From Zero to 600 Million: Tackling Broadband Development In Kansas - Episode 605 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

Jade Piros de Carvalho (00:07):
Ending the digital divide is such a multi-headed monster, right? You have to understand that there are so many barriers to these deployments and then start attacking them one by one, like Whack-a-Mole.

Christopher Mitchell (00:19):
Welcome to another Community Broadband Bits podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, and I'm here with [00:00:30] Jade Piros de Carvalho. Welcome to the show.

Jade Piros de Carvalho (00:34):
Thank you, Chris. Thanks for having me.

Christopher Mitchell (00:36):
You were until recently the head of the Kansas Office of Broadband Development. There's been a LinkedIn post, and rather than spoiling it and asking people to hang on, we are not going to explain what happened. We know that simply that you have let go of that position and you are in your post. You talked about the perils and scrutiny of the office, and we want to talk about [00:01:00] public sector work and some of that today.

Jade Piros de Carvalho (01:02):
Okay, sounds good. Let's do it.

Christopher Mitchell (01:05):
So I'm excited. You're one of the people that I feel like is more than 50 because of the states DC and then the territories who are responsible for enacting a historic amount of investment into broadband. And so I want to get a sense of what it was like when you found out that you were being asked to be the head of this new [00:01:30] Kansas office of broadband development.

Jade Piros de Carvalho (01:32):
I still think it's the best job in the country. I mean, it was really thrilling because I had worked in the industry specifically on the rural broadband expansion side for some time, and people had been talking about the issue for many, many years, but we finally had the money to actually solve the problem. So to be put in a position was really thrilling to me and slightly terrifying because it was a real [00:02:00] zero to 60 expectation. We were in office of one delivering on a $5 million state program, and within two years we ramped up to being responsible for more than 600 million in grants across multiple different federal agencies, state programs, all with different guidelines. So yeah, it was definitely a heavy lift, but really exciting. I mean, I [00:02:30] feel like it's real legacy building work. If you do it, you solve. In my instance, I would help to solve the problem for Kansans and then that would reverberate over the next several decades and really help uplift households and communities. So it was a huge honor. Honestly,

Christopher Mitchell (02:50):
When we're talking to people that are trying to figure this out at the local level, we often say that the decisions that are being made right now will determine the kinds [00:03:00] of networks that the children of children who are not yet born will use. This is truly, these decisions are momentous,

Jade Piros de Carvalho (03:08):
And I think that was what I found most exciting about this opportunity is that it was a real bottom up community driven solution type of conversation versus some of the programs in the past which were kind of top down and really taught us that it's not enough to throw money at this problem. You have to engage with the people you want to serve [00:03:30] and involve them in the solutions. So that was something I really enjoyed in my other kind of public sector life as an elected. And it was really cool to kind of merge my worlds of problem solving in the public sphere on the elected side, the local government side and my broadband industry experience. And it just seemed like perfect role for me and it was a fun ride, really was.

Christopher Mitchell (03:57):
So what was your broadband experience when you [00:04:00] were tapped to lead the office?

Jade Piros de Carvalho (04:01):
So I was with a fiber clec, a fiber over builder in a rural community of about 1100 that basically focused on fiber to the home in areas that were CenturyLink type areas that had not been invested in and didn't have any viable options other than maybe they even only had geo satellite [00:04:30] if they didn't have CenturyLink. And so we really worked in these super hard to reach spaces. I was brought on in the second iteration of this company when there were only about 15 people. And so I did, I wore a lot of hats. I did all the sales and marketing efforts, public relations. As the company grew, I grew into more of a government affairs and a policy focused role. So really learned a lot and enjoyed that quite a bit. Would probably not have [00:05:00] left, had Lieutenant Governor called and asked me to. So have really, really loved every job I've ever had, but that is where I cut my teeth in the industry and learned more about the problem. And

Christopher Mitchell (05:12):
I think that background is so helpful for coming into an office like this where I feel like I've talked to other people who've had a similar backgrounds and you know what it's like to be a small company building fiber. You have a sense, I think of the industry positions that although I would disagree [00:05:30] with a CenturyLink or an at t, a lot of the time, they're not wrong about everything. And so you're familiar with that, and so I feel like you're able to sit in meetings and not feel intimidated or you don't know what you're talking about.

