't
have an opportunity in a rural area, it is just a recipe for
not being successful and a disaster, and it does directly
affect the real estate business.
The blessing of our industry is I do hear a lot of things.
You hear the real story. So I do think the communities having
good Internet, like everyone is saying, it pulls that community
closer. It makes affordable housing more. It makes that
community more vibrant, it makes it more desirable because they
can buy way more of a house. They become part of the community,
which enriches the school. It is a spiral, a domino effect, and
a domino effect back.
So, yes, I do hear that a lot, and those are the number-one
concerns. But like I said, Internet access, affordable housing,
they kind of go hand in hand. So I hope that answers your
question.
Mr. STAUBER. Thank you, Chairman Golden.
Mr. Johnson, one of my questions for you is what are some
of the biggest differences that you are seeing in schools that
are connected versus schools that aren't?
And before you answer that, I would just say that I have
four kids. They are using the Internet in the City of
Hermantown, where I live. The location where I live, we have
high-speed access, and they can do their homework. Just down
the road, they don't, and that is frustrating for those
parents.
So I will ask you as folks that work with the schools--what
is your thought on the question, connected versus not?
Mr. JOHNSON. Sure. Thank you, Representative Stauber.
Excellent question.
I think when I talked about being in the digital age and
that ability to take that device home, most schools in
Minnesota are doing what we call one-to-one initiatives, right?
Where they give a device, a Chromebook, a tablet, in some cases
it is a laptop, to students, and then they design their
learning around that. That becomes their hub for learning, that
device, right? And they use technology to access assignments.
They use technology to access--in some cases, what you will see
in the places where they can truly extend that to the home,
there are terms like--you will hear ``flipped learning.'' That
is a term you will hear, and that is a situation where they
will change the way classroom instruction is done where an
instructor will do a lesson, a lecture, examples and things
like that, via video, right? Students will take that home,
consume that at home, and allow for the classroom time to be
group learning rather than having them have to sit and listen
to a lecture and see examples for half an hour, and then have a
little bit of time to do their homework, and then they go home
where they can't get questions answered.
In an environment where digital learning is really in
place, an instructor can provide sort of that initial learning
at home where they can consume it, and then they can come back
to the classroom and actually interact with the instructor on a
more personal basis, get their questions answered and so on.
So I think that is a big difference in what you will see.
Those districts that have good-quality access at home, they are
able to leverage all of that. Those who don't, you have that
10, 20, 30 percent or more of students where you have to give
them alternate instruction, and it is less effective for them,
and you have minimized what you can do with the whole group
because you are sort of dealing with the lowest common
denominator in a sense. Okay, these students who didn't have
access, we have to help them, we have to bring them along, less
time to spend on those who had access.
And if I can, for a moment----
Mr. STAUBER. Go ahead.
Mr. JOHNSON. Chair Golden, you asked the question about
bandwidth and what is necessary. One thing I will point out is
the FCC defines 25 meg down and 3 meg up. I think it is that
``up'' part that is problematic, especially for businesses, for
healthcare. That piece is important if you are going to do
healthcare monitoring. It is important if you are going to be
able to upload your videos and your files and so on. So I will
just add that piece to your question about that.
Sorry, Representative Stauber.
Mr. STAUBER. Thank you, Mr. Johnson.
Mr. Carlson, you talked about the healthcare. So I was on
the County Board of Commissioners and the Community Health
Board, and we talked about the telehealth, how important it is.
For instance, you talked about the mental health initiative
going across the country. In northern Minnesota, if you don't
have the ability to connect, that means that a law enforcement
officer who brought the individual in who was a danger to
themselves or others would have to travel all the way to
downtown Duluth, which takes him or her out of their district,
when they could get that high-speed connectivity in their
location and the doctor can interact over Skype or over the
monitor, which is going to save literally hundreds or even
thousands of dollars even for one trip. So I was very well
aware of that.
So when you talk about connectivity for the seniors, you
talk about mental health. Can you tell us how important it is
for those seniors that you are taking care of, living in their
home, how important it is to connect to their children, their
grandchildren, what that does for their mental health?
