 So, I'm Dan Bressette with the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, and I'd like to welcome everybody to our third briefing in our five-part series, Farm Bill in Focus. And today we'll be looking at the Farm Bill through the lens of rural development, and we'll be talking about unlocking rural economies, farm bill investments, and rural America. And I'd like to start with a big thanks to our friends in the office of Senator Welch for helping us get this amazing room, and also just being generally supportive of what ESI is up to when it comes to congressional education. Next year, ESI will have our 40th anniversary, so we've been around for quite a while. We're based here in Washington. And our job is to provide nonpartisan science-based educational resources to policy makers about climate change topics. And in fact, we were founded in 1984 on a bipartisan basis by members of Congress to do just that. Today's issue is one of those where our policymaker education work intersects very nicely with our other line of business, which is helping rural utilities access USDA programs, in particular the Rural Energy Savings Program, and develop, see, I didn't do it, and develop inclusive on-bill financing programs for their members and their customers to do things like energy efficiency, renewable energy, beneficial electrification, electric vehicle charging, and things like that. We do a lot of briefings. That's probably the highest profile thing we do, and we're known for. In addition to our five-part Farm Bill series, and like I said, this is installment number three. Two weeks ago, we were up here talking about climate energy and environmental or economic win-wins, or win-win-wins. And two weeks before that, we did a process briefing, thinking about how the Farm Bill will work this year, what we can learn from Farm Bill's past, and then also some general ideas for how staff can involve themselves and their boss in the process. But we started the year with a four-part series called Congressional Climate Camp. We looked at budget and appropriations. We looked at non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions. We looked at public polling. We also did a briefing about the status of the implementation of the Infrastructure, Investment, and Jobs Act, and Inflation Reduction Act. But we do more than that. We've done recent briefings with the Department of Energy about the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Programs underway, Nuclear Energy Programs underway. We have a briefing coming up not next week, but next week, next Thursday, looking at hydrogen, and that's going to be done in partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund. And a little bit earlier this year, we did a briefing on organics with our friends at Natural Resources Defense Council. And the best way to keep up with what we're doing is to subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter, which is called Climate Change Solutions. See? Again, getting no help over here with the slides, but that's okay. Best thing to do is to subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter. We do lots of articles and writing and things like that. I mention all of that because congressional staff are target audience. And we know what it's like to be a staff person. We know what it's like to have your boss show up at 4.45 on a Thursday afternoon, right before maybe they take off for the airport and say, hey, by the way, I need a memo. Or have you ever heard of hydrogen? Or how do electric vehicles get charged in rural areas? Won't that break the grid? All these difficult questions, we know what it's like to get those questions. And so our resources are really designed to be accessible and also very timely, which is why we're doing the firm bill now and not six months from now or nine months from now when we're actually getting text and things. And we want it to be practical. And I mention practical because one of the things that's outside on the table is our side-by-side-by-sides. So we have these, and we'll have these for about 20 programs with climate impacts across the firm bill. And what we've done is we've already populated it with the existing law from the last firm bill. And when we get House and Senate marks, we'll include those, that text as well and use formatting to help congressional staff see how what's being proposed differs from what's already there and also differs from each other. So a good practical resource that will save you hopefully a lot of time because everybody in the next year or so is going to have to work on the firm bill whether they like it or not, more likely than not. Everything is available at www.esi.org. That's where you can download our resources. That's also where you can subscribe to our biweekly newsletter. Again, I totally forget about all of this. But you can see our hearing tracker, which is really cool. We also do a lot of writing and article series and things like that. And then this is upcoming briefings. We're back in two weeks to talk about forestry, and two weeks after that on June 21st to talk about conservation practices. So we're covering a lot of ground in this briefing series. But today, like I said, we're talking about role development. And that's because rural communities face numerous challenges like high energy costs, relatively low investments in climate resilient infrastructure, and increasingly severe weather. The Farm Bill plays an important role in helping rural America develop strong economies and build climate resilience and mitigation. And so our briefing panelists today will help describe how Congress can bolster key programs in the rural development and energy titles of the Farm Bill, like the Rural Energy Savings Program and the Rural Energy for America