States\u2019 biggest source of funding for broadband expansion, a $45 billion tranche of funding called BEAD<\/a>, is in flux after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick last month announced he\u2019d reworked the program, by removing \u201cburdensome\u201d Biden-era requirements and \u201cwoke mandates,\u201d<\/a> and asked states to resubmit their proposals<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to NGA\u2019s announcement, the association relies on three task forces to make recommendations to its membership. In addition to a task force focused on economic development, there is also a group for education, workforce and community investment, and another for public health and disaster response.<\/p>\n The economic development task force also named surface transportation funding, transportation grant programs, highway trust fund solvency and water infrastructure as being among the top priorities governors should pursue as they look ahead to their states\u2019 appropriations processes. The task force also recommended governors set aside funds for streamlining their permitting processes, an upgrade that commonly includes technology upgrades.<\/p>\n NGA\u2019s economic development priorities for 2026:<\/p>\n Surface Transportation Funding<\/p>\n Transportation Grant Programs<\/p>\n Highway Trust Fund Solvency<\/p>\n Water Infrastructure<\/p>\n Permit Streamlining<\/p>\n Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Programs<\/p>\n Innovation and American Competitiveness<\/p>\n Broadband Deployment and Access<\/p>\n Economic Development Administration (EDA) Programs<\/p>\n Environmental Management<\/p>\n Sufficient Wildfire Response and Management Funding<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\tWritten by Colin Wood<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\tColin Wood is the editor in chief of StateScoop and EdScoop. He’s reported on government information technology policy for more than a decade, on topics including cybersecurity, IT governance and artificial intelligence.
\n
\ncolin.wood@statescoop.com
\n
\nSignal: cwood.64\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An economic development and \u201crevitalization\u201d task force inside the National Governors Association on Saturday asked its membership to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[35440,35441,7264,174,35442,35443,33411,74],"class_list":["post-44589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-internet","tag-fiscal-year-2026","tag-governors","tag-infrastructure","tag-internet","tag-modernization","tag-national-governors-association","tag-permitting","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}