Mr. CARLSON. Yes. Thank you. It goes back to an earlier
point that I made where Kaiser Health had indicated in their
data that it is really just the 10 percent of healthcare that
is driven by our health system, and it is the rest of it that
involves the quality of life. So that kind of connectivity, a
soft kind of a thing, being able to connect with family,
grandchildren and so forth, it improves one's well-being, their
sense of purpose, improves the quality of life, keeps them more
engaged, and the effects from that is really the bulk of what
really produces good health.
Mr. STAUBER. And I think that is important to note. We are
not talking a lot about that part of the quality of life. I
just want to share with you and the audience members that when
my wife was deployed, having the ability for my kids to see mom
over Skype was huge, and you talk about the mental health,
being able to see mom, and this goes across the country. So if
we hadn't had that opportunity, it would have been a much
more--it was tougher for me, but I am talking when you get back
to the seniors, I think it is so important that they connect.
When they are able to see their grandkids or siblings or
relatives over the Skype or being able to connect with them
right away, I think that is so important. That is part of the
healthcare that we don't see because that is the quality of
life that is important.
Mr. CARLSON. Representative Stauber?
Mr. STAUBER. Go ahead.
Mr. CARLSON. Just an additional comment to that. In my
experience, what I have seen with older adults, they shy away
from anything--you know, the technology. But it is that one
thing, the idea of connecting with family, that drives them to
learn how to use the Internet.
Mr. STAUBER. My parents are in their mid-80s and just
starting to send videos to the grandkids now, so they can do
it, for sure.
Mr. Crescenzo, one question for you. You made a statement
that you would not locate here if you had it to do over again
because of the lack of Internet and the quality of the high
speed; is that correct?
Mr. CRESCENZO. I feel like it is important to note that at
this stage in this business, it is required. When we initially
located here, it was to raise kids, it was to do what is
affordable. Now we are in a different, bigger ball game, so we
need this bandwidth to really flourish with this business. And
if we were to do it over again, where we are at now, we
couldn't do it here.
Mr. STAUBER. And those of us who represent rural Minnesota,
rural America, that hits right to the--that hurts to hear you
say that, but that is the truth. And that is exactly why we are
here, to make sure that the people that want the quality of
life outside in rural Minnesota, rural America, can have that
opportunity.
Mr. Artz, you talked about in your real estate business--
and this will be my last question. You talked about in your
real estate business the ability to--that first question, is it
connected to the Internet or not. A house that is worth
$250,000 connected to the Internet or one that is not, how
quick of a sale is it to connect? Like right now?
Mr. ARTZ. Yes, it is night and day, and it is really not a
matter of value. It is a matter of they don't want the house if
they can't connect, because people don't want to go through
what he does. I mean, they don't want to deal with that. They
see that as not an option for the kids anymore, and themselves.
So, yes, absolutely. Two equal houses, the value is night and
day difference, and it doesn't mean if it is $10,000 less they
will buy it, because they won't. It is amazing that that has
become so prevalent, because when some of us older people grew
up, we had books and we never had any of that stuff. I used to
carry coins in my car to go to the pay phone, where today it is
just a reality of life now.
Mr. STAUBER. Was the pay phone a dime or a quarter?
Mr. ARTZ. Well, a dime.
[Laughter.]
Mr. STAUBER. Me, too.
Mr. ARTZ. But a little later the quarters, yes, so you
always carried those.
I mean, I could never imagine the technology that we have
today, but this is electricity back in the day that our parents
or grandparents were----
Mr. STAUBER. I can tell you every realtor that I talked to
would answer that with the same passion you just had. It is the
Internet that makes the difference, so I appreciate your
comments.
Mr. Chair, I yield back.
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you, sir.
With that, we will recognize Congresswoman Craig.
Mrs. CRAIG. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
My name is Angie Craig. I represent Minnesota's 2nd
Congressional District. That is essentially southeastern
Minnesota. About half of my district geographically is actually
greater Minnesota. So having grown up in rural Minnesota, or
having grown up in rural America, it is so critical that we
start to make these investments, and I feel really, really
lucky to serve both on the House Committee on Small Business as
well as the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee with
Congressman Pete Stauber. He and I have been working together
on some things we care deeply about, and it is great to be in
your congressional district.
I know a little bit about your district, Mr. Artz. As you
were saying, you were talking about just two or three miles out
of North Branch. We have a cabin about eight miles out of North
Branch, and I can't tell you how many times we have had to pack
up the cabin early so the boys could get back to Eagan and turn
their homework in or get their homework done. So that
particularly resonated with me.