program, but also wastewater and wastewater technical assistance programs and broadband programs. We have a very special guest joining us today via prerecorded video remarks. It's hard to talk about rural development without talking about Representative Jim Clyburn. And we're lucky to have him join us today. He represents the sixth district of South Carolina, and in addition to being the Assistant Democratic Leader and, according to former President Barack Obama, one of the handful of people who, when they speak, the entire Congress listens. Representative Clyburn is also the clean energy and rural issues leader who's the driving force behind the Rural Energy Savings Program. And that's been from the very beginning right up to today. So it's always a tremendous privilege for everyone here at EESI to have Representative Clyburn join us. So, Dan O, I'll turn it over to you. Hello. I'm Congressman Jim Clyburn. Thank you for inviting me to share a few words ahead of your congressional briefing on rural development. Every five years or so, we're given a renewed opportunity to address ongoing agricultural and food issues in our nation. It is important that rural communities are included in our efforts. Our rural communities are facing historic neglect and numerous challenges, such as rising costs and underinvestment. They need the resources to create safe, affordable housing, support economic development, establish quality healthcare facilities, both so they're clean water supplies, and improve residents' overall quality of life. I've long said the hallmark of my congressional service is my longstanding mission to make America's greatness accessible and affordable for all. If we're talking about broadband, it must be accessible and affordable. If we're talking about healthcare, it must be accessible and affordable. If we're talking about education, it must be accessible and affordable. So, as we discuss the rural development title of the Farm Bill, we must ensure that we are keeping this vision in mind. Programs like my rural energy savings program contribute to this effort by creating jobs and saving families money on their energy bills. Authorized by Congress in the 2014 Farm Bill and in partnership with EESI, our ESP is helping us build a cleaner, more equitable and sustainable future by providing rural utilities with 0% loans for energy efficiency financing programs for their members. We must reauthorize this critical program in the upcoming Farm Bill and focus on finding ways to improve its effectiveness for co-ops, their members, and our rural consumers. I look forward to continuing my work with your team, Dan, John Michael, and Anna to get this vital initiative over the finish line. Every American deserves a good quality of life, no matter where they live. I applaud the Environmental and Energy Study Institute for the invaluable resources they provide and for their commitment to rural communities. Together, we can help make this country's greatness accessible and affordable for all. Good luck and Godspeed. Thank you, Dan O. And thank you, Representative Clyburn and thanks to his great staff who helped make his participation in the briefing today possible. We'll get to our panelists in just one second, but I have one last piece of logistics and that is after our fourth panelist today, we will have a Q and A period. We have a lot of staff in the room, a lot of people in the room today, which is great. My buddy, Parthov, will be around with a microphone. So if you have a question, please save it to the end and we'll be sure to get to you the best we can to ask your question. But we also have a lot of people watching us online today. And for those people, you can also ask questions. You can send us an email and the email address to use is ask that's ASK at ESI.org or you can follow us on social media at ESI online and we'll also do our best to incorporate your questions from into our moderated discussion. But without any further ado, that means I get to introduce our first panelist today and she is Aaliyah Ned. Aaliyah serves as director of government relations for the National Cooperative Business Association, CLUSA. In this role, she leads NCBA's federal, state and local outreach and advocacy work to develop, advance and promote cooperative enterprise. Before joining NCBA, Aaliyah worked on a variety of policy issues at the National Association of Counties. And most recently, she served as the associate legislative director for agriculture and rural affairs and immigration. Aaliyah, welcome to the briefing today. I can't wait to hear your presentation and I'll take it away. And here's your clicker. I hope it works better for you than it did for me, which means I hope you use it. Let's roll the dice here. Good afternoon, everyone. And a huge thank you to ESI for hosting this incredibly timely briefing. As Dan mentioned, my name is Aaliyah Ned and I am the director of government relations at the National Cooperative Business Association, or NCBA, CLUSA. We are the APEX membership association for U.S. cooperatives across the country. We were formed in 1916 and have been doing this work for about a hundred years. We represent the 65,000 co-ops that exist in the country, along with the larger sectoral associations. Our mission is to develop, advance, and protect cooperatives and our vision is to help more people use cooperatives to build a more inclusive economy. This includes domestically and abroad as we have been implementing U.S. international food assistance and international development programs for about 70 years now, just celebrated our anniversary and many of these programs are authorized through the trade title of the Farm Bill. So what are co-ops and how are they aligning with this mission and vision? Co-ops are democratically owned and