[News] After dark money defeat, Longmeadow fiber advocates may try again

The following article appeared on Light Reading:

Last week, supporters of an effort to build a municipal fiber broadband network in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, suffered a defeat when a town vote to fund the first phase of network construction failed. According to those involved, that failure followed a well-funded "dark money" opposition campaign, believed to be connected to Comcast. But advocates of the network say they hope to try again.

Longmeadow's municipal fiber journey dates back to 2023, when Vineeth Hemavathi ran for a seat on the Select Board and, while campaigning, heard an array of complaints about the reliability of the town's incumbent provider, Comcast.

"I spent basically six or seven months knocking on doors all over town. And, besides some infrastructure issues like our roads and deferred maintenance, the unreliability of Comcast Internet service was a thing that I heard about the most," Hemavathi told Light Reading.

That led Longmeadow to explore town-owned fiber, an endeavor that several other cities and towns in Western Massachusetts were undertaking or considering. "In Western Mass., we have so many towns that have gone to town-owned fiber or were moving towards it, and so what I kept hearing was, you know, 'why can't we have this in our town?'" said Hemavathi.

From there, Longmeadow established a municipal fiber task force to explore the best way forward for the town and ultimately recommended pursuing town-owned fiber, in partnership with Fiberspring, the municipal fiber arm of South Hadley Electric and Light Department (SHELD).

"Longmeadow, like many of us, is simply trying to control their destiny with their fiber plant, and they're trying to own their own fiber plant," said Sean Fitzgerald, general manager of Fiberspring. "And they went through a vigorous process where they evaluated multiple ISP providers, and we were one of them, and they selected us to be their partner." 

After the task force submitted its recommendations, the town planned to vote in November 2024 on creating a municipal light plant (MLP), a public utility to own the fiber entity, and on funding the Longmeadow fiber project's design, engineering and pole applications.

Enter 'Mass Priorities'

That's around when the "dark money" campaign began to make itself known, says Hemavathi.

That campaign was being led by Mass Priorities, a group that says it seeks to support "responsible local spending that protects schools, infrastructure, public safety, and essential community services" and aims to "Tell Massachusetts Policy Makers to Keep Their Priorities Straight," according to its website.

"Even back in November 2024, before the vote for design and engineering and pole applications, throughout the month before that, the town was just bombarded by Mass Priorities, and they had people calling into town, they were running Facebook ads, spreading misinformation about the project," said Hemavathi.

Mass Priorities is a project of the Domestic Policy Caucus (DPC), which has run other campaigns seeking to defeat public broadband projects. While Mass Priorities claims a broad interest in preserving taxpayer interests, five of the six campaigns listed on its website are specifically focused on defeating municipal broadband projects in Massachusetts.

Mass Priorities and DPC don't list their funding sources, but sources say signs point to the region's incumbent cable operator.

"They are obviously connected to Comcast because they only operate in towns where Comcast is the incumbent service provider," said Hemavathi.

Comcast did not respond to a question from Light Reading about its connection to Mass Priorities and DPC as of this writing, and there's no public record of a financial relationship.

However, as the Western Massachusetts publication The Shoestring noted, while Comcast doesn't list the organization amongst its 501(c)(4) contributions, Comcast's policy also "does not require it to list contributions of under $50,000."

Moreover, adds The Shoestring: "Comcast has given significant sums to other groups, like over $1 million to the New England Connectivity and Telecommunications Association between 2023 and 2024, which does lobby on behalf of the industry but does not appear to have ties to Mass Priorities, though a dubiously-worded survey question echoes the group's talking points."

Mass Priorities' initial effort to defeat the 2024 vote in Longmeadow was unsuccessful. The town voted 10-1 to form an MLP and approve design and engineering for the project.

But in the lead up to a vote last week to fund the project's construction, which needed a two-thirds majority, the Mass Priorities campaign to oppose the project was reignited. The measure to fund the town-owned fiber project officially failed last Thursday (May 12).

'Crush the dreams of a municipality'

Both Longmeadow's Hemavathi and Fiberspring's Fitzgerald pointed to another culprit, in addition to Comcast, that they feel helped the Mass Priorities campaign succeed: private equity.

Specifically, they called out Gateway Fiber, an ISP in the region funded by CBRE Investment Management, which they each said was behind the effort to campaign against town-owned fiber in Longmeadow.

In an email to Light Reading, Derek Leffert, head of government affairs at Gateway Fiber, said that Gateway and CBRE have "not funded Mass Priorities or related advocacy efforts connected to this matter." He added that "Gateway Fiber has spent more than two years planning to serve Longmeadow and has invested more than $1 million in pre-construction work and permitting. Their efforts in Longmeadow have been undertaken independently and not in coordination with outside advocacy groups or campaigns."

Gateway Fiber did, however, seek to influence last week's decision. The company published a blog post ahead of the town meeting encouraging a "no" vote on the measure to fund the municipal project, saying it will lead to years of debt.

"The May 12 vote on Article 7 is a commitment to decades of public debt. Voting no does not mean voting against better Internet; it means insisting that residents have the chance to evaluate alternative approaches before that obligation is locked in," said Gateway in the blog post.

To the Longmeadow advocates who were working toward starting construction on the municipal network, however, all of these efforts have served to mislead residents on the project's costs and benefits.

"You have private equity fiber – Gateway Fiber; you have old cable – Comcast; and then you have Mass Priorities, who all rose up to crush the dreams of a municipality who wanted to own their own fiber," said Fitzgerald.

Potential path forward

In a post on LinkedIn after last week's failed vote, Gigi Sohn, executive director of the American Association for Public Broadband (AAPB), said she hopes the town will regroup and try again.

"I don't know enough to do a thorough post-mortem on why the vote to build a municipal fiber network in Longmeadow, Massachusetts did not succeed. I do know three things, however: 1) a dark money group, most likely financially supported by the lone private broadband provider in the area (Comcast), spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on online ads, door knockers, flyers, etc for many months trying to defeat the measure; 2) the financing model for the project made a lot of folks uncomfortable, and attempts to consider a different one ran out of time; and 3) obtaining a 2/3 majority vote of residents in an in-person meeting is really hard, especially for a matter that is as expensive and complicated as this," Sohn wrote.

She added that project supporters now "need to work on developing a financial model that will result in more grassroots support as well as the support of local businesses, community anchor institutions and everyone else who would benefit from locally-owned, affordable and robust broadband."

Longmeadow's Hemavathi told Light Reading he still hopes to find a way forward after last week's failed vote. But he laments how difficult it is for a town to successfully represent its interests against a well-funded opponent.

"We cannot take on an entity like Comcast, a billion dollar company, unless our town is united," Hemavathi said. "We'll see what our residents want to do, what our elected officials want to do, and see if there's a path forward here."