My background is I worked in two healthcare manufacturing
companies before I represented Minnesota 2, and I now own a
little part of a small business just outside of my district. So
this is just a critical conversation that we are having, and I
know Pete and I have said that any infrastructure package we do
has got to prioritize investment in high-speed Internet in
rural America because at the end of the day, every American
deserves the freedom to have an opportunity to earn a good life
where you want to live, and many of these communities are dying
because we haven't made that investment.
So thank you for being here, and everything I have heard
here is exactly what you would hear if you were down in
southeastern Minnesota in my congressional district.
Mr. Carlson and Mr. Johnson, I spent, again, over 20 years
working in healthcare, and I want to apologize first because
when I leave, when I am done, I have to go back to my district
to talk about healthcare on a panel right after this. But you
talked about mental health in rural areas, and you also talked
about, which I love, moving away from this fee-for-service pay
system, and how being able to move to an outcomes-based system
depends on the ability to have telemedicine in rural areas.
So, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Carlson, talk a little bit more
about each of those topics.
Mr. CARLSON. When I hear the news locally and nationally,
the issue of addiction, the opioid crisis and what not, when I
speak with law enforcement people and the challenges that they
face, whether it is traffic issues or intervention in family
issues, whatever the case might be, the need to intervene in a
meaningful way is really critical. But many people who are
isolated out in the community, they might go in for treatment,
and once they finish treatment they are back into that home
environment where maybe it is a toxic environment, or whatever
the case might be.
I certainly am not an expert on that end, but I do know
that the ability to maintain some connection--and I know there
is technology that can help with that. There are programs.
There are ways of checking in and so forth. But in helping
people move further away from their addiction or their mental
health issue, that period of time is critical. If it is just
simply a discharge from a treatment program and then they are
back home or back to wherever their living situation is and
there is not the ability to have a robust follow-up kind of a
program, the likelihood of a repeat of that kind of behavior is
significant, much higher.
Mrs. CRAIG. Thank you. I know in my district, sometimes you
have to drive 30 or 40 miles just to get to the closest follow-
up or preventive health, and the ability to do that via
telemedicine would just be critical.
Mr. Johnson?
Mr. JOHNSON. Sure. Thank you, Representative Craig. In the
schools we have mental health issues with our students as well,
and of course we lose many students in the United States to
suicide and other things related to mental health, so it is a
huge issue.
There are a number of things involving telehealth within
the mental health community that would help. Some of our
counselors and mental health professionals in the schools would
or could, because again sometimes you have to share them, small
rural districts, you have to share these staff among districts,
and then that involves travel time for them to get back and
forth, and technology can play a role in that, and high-speed
Internet in terms of having a telehealth meeting with those
students in a different school building if you are a shared
staff person. I think there is a lot of opportunity for that,
and there is opportunity to extend that further to the home if
at home they have that same access. So I think that is an
important thing.
I will go back also to what I said about upload speeds. If
you are going to have that kind of connection with somebody at
home, you need the upload speed to make that happen, or if you
are going to have monitoring, or if you are going to provide
services, whether that is mental health or other healthcare
services to people at home, you have to have that other side of
it. Download is great; upload is what you really need for me to
be seen on the other end.
Mrs. CRAIG. Absolutely. What else would, from a small
business perspective, help you if we were to invest in around
that? I mean, we are talking about transportation and
infrastructure as well. Is it just high-speed Internet? Is it
highways, roads, bridges? Any thoughts there?
Mr. CRESCENZO. That is a tough one. I really have to
consider the brevity of the entire roads, bridges. We are in a
rural area, so we are between major lanes of transport, between
the Twin Cities and Hudson and access to the great state of
Wisconsin. So we look at what would benefit our business. The
only thing holding us back here is a go-for-it. We don't need
much more than an okay from the county and high-speed Internet,
but we may be an exception.
Mrs. CRAIG. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Crescenzo, and thank you for sharing your
beautiful family with us here today.
Mr. CRESCENZO. Thank you very much.
Mrs. CRAIG. Thank you.
I yield back, Mr. Chair.
Mr. ARTZ. Can I make one last comment on what you said?
With the Internet, what I wonder is what is being missed. When
we provide that Internet to everyone, I think it is going to
unleash the entrepreneurial creative spirit of America that
must be massive untapped talent out there.