Jade Piros de Carvalho (05:45):
Yeah, and I appreciate that because I did feel a level of confidence that I think I could only come from being in the trenches and being taught how to splice fiber on my first day on the job and understanding [00:06:00] truck rolls and permitting issues and all these OSP issues and the holistic view of what it takes to get this job done because this is really ending. The digital divide is such a multi-headed monster. You can't just throw money. Like I said, you have to understand that there are so many barriers to these deployments and then start attacking them one by one, like Whack-a-Mole. So it's not enough to build a sub-grant process that incentivizes [00:06:30] participation. You also have to work with the local communities to help them understand what they might be doing to incent. And you have to work with the state to have better right away policies, and you have to work with federal policy makers and Congress people to enact policies that are going to facilitate this. It is not just here's the money handed out, solve the problem. And I don't think I would've fully understood that had I not had any kind of experience in the deployment space. [00:07:00] So feel very lucky for that and felt like it really served Kansas well in the office. Well,

Christopher Mitchell (07:05):
And then you find yourself at the head of the broadband office, which as you said is you initially and you're preparing to distribute a rather large sum of money at some point. I'm assuming you have to start collecting staff, but what was it like? What were the first tasks that you had to tackle when you took over the office? I

Jade Piros de Carvalho (07:27):
Was hired in June, 2022, [00:07:30] so a month after the BEAD NOFO was released, I knew I had to build a staff. I knew I had to get the next month a federal grant deadline for BEAD planning fund or de planning funds. And then the next month, another federal grant deadline, and then the next month if I wanted to go after Middle Mile, another federal grant deadline, and it was just kind of in a weird space for Kansas. So I had [00:08:00] no procurement vehicle because they were changing the procurement policy. So I couldn't even get consultants. So no, not really staff, no consultants. But despite all that, my first thought on day one is I got to get CPF out the door because I wanted to knock out some high cost areas. We did a sliding skill model and I wanted to have that in the rear view when BEAD came. And so started building relationships with treasury and was lucky enough to get my program plan approved the next month and get that money out the door by the end of the year.

Christopher Mitchell (08:29):
That's the capital [00:08:30] project fund for people who are not living this 24/7,

Jade Piros de Carvalho (08:35):
The alphabet soup is real.

Christopher Mitchell (08:38):
Those are funds that the Treasury department distributed as part of the rescue plan, and they were the most flexible dollars. And so you developed a plan that it was approved by treasury and then you could go and distribute them?

Jade Piros de Carvalho (08:48):
Exactly, yes. So that sub-grant process was done that summer and fall and then just started knocking off those deadlines one at a time, was able to hire two people [00:09:00] I think several months later, but before the end of the year, and then finally able to get some consultancy help in January of 23. So it was just take it one step at a time.

Christopher Mitchell (09:13):
These are not eight hour days with you going home and relaxing with a family, right?

Jade Piros de Carvalho (09:18):
No, I slept three hours a night for so many months, and that's why I'm so grateful for the staff and the team I was able to build because that's not sustainable and I credit them [00:09:30] for the brief longevity I had in that office.

Christopher Mitchell (09:34):
I think that that's just worth repeating Now. You getting, that's the work. And this is something that we talked about in the Connect This! show. I've talked about it before. Those are the hours that during the season, football coaches and basketball coaches sleep for the big universities, and they are making sometimes more than 10 million, oftentimes many millions of dollars. You are receiving the same salary as someone who probably is putting in 10 or 12 [00:10:00] hour days and has a much more reasonable work-life balance. So I assume that you're just running on adrenaline and the fact that you just see that this is so important to get done.

Jade Piros de Carvalho (10:09):
Exactly. The alternative is to not get it done. And I didn't see that as an alternative. I took this mandate seriously and knew that it was going to have to take an extraordinary effort and putting the resources in place over time, but I didn't see a way around [00:10:30] going that hard and that fast and working hours like that. And I think I'm not unique in that perspective. I look now even today at states like North Dakota and led by Brian or Alabama led by Maureen, and they have skeletal crews. They have maybe two or three people if that, and I don't know how they're doing it. Kansas has 10 surrounding states like Colorado, Missouri, Oklahoma I think have 20, [00:11:00] which is a much better position. But I'm, I'm just grateful I was able to build up my team at all because some states don't allow for the addition of FTEs and I just dunno how it works.

