CU Roosevelt Hackathon - Team 16 Policy Proposal

By: Gabriel Davis-Hollander, Ben Goodrich, Kermina Hanna

Executive Summary:
COVID-19 exposed underlying fragilities of rural American economies, especially in
employment and infrastructure. There is not sufficient leadership at the federal level that exists to
coordinate a response to the immediate public health crisis and its effect on these structural
weaknesses. A potential solution is to establish a federal advisory committee to advise the
White House on rural policy and the patchwork of federal rural programs, consult with
state, regional, and local bodies for the implementation of rural policy, and develop a
coordinated federal response to COVID-19 and its impact upon rural communities.

Background & Context:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines “rural areas” as any region outside of a
metropolitan area of 50,000 residents or more. Under this definition, more than 46 million
Americans lived in rural areas in 2015, representing 72% of the U.S. land area.1 The population
within rural America is predominantly White, although there are exceptions with majority Black
communities in the rural South, Native American communities in the West and Midwest, and
rapidly growing Latinx communities in the Southwest.

The COVID-19 pandemic inflicted significant damage upon the public health and economic
well-being of the United States, with rural communities taking a particularly large blow.2
However, much of the issues affecting rural communities simply exposed weaknesses in the rural
economy that existed prior to the pandemic, including underinvestment in critical infrastructure,
fragility in healthcare quality and coverage, and shallow options for employment. While attempts
from Congress and the federal government to provide relief is critical to the immediate survival
of many rural communities, the lack of emphasis on long-term investment in rural America will
result in a slow and unsustainable recovery.

Proposed Recommendations, Analyses, & Implementation:

One issue highlighted by the federal response to COVID-19 in rural America is that there is no
clear federal leadership on rural issues. There are hundreds of federal programs assisting rural
communities within 50 offices in 13 departments and 10 independent agencies within the federal
government.3 Currently, the primary federal leader on rural policy is USDA through its Rural
Development Office, although coordinating policy through this office is still a challenge since
rural programs are often outside the jurisdiction of USDA. This also makes initiating
public-private partnerships or coordinating a rural-specific response to an emergency such as
COVID-19 a challenge when there is no clear federal leader for stakeholders to consult about
developing partnerships.

1
Johnson, 2017
2
National Academies of Science, 2
3
Pipa, Geismar, 2020
A solution to this is to establish a federal advisory committee to advise the White House on rural
policy and develop a coordinated response to COVID-19 and its impact upon rural communities.
This advisory committee will also advise on federal rural policy in a post-COVID world,
including on infrastructure, underemployment, agriculture, rural economy, and other relevant
issues and provide thorough reporting to the White House and Congress on best policy practices.
It’s important that this committee represents a diversity of rural perspectives from Black, Latinx,
Native American, and other historically underrepresented rural communities from all
backgrounds and industries.

The advisory committee should address the underinvestment of broadband infrastructure in rural
America, a problem now further damaging to the region due to COVID-19. Internet access is
necessary for rural America to keep from getting left behind in the digital age. One innovative
solution to the underfunding of broadband infrastructure is through public-private partnerships.
One case study is the Mississippi Electric Cooperative Broadband COVID-19 Act, funded
primarily through the CARES Act with matched funds from electric cooperatives.4 Prior to the
deployment of this funding, electric co-ops in Mississippi already had broadband expansion
plans. Electric co-ops were created by President Franklin Roosevelt’s Rural Electrification
Administration, and now, about 900 of these co-ops exist nationwide5. They were given the
opportunity to expand their operations to provide broadband when President Obama classified
broadband as a public utility. The one missing piece to their operation has always been the
necessary capital, which the federal government provided through the CARES Act.

With this funding, the state legislature passed the Mississippi Electric Cooperative Broadband
COVID-19 Act to allocate $75 million to these co-ops working to set up networks in areas with
little to no internet access. This could be the blueprint that the federal government uses to expand
nationwide. The Biden administration should follow the historical precedent set by President
Roosevelt in establishing the Rural Electrification Administration and expand their operations to
include broadband regulation, providing initial funding to help these co-ops set up new networks.
Once they do, their revenue will come from customer subscriptions to help expand their
operations and improve internet speeds, thereby not needing federal stimulus.

A second area the committee should address is the federal response to COVID-19 induced
unemployment in rural American, as well as slow rural employment growth since the Great
Recession. We propose the creation of stability for small businesses by micro financing
administered through federal funding and disbursed through non-profit organizations. This
would provide funding to mitigate the negative effect of COVID-19 on the small businesses,

4
Mississippi Public Service Commission, 2020
5
Eisenberg, Shoemakers, and Pruitt, 2021
which constitutes 15% of the rural workforce,6 while also providing operational support to
ensure the recovery is conducive to long term employment stability and growth. This policy
would follow in the tried-and-true frameworks of innovation and empowerment set out by the
Center for Rural Innovation in 20 rural communities, but nationalize the impact and thereby
increase industry stability and growth.7

Furthermore, in order to mitigate effects of COVID-19 unemployment, we propose in following

with global recommendations that informal workers not compensated by unemployment status
receive federally funded unemployment stipends, namely for food and essential safety goods.8 In
addition, we propose the American Rescue Plan currently under scrutiny include benefits for
low-income families with children by using “targeting out” methods effective in rural Bolivia,
Namibia, South Africa, and Thailand. 9 The informal labor market in the United States was
calculated at 37% of the rural workforce in 201710, and since it has plausible only increased, the
need to provide support to informal workers for whom it is no longer safe to work is clear.

6
The Brookings Institute, 2020
7
Sorenson Impact Center, 2020
8
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United, 2020 States
9
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 2020
10
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 2017