govern businesses hinging on the principle of one member, one vote. They were initially formed to address market failures where neither the private sector or government intervention provided a needed service and they hinge on seven key principles. One, voluntary and open membership. Two, democratic member control. Three, member economic participation for autonomy and independence. Five, education and training. Six, cooperation among cooperatives. And seven, concern for community. At their core, they help small players gain parity with large investor-owned companies and give consumers a deliberate choice of their enterprise to help promote that equitable economy. The co-op impact as you can see here, it touches across all spans of our economy. One in three Americans are members of cooperatives and they touch every sector as we can see here from providing healthy food for communities through our food co-ops to purchasing scale, allowing independent small businesses to come together and achieve parity with larger players providing electricity and broadband to rural communities powering 20 million households and businesses, affordable home ownership, business ownership for low-wage workers and marketing agricultural products through farm co-ops. Fun fact, the first co-op was formed by Ben Franklin in 1752, a mutual insurance company that's still around today. So this is a time-tested tradition of business and a way of doing business. And we think that it's key to unlocking rural communities as we're here to discuss today. On the slide here, if you want, you can zoom in online but here are just some stats about the key services that co-ops provide and how they do touch and contribute to the economy from our farm co-ops with 1.9 million farmers and ranchers across the country being members of a cooperative with dairy co-ops producing 85% of the milk in the USA with the farm credit making 14.4 billion in loans to rural communities and producers in 2019. Looking at credit unions who also fall under this window and provide financing to not only small businesses but individuals to fill in those key gaps. And these are some of the federal investments that have helped support rural cooperative business. One being the rural cooperative development grant program and the other being the rural energy for America program as key highlights on how investments to either support co-ops directly or their development is key in reauthorization of this next farm bill. The RCDG program is currently the only federal program that's dedicated to co-op development allowing nonprofits to provide businesses with technical assistance real on the ground training on how to run a successful business and keep some of the core institutions that exist in our rural communities doing well throughout the major economic headwinds as we've seen over the past few years. It supports job creation and preserves businesses while promoting locally driven economic growth. Similarly, the rural energy for America program has received significant investment to allow cooperative businesses and rural small businesses and producers to make affordable investments in energy efficiency improvements and systems across the board whether that's a new cooling unit within a food co-op or allowing farmers to deploy some renewable energy systems on their farm in an affordable way through the loan guarantees and grants provided by USDA. And it allows them to future proof their businesses to increase that renewable energy development and ultimately remain resilient. Turning to rural communities more broadly, we understand that there needs to be significant investment through some key realities that rural communities face. Number one, they are diverse not only in terms of ethnicity with 24% of rural communities being comprised of communities of color but also economically. We traditionally think about farms as the cornerstone of many rural communities but we know that for some communities their key economic driver is tourism or those gateway communities and providing those key services. We also know that rural communities are subject to dynamics of previous generations in terms of resource and knowledge extraction and policy interventions that have overlooked some of the diversity that exists in rural America. So as a result, we've seen rural continuing to lose around key indicators with 68% of those persistent poverty counties being in rural America. And how can we address this? We think the key is within the next farm bill and there is a rural imperative to focus on rural policy. Number one is equity. Rural people deserve the economic opportunities afforded to everyone in the country. And so how can we continue to address some of the headwinds that we've seen in unlocking the federal resources that have already been deployed and making new investments that are tailored to each community? The economy, as I mentioned, they're incredibly diverse and they have much to offer from a breadth of natural resources and open space. We think that rural communities can actually lead as we move forward and seek to address some of the, both economic and environmental related headwinds and resilience, increasing that quality of life and remaining climate friendly. Looking ahead, some policy strategies toward the future as we reauthorize the farm bill, particularly the rural development title, we know that capacity building is key. As I've said many times, rural economies are diverse. If you've been to one rural place, you've been to one rural place. And so each single policy intervention must be flexible at its core. That flexibility is key because it allows the folks on the ground who know best how to serve their communities to actually provide for their communities and address that rural reality. As I mentioned, that