Christopher Mitchell (11:12):
Well, it's wild to me, and this came up in our most recent show with Blair Levin. He made a comment that I chose not to follow up at the time, but about how this is a dynamic of the states of a snake. I always think of it as a hamster moving through a snake, but people think that's horrible. But the snake, [00:11:30] which is the offices are ramping up, they're going to spend the federal dollars, they're going to ramp down. I am assuming that even if states are not anticipating it, there will be broadband related work to do for many years, certainly for the rest of the decade. I would expect.

Jade Piros de Carvalho (11:45):
I agree with you, everyone thinks these are just going to dissolve, but there will be, for one, we know that the maps are inaccurate and are painting a picture that we won't have the truth about until after this money is spent and people are calling [00:12:00] up and saying, where's my broadband? We also know that things like we were lucky enough to be awarded a mail mile grant. This is the first open access middle mile network Kansas has. We need some infrastructure in place, long-term to manage that, especially on just getting uptake on the network and those relationships. Those might be 20 year irus. We hadn't figured all that out, but you can't just pull support [00:12:30] maybe after the period of performance, the Department of Transportation or somebody else picks it up, but you can't not have a person managing that. And also remember that some parts of the state will not be priority broadband projects or they won't be getting fiber.

(12:48):
And so those parts, if you're not choosing very selective next generation wireless, and even if you are seven to 10 years, you may need additional investment [00:13:00] in those spaces. And this is not a one and done program. And also what's going to happen with USF and how does that impact the long-term operational viability of some of these networks? And if companies go bust, what does that mean for the future of broadband? So it would be nice to treat this as a technical problem instead of an adaptive one and just check mark it off. But I don't think that that's what we're going to see. It's not like [00:13:30] we don't have water problems to this day or electricity infrastructure issues to this day, and those problems were solved long ago.

Christopher Mitchell (13:40):
I am curious about the mapping situation. You mentioned it. I talk about it all the time. When I was recently in Montana, I was at an event and a person related to the state there was talking about the deep frustration that in the case of Montana, they had previously built their own maps with light box. [00:14:00] They thought those were quite accurate. They had to toss those out the window in order to deal with the federal data, which they said was much less accurate. And so I'm just curious if you want to share anything about the experience of, it seems like mapping has taken over the state offices in some ways, and I don't know how it went in Kansas, but I'm curious if you want to reflect on that at all.

Jade Piros de Carvalho (14:20):
I do think it's easy to armchair quarterback this attempt by the federal government to do a very difficult thing. I mean, I think we can [00:14:30] all agree that the maps are a lot more accurate, and getting from a census block level to a location level was a huge undertaking. So props to them, none of it matters if we don't fix the underlying problem of just allowing for advertised speeds to be the truth. And so what we found from this latest version is that we were able to identify some [00:15:00] patterns that we found maybe inaccurate in the wireless space. And so I think I may have put on LinkedIn lies and lies, but I also reached out directly to the FCC and let's work through this. Let's have conversations and something isn't adding up and these designations are changing. Another thing we've really noticed with the maps and has also been pointed out by our provider community is that the non BSLs [00:15:30] that are still showing up such as rocks or dilapidated shacks that we have to account for in the final proposal, we were really happy with the solution we came up with in Kansas to account for those.

(15:43):
But I think that we continue to see that as an issue. So I mean, we'll get there one day, maybe in 10 years, but this money will be long gone by the time we do.

Christopher Mitchell (15:56):
I just had a vision of the state having a [00:16:00] application form for any rock that would like to request low earth orbit satellite service, and then you can deal with it when those applications come in. My

Jade Piros de Carvalho (16:08):
Gosh, geez.