Mr. STAUBER. I call that unleashing the economic engine of
Minnesota's 8th Congressional District.
Chairman GOLDEN. Congressman Hagedorn?
Mr. HAGEDORN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a
pleasure to be here. I appreciate you holding this hearing. It
is good to see Congresswoman Craig, our colleague from
Minnesota; and last but certainly not least, my good friend
Pete Stauber. Mr. Ranking Member, thank you for suggesting this
venue. It is an honor to serve with all of you in Congress and
be working on the Small Business Committee to try to move
things along here in rural Minnesota.
I grew up on a grain and livestock farm down in Truman,
Minnesota. Actually, the 1st District that I represent is most
of southern Minnesota, all the way from South Dakota to
Wisconsin, and then Iowa up about 80 miles. The little town
that I grew up in used to be a hopping place--three grocery
stores, seven gas stations, and on it goes. It is still about
1,000 people, but there is not much of that going on.
Times have changed, and rural America has been squeezed for
many decades now, and we have been under pressure, especially
hearing about the last six or seven years, low commodity prices
in agriculture, high input costs, and you need fewer and fewer
people with all our mechanization and technology to work the
land. Where I come from, if agriculture suffers, so does our
district.
But we also have other interests, small business interests
that are very important, medical interests. We have awesome
rural hospitals in southern Minnesota, and then there is that
clinic you may have heard of, the Mayo Clinic, which is in our
district.
And then up here you have interests like mining. I
appreciate what the Ranking Member has been doing, and his
predecessor for that matter, to bring mining back, have those
good-paying jobs, and to create opportunities in rural
Minnesota. Pete, you have my support on that, whatever you need
to move that forward.
But let's be honest, if we don't have people living in
these areas, it doesn't really matter what industries we have,
we are still going to suffer. And some of that is quality of
life, as you have talked about, to make sure that we can
attract people, keep people, want people to be in our rural
communities. A lot of that is just infrastructure. Do we have
good roads, good bridges? Do we have sewer and water?
A long time ago in the rural areas, they went in with the
RA and made sure we had electricity, and this case is no
different. This is an infrastructure issue, it is a quality of
life issue, and if we don't have it, we are going to suffer. It
is going to be very difficult for our folks to keep those
communities sustained and vibrant, which is one of my
priorities.
I will ask Mr. Carlson, when we talked a little bit about
telemedicine, I think that is an emerging area. The Department
of Agriculture has some sort of standard, the 10 megabits per
second versus 1, and you are saying you have to have at least 3
in order to do just face-to-face conversations. Is that true?
Mr. CARLSON. Well, as it relates to technical questions, I
am not the person you want to ask that question. Maybe Mr.
Johnson can----
Mr. HAGEDORN. Well, is there anyone here who can--the
standard that Agriculture has I don't think is going to be
conducive. Bill Eckles, who heads up Bevcomm in my home town, a
telecommunications company, said 25 and 3, which is what you
talked about, seems to make more sense. That is what we should
be building towards and spending our money towards. Is that----
Mr. JOHNSON. Thanks, Representative Hagedorn, for the
question. The previous--like some of the CAF programs, the
Connect America Fund programs, where they had a 10 megabit
down, 1 megabit up, that 1 doesn't do you much, especially if
you are trying to do--well, it won't do a video conversation
very well at all. So that productivity piece of the upload
speed, 1 is pretty inadequate.
Twenty-five/3 is what the FCC has more defined as
broadband, and that is better. I would argue that you need 5 to
10 up when you get into the business world. I would think you
would have to have that. Again, that is my opinion, right? I
think you have to have that kind of speed, or better. And if
you are dealing with very large files, CAD files, things like
that, then upload speed even has to go a little bit more.
Mr. HAGEDORN. Okay. I bring this up to take a little bit of
a sidestep issue, and that is in the area of telemedicine. I am
somebody who supports the concept, for instance, that our
veterans should be able to choose their own doctors and
hospitals, that our veterans should have the choice of the VA
system, if that works, but if they fall through the cracks, let
them go find their own doctors and hospitals.
