“It was inappropriate for the Texas Department of Agriculture to outsource more than $3 million in federal funding to a Kentucky non-profit organization with a questionable record and significant ties to telecommunications companies when federal law allowed the state to conduct this project on its own,” Gilbert, a rancher and businessman from Whitehouse, said.
He accused Staples and the Texas Department of Agriculture of bypassing state agencies and public universities within Texas that could have completed the project.
“The fact of the matter is that federal law allowed the state or any of the public universities in Texas to conduct this project,” Gilbert said, citing the provisions The Broadband Data Improvement Act, 47 U.S.C. §1304, which states that multiple entity types—including government bodies—were eligible for the funds.
Highlights
* Connected Nation was paid in excess of $3 million for a mapping project which could have been completed by TDA or a state university.
* Connected Nation is accused of misleading the FCC.
* Connected Nation is accused by public officials of being a front for telecom companies, and its board is littered with telecom execs.
* Connected Nation’s data cannot be independently verified by any legitimate means.
Gilbert also questioned why Staples would allow the Texas Department of Agriculture to do business with a company that has left controversy in its wake in North Carolina and Kentucky, signed restrictive non-disclosure agreements with telecom companies prohibiting disclosure of detailed coverage information, and has been accused of providing misleading information to the Federal Communications Commission.
“Putting aside the lunacy of making this map, the award of the contract itself is questionable. The state could have taken this three million dollars and conducted this project itself or had one of our state universities spearhead it rather than engage in a risky outsourcing project that does nothing more than produce a map and create wealth for the employees of a non-profit in Kentucky and Washington,” Gilbert said. He also pointed out that the board of Connected Nation is littered with telecom executives.
“That ought to tell you something right there. It is like allowing the fox to devise a security system for a henhouse,” he said.
Gilbert said that the award was typical of Staples’ haphazard and incompetent management at the Texas Department of Agriculture.
“Here you have a Commissioner who has accepted thousands of dollars from telecom companies and owns stock in two companies that have partnered with a company that, by all accounts, is in bed with big telecom. It looks very bad,” Gilbert said.
Gilbert was also critical of the fact that a high-level Farm Bureau operative holds a leadership role with Connected Nation; Farm Bureau was the single-largest contributor to Staples’ 2006 campaign.
“It’s especially troubling that a former President of Texas Farm Bureau, an organization that endorsed Staples in 2006 and from whom Staples has received significant campaign funds, serves an advisor to the firm to which the contract was awarded,” he concluded.
Kenneth Pooley