Christopher Mitchell (16:11):
So one of the things that, as I had said, you talked about the perils and scrutiny of the office, and this is something that really leads into what's been something that I've watched both professionally and then in my personal life and talking with my wife about people [00:16:30] that she's worked with in the city of Minneapolis, the state of Minnesota, where I feel like, and actually this even goes back to I interned over a summer at OSHA in Oregon. That building had a second story outdoor seating area that the architects had put in or whatever. And my recollection, which could be wrong, but it was that nobody ate out there because they didn't want to deal with the person calling in to be like, I'm not paying those [00:17:00] people to sit outside on that nice balcony and eat. So when you're in public office, you open yourself up to that.

(17:06):
And so there's two aspects of this at least that I want to cover. I think one is the fact that you then have to deal with people that are saying all kinds of things, some of which might be accurate, some of which are certainly inaccurate, and just dealing with the criticism that comes with that. And then we'll roll into the second thing, which is I think what I would say the mining of people's goodwill and energy that sometimes comes along as well. So how is [00:17:30] it dealing with the fact that you are working for a company, building a fiber network, dealing with marketing and stuff like that, and all the things that come along with it, and then suddenly you're a target for a million people who want to be critical of one thing or another thing.

Jade Piros de Carvalho (17:45):
It's not, I would say the most fun aspect of the job. I had experience 10 years on council, three terms as mayor, so I was in that spot, but I wasn't responsible [00:18:00] for more than half a billion dollars. So the stakes are a little bit different. And there's a lot of talk about how cutthroat the corporate world is, and it can be, but you have a boss or maybe two or three bosses, you don't have 3 million bosses, which is population of Kansas. And so there's so much tension and anxiety around that, and I think it leads to this kind of closing down. We all want [00:18:30] government to be as transparent as possible, but you're forced to balance that transparency with guardedness, and it's just this kind of cspo of mistrust, and I think it hinders progress. And so I try to cut through all the noise, be as authentic and transparent as possible, and I still think that's the right way to get problem solved. If you have [00:19:00] a disagreement, you lay it on the line, you discuss it. But so many people are fearful of doing that. And so we just kind of dance around the edges and hope nobody's going to sue each other and we get something done. Yeah, it's really rough and it's harder on some than others. Like I said, I had a pretty thick skin that I've developed

Christopher Mitchell (19:24):
As a mayor. I always say this, if you, especially to be a multi-term mayor, [00:19:30] there has to be something different about you with thick skin because let's just assume for a second that you're the perfect mayor and every decision that you have made has been the right one for the betterment of the community for people to live more fulfilled lives. You're still every day going to be confronted with someone being like, you got that wrong, and I hate you because I'm like this. I dunno, am I exaggerating it? It seems like you're setting yourself up for constant criticism.

Jade Piros de Carvalho (19:54):
Oh, absolutely. And I was like, by no means perfect mayor. I made so many mistakes, [00:20:00] especially early on when I had no idea what I was doing. But yeah, and I mean, I was on the opposite political party of my community and got elected three times. I think it was because people knew what you see is what you get. But yeah, I think a lot of people are unhappy and will project that on whoever they see as a person in authority, or I'm not responsible for my unhappiness, [00:20:30] or You're making my life awful. And it can be ugly at times, but the difference is when you're on the local level, these are people you see every day in the grocery store, and they're not just keyboard warriors or people in another state trying to take you down. Yeah, similar. I'm glad I had that experience because I work with some people who are much younger than me, and the injustice of it all really bothers them, and it bothers me too, but [00:21:00] at the end of the day, I know I'm doing my best to do what's right, and so people can say what they want.

(21:07):
My boss used to say, the dogs bark, but the caravan rolls on. And I tried to keep that in my mind because I always felt really funny and helpful.

Christopher Mitchell (21:19):
But then, I mean to the extent that you were in a good position and you've said that you made a comment and by the end of the day you were forced to do an interview with me, you lost [00:21:30] your job.

Jade Piros de Carvalho (21:31):
That's the good part. Yeah.

(21:34):
Well, I mean, yeah, I think I've been reflecting on it a lot, but I think although this was boiled down to one comment, the greater issue is that I'm a bit of a firebrand, and you can't really have that in the public sector because you have to be able, leadership has to be able to control the narrative and know what's going to happen. Because I think I put maybe people on [00:22:00] their tiptoes, and so I get it, I it that I don't fit the mold again of what someone in the public sector should look like or behave like, but I think it's the way forward. I think that we have to be bolder. We have to be more outspoken about what it's going to take to enact change and help impact people's lives positively. Also, I'm [00:22:30] appointed and I don't have any self job protections, and I'm going to right to work state even if I was not appointed. So that's kind of what you sign up for. I've had so many people reach out and they're like, oh, I don't know if I want to apply for this or that. And I'm like, don't let it. We need good people, Chris.