racial and ethnic diversity as well as that economic diversity has to be recognized through flexibility. There is a knowledge based economy. I think oftentimes when people think of rural communities, they don't recognize that aspect with rural communities position to gain and to lose with some of that knowledge based economy and relying on the expertise of local people in local places and the data, making sure that the investments that are given to rural communities benefit the folks who are in that community at the end of the day, giving people a voice, allowing them to feel empowered and integrated in the decision making process within institutions and the economy at large. Again, folks know what's best for their communities and should drive that strategy forward. And in coalition, NCBA, CLUSA, and a group of rural development stakeholders are looking to address this in the rural development title of the Farm Bill through a concept based on this flexibility, this capacity building, unlocking that local expertise called the Rural Investment Initiative, which some of my fellow panelists will talk about today. Putting this back into context of NCBA, CLUSA, some of the things we think about as cooperatives is that we focus on services provided to the members. Ultimately, as we see with rural electric co-ops, ad co-ops, food co-ops and across all sectors, they're user owned. That means they are user controlled. The folks within the business get to make those decisions ultimately on the ground and it benefits the users at the end of the day. The benefits of this cooperation is that it is responsive to the member owners and in turn the local community. As a community institution, folks have skin in the game. They are invested in the success and keeping these household institutions and local institutions alive and thriving. And they develop and sustain an organized base of people and leaders who act through democratic structures. Democracy is at the core of our nation and that those democratic structures are embodied within the cooperative business model. So that's a little bit about what to think about as we're looking ahead to the next farm bill and rural development specifically. And that concludes my remarks. I'll kick it back to Dan. Thanks, Aliyah. That's a perfect way to get us started and you had some great slides. Just like to make a quick reminder or share a quick reminder that all of the presentation materials will be available or are currently available at www.esi.org. So you can download everything as well as some other resources. We will also have an archive of the livecast today as well. So if you wanna go back and revisit any of Aliyah's presentation or any of our other panelists' presentations, you can absolutely do that. And then a couple of weeks from now we'll have written summary notes as well to be a handy resource as you go back and say, hmm, what was that interesting point Aliyah made during that rural development briefing? You can go back and just scroll through the notes and do it that way. This brings us to our second panelist today, Gary Stooksbury. Gary has been CEO of Aiken Electric, which serves about 47,000 consumers or consumers in rural South Carolina since 1995. He has more than 40 years of experience with management and finance and administrative positions or administration positions in the rural electric utility business. You need to hold it closer. He's also past chairman of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association or NRECA and their Community and Economic Development Committee among other rural electric industry positions. Gary, it's always great to see you. Thanks for making the trip up and joining us in our briefing today. Thanks, Dan. Do appreciate the opportunity to be here today and address the group and talk of things that are near and dear to our heart back home. I'll sort of try to bring it home of what Lisa has set out as the first thing I wanna talk about is our Help My House program, which is RESP program that we did. But to give you an idea of the size of Aiken Electric, we're 51,000 accounts. We serve nine counties in Western South Carolina. We have 5,000 miles of electrical lines and to say that USDA funding is the lifeblood of Aiken Electric is an understatement because that's where we get a lion's share of our financing. So the farm bill is very, very important to rural communities and especially Aiken Electric. To give you an idea of where we're at, we're 15 miles from Augusta, Georgia. I think they play golf there once a year. So some of you golfers may know where that's at. We don't go out to eat that first full week in April because all of you all are in town, but we do appreciate you and please continue to come. I'm excited that Congressman Clyburn kicked off the program. He is a tremendous asset for America, but he is also ours. And Congressman Clyburn did a phenomenal job to create this program with our statewide folks and with EESI back in the day. Congressman Clyburn's sixth congressional district has benefited from this. Matter of fact, this lady in the slide is one of his constituents and she was very appreciative of the day that she could tell him how it really helped her and her family. So back in 2011, our generation transmission cooperative, Central Electric Cooperative did a pilot. We did 100 homes to see if it made sense. How would it work and how would we do this? Because we saw people with $4 and $500 electric bills trying to make ends meet. And the exciting thing about the pilot is these two ladies here, the annual average savings for the 100 homes was $1,157. That's what a home saved by going through Help My House. And what we saw in our pilot, it was a 10 year loan that $869 on average went back to pay the 10 year loan and in their pocket on an