8590.13.
(a) (1) Upon an appropriation by the Legislature for this purpose, the office shall establish a grant program on or before January 1, 2024, to provide fairs with grant funding for purposes of building and upgrading broadband communication infrastructure on fairgrounds.(2) (A) It is the intent of the Legislature, if a future appropriation is made for the purpose of implementing this section, that the appropriation include at least one hundred twenty-five million dollars ($125,000,000) to the office for the purpose of implementing this program.
(B) Revenues from the California Advanced Services Fund collected pursuant to Section 281 and Section 281.1 of the Public Utilities Code shall not be used to fund this program.
(b) The office shall establish standards to determine how fairs receive grant funding based on the fairgrounds’ need for broadband capabilities in order to service an emergency response operation. The standards shall require that fairs eligible for funding meet, at a minimum, the following criteria:
(1) The fair is located in an area with sufficient open-access middle-mile broadband infrastructure within a reasonable distance to support the fairground’s expanded broadband capabilities.
(2) The fair is capable of providing publicly available broadband access to the fair’s broadband network throughout the year.
(c) The office may prioritize the order of grant disbursements based on either or both of the following criteria:
(1) The frequency in which fairgrounds are used as an emergency staging area, evacuation center, community resilience center, or other relevant emergency response site.
(2) The need to address an operational or response gap or other deficiency or problem that would be addressed through implementing broadband infrastructure at a specific fairground.
(d) The office shall consult with the Department of Technology and the Department of Food and Agriculture to coordinate the statewide deployment of broadband communication infrastructure on fairgrounds.