Christopher Mitchell (22:52):
We need, right. That's what I was just going to say. So I was just looking up our name quick, and I've talked about her before, but Jennifer Polka wrote a great [00:23:00] book. I think it was called Recoding America or Recode America or something like that I think was, she was involved with digital, very many things were digital government and that sort of thing. The book was wonderful. I both listened to podcasts about it, and then I actually read the book in it, she talks about a government employee who says, or may have been a contractor who said, if my boss, or if our contract says to build a concrete boat, I build a concrete boat if it sinks when it sinks because concrete boats [00:23:30] will not float. That's not my job, my job. And there's this caricature of a public employee as being someone who keeps their head down and just works the bureaucracy.

(23:40):
That has not been my experience with a lot of folks. Now, what has been my experience is that there's a lot of good people in government, and then when the government shuts down for a few weeks, a lot of those good people are like, I just can't take this anymore. All the problems that come with it, I'm going to go increase my salary and work in the private sector, and then they don't come back. And so over time, [00:24:00] you have good people like yourself, but they just find themselves being driven out, and then we end up with a caricature. That is what people claim everyone in government is, and we don't have to do that.

Jade Piros de Carvalho (24:12):
I know. It's like we're causing the problem that we're identifying and it's exceedingly frustrated. I will share that I have had dozens and dozens of messages and horror stories sent to me over the last few days from people at all levels of [00:24:30] the federal government states, people in academia just telling me the same thing. And it's heartbreaking. I've never been let go from a job. So I didn't guess get it that because these people are a lot more impressive than me. It's really been kind of reassuring, but also demoralizing because our country needs the best and the brightest working in these roles, and we have to build some level of village around the supporting of having the brightest in these [00:25:00] roles and not just crumble or panic when someone says something that isn't scripted. It's like any relationship. You take the bad with the good. I say this all the time. I say this to my staff all the time when they get worked up. I say it too, my friends, you just have to take the bad with the good with people. As long as someone isn't saying something egregiously hurtful or doing something that puts the integrity of the state at [00:25:30] stake, then let's work through it and have a conversation.

Christopher Mitchell (25:34):
So the other example that I wanted to touch on, which we'll just do very quickly, I think, is getting back to those early days and talking about you're working 20, 21 hour days effectively. And what I've seen is that cities sometimes state agencies, the federal government, certainly there's a lot of people who they care passionately about doing this work, getting it done. They kind of get sucked in [00:26:00] and they keep doing more and more because the system needs them to do that. Whether it's because of the difficulty of finding enough people that will put in that level of work or because of systems that aren't great, but it ends up often they're neglecting their families. They end up, I don't know if they would even regret it later in life, but they shouldn't have to pay that price as part of serving. And so I'm just curious, is there a way to avoid the situation where one had to work 20 hours a week to get this office started?

Jade Piros de Carvalho (26:30):
[00:26:30] I just dunno how it could have been done any differently. I mean, I think that if I would've, let's say, not gone after the Middle Mile grant, that was an enormous time suck. But I made a decision early on any discretionary opportunity, discretionary funding in the federal government. I'm going to work my hardest to get that into Kansas. We went after USDA technical assistance grant and got it, probably made it harder by trying to do all the things. I guess you could do it if you wanted to be mediocre, if you wanted to miss deadlines. But [00:27:00] now I don't see how you could do it otherwise.

Christopher Mitchell (27:03):
Right. And it's not like you could just hire five people that knew what they were doing. Everyone who knew what this industry had just been hired by other people.

Jade Piros de Carvalho (27:09):
I know. I know. Or you hire an army of consultants. That's what states were doing.

Christopher Mitchell (27:15):
That's the book I just started reading. It's called The Big One of my favorite economists, Mariana. It's all about how consulting is destroying the ability of government to actually do anything. So sorry, I jumped in to cut you off. I'm so excited about that.