annual basis was like $288. So the question for Aiken was not would we do this but how we would do it? Because we feel very compassionate toward those folks that are trying to make ends meet that are our members. And so what we did is in 2010, we went to our legislators in the state of South Carolina and got on bill financing passed. And what this is, it ties the loan to the meter. We don't do a credit check. We don't require you to put money down because that was one of the impediments that we saw in the pilot. These folks can afford their electric bill, but barely, but yet they don't have several thousand dollars to pay down a loan or to put collateral up. And some of them because of the situation they're in does not have a do not have a very good credit rating. So what we were able to do was secure that loan to the meter and if you sell your home and you've got one of these Help My House loans, it transfers with the home and it stays with that meter. And the exciting thing was it was consistency. We did the pre and post audits on these homes and made certain that the contractor did what they said they were going to do and the home was done correctly. Because even though in rural America, there are some folks out there that don't do their best work. But we have good quality assurance in this program because we do the post audit and make sure it's done and done right. To give you an idea of what we've done in Acons, the beginning, we've done 419 homes, $4.3 million of USDA funding. Initially, we went through the red leg program and got money from a USDA program. But after Congressman Clyburn did his heavy lifting in the last foreign bill and got the rest authorized, we're utilizing those funds now, which is a tremendous help for our program. And to give you an idea of what we've done in the state of South Carolina, we've done collectively 1,031 homes, $10.3 million has been loaned out since we've started this. Now I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about our broadband project. One of the exciting things in my boardroom when Alisa was talking about board members, I have 10 trustees. One of the trustees that sit on my board today, his grandfather was a charter member of Acon Electric Co-operative. And the night we made the decision or they made the decision that Acon Electric would get in the broadband business, I said, we now know what your grandfather felt like in 1938 when they made the decision that we would go to rural America and provide electricity. It was a pretty unique and surreal moment that night when we did that. It's exciting times and what we did in South Carolina, we have three cooperatives in another slide, I'll show you. They came together and created Carolina Connect. Carolina Connect does all the back office. They do the installs to the home. They have all the technicians and the call center and the accounting people. What Acon Co-op does is we run fiber to the home and then Carolina Connect, our partner does the rest. And it's a great way of sharing resources, but we got three co-ops, we joined each other, Mid-Carolina, Newberry and Acon Co-op that created or Mid-Carolina created Carolina Connect and we joined a few years later. Where this all started is in one of our work plans, we installed 350 miles of 288 fiber as the backbone for our electrical system. We've connected 27 of our substations and four of our offices. And the neat thing for us to take over that communication saved the cooperative $180,000 annually. Not to say that telcos charge more than they should, I'm just saying we saved $180,000 and obviously that's continual. We offer voice over IP, so if for those folks that want a landline, we have that available for $24. And our service culture was born out of an electric cooperative. And when you call Carolina Connect, you get someone that answers the phone, it's a live person and they're able to meet your needs. To give you an idea of the magnitude of our project, our business plan called for a $100 million project, initially we said we would do this in four years. And then the question in the boardroom because such a great need in our service area, can we not do it in three? And so the answer was we'll give it the old college try. And to date we've got 426 contractors and subcontractors working for us. To say we have a small army is a understatement. And you can see the breakdown there. And that 426 does not include the people at AEC, we have a handful of folks that oversee and do some things with our fiber project. The exciting thing about USDA funding and the funding for broadband in rural America, we've been able to secure several grants. We are continuing to search for other grants. One of the exciting things, the CARES Act dollars gave us the ability to put Wi-Fi at two school systems in our service territory, territory that was a bridge to getting broadband. Because we had just started, we knew we weren't going to be able to get it out. So what we did is we put Wi-Fi in the parking lots. And so rather than going into town to McDonald's and use their Wi-Fi, you could come to the school system, park in the parking lot, the school systems had a portal and the kids could do their homework. It's still active today, they're still utilizing it. And then there was an open portal for the parents to do whatever they needed to do. So we saw that as a somewhat of a stopgap, but yet a very needed service in rural America. And then the Office of Regulatory Staff in the State of South Carolina is the ones that administer the federal dollars. We're very appreciative of that group. They have done a phenomenal job with working through all the guidelines from the dollars that come from the federal government. And we got a couple of grants from Aiken County and Saluta County, two of our counties that