But particularly in the area of mental health, when we have
so many veterans, unfortunately, committing suicide, we have
backlogs at the VA, getting mental health services, it seems
like this telemedicine concept would really be helpful there,
especially if they could see somebody face to face, talk to a
mental health provider, and do that almost instantaneously
where the government would back that up. A lot of our veterans
live in rural areas, and they don't have access to these types
of things now.
So don't you think that would be beneficial, the concept? I
am not going to have you support my policy, but the concept of
that.
Mr. CARLSON. I live in the City of Cambridge. I live a
block-and-a-half from the hospital. If I need to make an
appointment--if I have any issue that comes up, I need to make
an appointment. So I call the medical center, I make an
appointment. That way, now I can do it online. But I need to go
physically to that location only a block-and-a-half away, when
oftentimes through technology I could get some kind of
response, whether it is through video conferencing or whatever
the case might be.
We have 900 personnel employed at our local medical center.
But if you need service, you have to go there. The further you
are out into the rural parts of the county, the further you
have to travel, and the more work it takes to get there. So
whether you are a veteran or anybody else that needs any
services, you go to that location.
I think that through telehealth, the opportunity is there
to really turn that over. You talked about how it has flipped
in education, and I think this is the same kind of thing. We
need to flip that paradigm so that services are made available
to people where they are at, versus having to come to this
place, which honestly is not open 24 hours a day other than
maybe the emergency room, and that is going to be more costly.
So oftentimes I think there is opportunity to save a lot of
dollars, too.
Mr. HAGEDORN. In this case you might have access 24 hours a
day. You could have people sitting on the other side of a
computer or phone or whatever to do these things.
I would just like to thank the witnesses for your
testimony, everyone for being here, for holding the hearing. I
see good friends like Senator Koran here, and I think we from
Minnesota are prepared to work with our governor, our state
legislature, in order to help this in any way possible.
My parting statement is that rural America has been
overlooked for far too long, and we are working real hard to
turn that around, and I am pleased to work with my colleagues
on a bipartisan basis to make that happen. Thank you very much.
Chairman GOLDEN. I want to thank you all once again. I
think this has been a pretty productive conversation overall.
We take a lot of notes, and really I think a big part of the
job is getting out into your communities and listening,
bringing the feedback back home, back down to Washington I
should say.
In case you can't tell, I am a little bit obsessed with
this idea of the FCC mapping of this issue and how it really
doesn't get it. It drives me insane. Even when we talk about 25
down, 3 up, you have this drilled into my head now, what I hear
a lot of people talk about, and I am sure that this is the case
in this community as well, is yeah, sure, we have that, we have
25 down, 3 up, if you want to wait until 11:00 p.m. at night or
something along those lines, right? But then once everyone in
the community figures that out, all of a sudden that is a
problem too.
That is just not good for business right there. You don't
want to have to be coming into the shop at 11:00 p.m. at night.
You need it when you need it.
A big part of you all to understand, I think these days
members of Congress are always encouraged to try and do the
thing that gets the headlines, and that is usually introducing
legislation, passing bills, getting press. But a good boss of
mine, Senator Susan Collins from Maine, who I worked for years
ago, taught me that a big part of the job is oversight. It is
not as attractive and exciting, but that is where the real work
gets done. If you all have ever seen that picture of an
iceberg, just the tip of it, and then underneath it is just
this massive thing, I think that is really what the job is.
So I know that we are all going to--I think actually you
may have signed a letter as well, sir, and Angie Craig, the
Small Business Committee to the FCC to keep pushing them to get
more accurate mapping. It is probably unrealistic to expect
that bureaucracy to be able to get into every community to do
it themselves, so maybe there is some solution at the local
level where we do the mapping and pass it on to them. But it
has a big impact, I think, on our ability to get broadband out
into rural communities.
But just very quickly in closing I would say I think we
have come upon a time where we see the current trend is people
flowing into more urban areas, and every now and then I think,
whether it is electricity or now broadband, there is a
technology gap that develops that will push that kind of a
trend. But if all things were equal, rural America offers a
better standard of living in the opinion of a lot of folks, and
when we equalize things then it will correct itself and all of
a sudden we will see people flowing or wanting to flow back out
into rural areas, and I suppose the question is do we want to?
Just kidding. We always welcome new people.
So thank you for welcoming me here to your community for
this hearing. If you want to have a closing statement, we are
doing it a little different. Normally we would just say, all
right, we are done, and we will submit closing statements for
the record. But I am in your community, and if you want to wrap
it up, then I will leave it to you, sir.