Jade Piros de Carvalho (27:27):
No, because I think you've really hit on [00:27:30] something so important because you don't allow for FTEs, right? Because that would be growing government. So instead, some of these states just throw three to four times more money out of state consultancies to do the work and annihilate the ability of the state to build capacity to maintain that work. So you're just constantly in a position to feed at a much higher rate, people that may not [00:28:00] understand the state as well as if you were just to hire some people. So the people I hired, none of 'em had any broadband experience. One, I hired one former network engineer later was one of my later hires. But you can hire good people and pour into them and bring them up, and they will do great work for you, and you will save millions of dollars and keep that money in the economy, [00:28:30] in the state economy. So I wrote that down because I'm going to look that book up.

Christopher Mitchell (28:35):
Yeah, highly recommend it. So as we're running out of time, I am curious then, what are your fondest memories of doing this work? And I'm sure that you'll be excited to see as this project does get finished and as Kansas figures out how to move forward. I'm sure you're still rooting for a wise expenditure and everything else, but what are the things you look back at and you're just really glad that you were a part of there?

Jade Piros de Carvalho (28:59):
Well, definitely [00:29:00] the Middle Mile grant, because I think that that will enable fiber in a lot of areas that would've never gotten it. And it's just a really creative new thing for our state. The hiring of each and every one of my team members and the time we had together and the fun. We had a lot of fun. It's a hard job, but if you surround yourself with really great people, it's a lot of fun. And then the people I met, I [00:29:30] met Angie the Bennett, she's the director of Digital Equity Act really early on. People like her who really just salted the earth really out to help all those relationships. I mean, it's a great gig. I don't want to discourage anyone from it, but it's not easy.

Christopher Mitchell (29:53):
I was just thinking it'd be fun to ask you to list all of the people who aren't doing a great job, and then we [00:30:00] would just put beeping noises on to make it sound like you were naming names and we were censoring it.

Jade Piros de Carvalho (30:04):
Oh,

Christopher Mitchell (30:04):
That'd be awesome. What's that?

Jade Piros de Carvalho (30:07):
Oh, lemme tell you about this person,

Christopher Mitchell (30:10):
Right? Because I dunno if it was Letterman or Conan, someone used to do a segment on that in late night where they would make it seem like the person was spilling the tea. But in reality, there's normal conversation. Jade, it's been wonderful to talk with you, and I also want to give you a chance, is there anything else that you'd like to share or reflect on before [00:30:30] we draw it to a close?

Jade Piros de Carvalho (30:31):
I appreciate you hitting me up and saying, Hey, do you want to talk? Because I found my calendar really open this week, so it was nice.

Christopher Mitchell (30:40):
I suspect your calendar is not going to remain open, so I hope you enjoy it for as long as you can.

Jade Piros de Carvalho (30:45):
Yeah, yeah. Well, I appreciate the work you're doing and highlighting this. And I guess one thing I will say is that it's really, to me, elevated the need to have a village of supporters [00:31:00] around you. If you're going to do this work, you can't do it alone, and you need to have a real commitment to collaboration and listening, learning from others, or it's going to take you down really quickly.

Christopher Mitchell (31:13):
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. And I'm sorry for the cause, but I hope that this conversation will help a lot of other folks.

Jade Piros de Carvalho (31:21):
Yeah, me too. Thank you so much, Chris.

Ry Marcattilio (31:23):
We have transcripts for this and other podcasts available@communitynets.org slash broadbandbits. [00:31:30] Email us@podcastmuninetworks.org with your ideas for the show. Follow Chris on Twitter. His handle is at Community Nets. Follow community nets.org stories on Twitter, the handles at muni networks. Subscribe to this and other podcasts from ILSR, including Building Local Power, local Energy Rules, and the Composting for Community Podcast. You can access them anywhere you get your podcasts. You can catch the latest important research from all of our initiatives if you subscribe [00:32:00] to our monthly newsletter@ilsr.org. While you're there, please take a moment to donate your support in any amount. Keeps us going. Thank you to Arnie Sby for the song Warm Duck Shuffle, licensed through Creative Commons.