Mr. STAUBER. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Before you gavel us
down, I would like to make a closing statement.
To the witnesses, thank you for being here and sharing your
expertise. It helps us make decisions. For me, making sure, as
Congressman Hagedorn talked about, making sure that rural
America matters. You talk about the rural schools, they matter.
Your businesses matter.
I have been pushing not only the Transportation and
Infrastructure Committee but the Small Business Committee to
make sure that living in rural America has a great upside. You
talk about the standard of living, we need to make sure that
those little footsteps that you heard a couple of minutes ago,
those children with sandals, that if they want to stay right
here in this community, they can stay here and live, work,
play, recreate, raise a family in rural America, rural
Minnesota.
So this whole conversation we are having today is extremely
important, that we can bring it back to the other committee
members.
I will say this, that the elephant in the room is, of
course, the money, right? But I want to end with this: At some
point in this nation's history, our government decided that
everybody would receive United States mail. At some point,
every mailbox mattered. Think about that. Think about that for
a minute.
We have to make the investment. We have to make the
investment, and is it going to be to the price point that we
can attain? The answer is yes. When we put our minds together
in the Federal Government and local, make it local, we can do a
lot of great things. As Senator Koran told me--we spoke about
it before the meeting--we can work to make this investment. I
want the states and the local communities to have the input. I
don't want the input and the forcing from Washington. I want to
make sure that we in the Small Business Committee and the
Subcommittee work to invest, put forth that money, and the
experts in the field can deploy it. The experts in the
legislative process in St. Paul can make the difference.
With that, thank you again to the witnesses. Thank you to
the audience members. We so much appreciate you being here.
Congressman Hagedorn, thanks for your time. Chairman Golden, I
really appreciate you coming to the great state of Minnesota,
and I yield back.
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you very much.
And with that, I would ask unanimous consent that members
have 5 legislative days to submit statements and supporting
materials for the record.
Without objection, so ordered.
There being no further business to come before the
Committee, we are adjourned.
Thank you very much.
VOICE. Can I just make a statement?
Chairman GOLDEN. Sure, why not?
VOICE. [Inaudible.]
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you. Well said.
[Applause.]
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you, everyone. I appreciate your
attendance.
[Whereupon, at 11:31 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[all]
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Velazquez, Nydia M. | V000081 | 8073 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | NY | 116 | 1184 |
| Chabot, Steve | C000266 | 8091 | H | R | COMMMEMBER | OH | 116 | 186 |
| Chu, Judy | C001080 | 7837 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | CA | 116 | 1970 |
| Schneider, Bradley Scott | S001190 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | IL | 116 | 2124 | |
| Veasey, Marc A. | V000131 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | TX | 116 | 2166 | |
| Kelly, Trent | K000388 | H | R | COMMMEMBER | MS | 116 | 2294 | |
| Evans, Dwight | E000296 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | PA | 116 | 2298 | |
| Espaillat, Adriano | E000297 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | NY | 116 | 2342 | |
| Balderson, Troy | B001306 | H | R | COMMMEMBER | OH | 116 | 2370 | |
| Hern, Kevin | H001082 | H | R | COMMMEMBER | OK | 116 | 2372 | |
| Crow, Jason | C001121 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | CO | 116 | 2385 | |
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| Finkenauer, Abby | F000467 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | IA | 116 | 2394 | |
| Davids, Sharice | D000629 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | KS | 116 | 2403 | |
| Hagedorn, Jim | H001088 | H | R | COMMMEMBER | MN | 116 | 2411 | |
| Craig, Angie | C001119 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | MN | 116 | 2412 | |
| Stauber, Pete | S001212 | H | R | COMMMEMBER | MN | 116 | 2415 | |
| Kim, Andy | K000394 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | NJ | 116 | 2420 | |
| Delgado, Antonio | D000630 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | NY | 116 | 2428 | |
| Houlahan, Chrissy | H001085 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | PA | 116 | 2433 | |
| Joyce, John | J000302 | H | R | COMMMEMBER | PA | 116 | 2435 | |
| Burchett, Tim | B001309 | H | R | COMMMEMBER | TN | 116 | 2440 | |
| Golden, Jared F. | G000592 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | ME | 116 | 2469 |
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