we serve from some of the original COVID dollars that came. They wanted us to go to some areas. But to date, $8.5 million is what we've secured. We're continuing to chase those dollars to assist our membership and our folks. The neat thing about our broadband, it's not for profit. I mean, even though we have a for-profit subsidiary, but we're not running it for our shareholders, we charge $49.95 for 350 symmetrical, and we have the gold standard. We have fiber to your home. As you can see, we have quite a big, quite a large service territory. We've put in several thousand miles of fiber. We are about 70% complete. Okay, Dan. Gary, when do you suppose the rest of your service territory will be covered by broadband? December 31st. Nice. It's the data I've given my pool. Good. So it'll probably get done. Yeah, okay, good. I like that. That was a great presentation. And I just wanted to remind everyone for our folks in the room, we'll have a microphone go around after the presentations to get questions. If you're in our online audience, you can ask us a question by sending us an email. And the email address to use is ask. That's ASK at ESI.org. Or you can follow us on social media at ESI online. And it always helps if you use hashtag ESI talk. Our third panelist today is Ted Stegger. Ted is responsible for the rural community assistance partnerships, national policy, legislative and regulatory efforts. Ted has also managed and secured multi-million dollar technical assistance and training programs while at RCAP. Currently, he oversees RCAP's new economic development and events departments. Previously, he was the legislative associate for the National Association of Development Organizations, which represents local government-based regional development and planning organizations nationwide. And before that, he worked on Capitol Hill for someone who's very important in the upcoming debate, Senator Debbie Stabenow from Michigan. So Ted, welcome to the lectern. I'll turn it over to you. Thank you. Do we need a stretch break? I know it's in the afternoon. So I had a little bit of coffee here, but I wanna thank Dan and the team at ESI. This is a timely topic, as everybody knows. We are in a farm bill year. Farm bills usually happen, usually, every five years. But my name is Ted Stegger, as Dan said. I work for the Rural Community Assistance Partnership, or RCAP for short. Like EESI, we actually were created by Congress back in the 1970s, actually, when EPA was created and Federal Law, Federal Water Pollution Control Act was created in the 1970s. And Congress believed that small towns in rural America were gonna need a little bit of extra help complying with the new federal standards to protect health and to protect our water quality. So who is RCAP? What are we? RCAP is a national nonprofit organization. We're made up of a network of six intermediary groups here. We really serve small and rural water and wastewater systems. We serve rural homeowners. And when I say rural, we typically mean 10,000 or below in population. That is the USDA statutory definition for the water programs at USDA, 10,000 or below. There is some flexibility there. But as you work on farm bill programs, you know that there is a number of different statutory definitions of rural throughout the bill. RCAP has been providing TA in training. And when I say TA, I mean technical assistance. And I'll talk to you a little bit more about what exactly technical assistance is or what capacity building is. But we're celebrating our 50th year. We are staffed by over 350 on-the-ground TA providers that are across the country in all 50 states in our territories. And these are folks that are experts. They're either former water operators themselves, town clerks, financial managers of towns and that really live and work in the communities that they serve. This is just a little map here of the country and our six providers here. If you do have questions, please see me afterward. If you know of a community, a small town that is going through some challenges with their water system, water quality, some community facilities help, we would be able to do that and have a look and work with that community. Thanks in part to farm bill programs and obviously the RD title, which is title six. I know these stats are a little small but these are our impact stats from last year. RCAP served a little over 3.5 million rural and tribal residents in over 1,650 communities in all 50 states and four territories. We conducted 639 trainings serving over 6,680 systems reaching about 13,000 attendees at our trainings. This is the stat that I really like the most is that we helped rural communities across the country leverage close to 700 million in federal infrastructure dollars. We support the smallest, often overlooked communities with an average population of about 1,500 residents, so the smallest rural of the rural with a median household income of about $40,000. So that's a snapshot of the communities that we work with in a given year. And obviously the work that we do really makes a difference and for all the organizations that are up here, the farm bill has been described as a Swiss army knife for rural America and it really is. The RD title supports infrastructure investments. There's over 57 programs currently authorized and funded at rural development and rural development has three mission areas, rural housing service. A lot of those programs are not in the farm bill, they're over at Senate Banking and Housing. You have the rural utility service and then you have the rural cooperative and business service over there. But for our work, we're really trying to help small and rural communities achieve safe drinking water act compliance, clean water act compliance, addressing public health concerns, helping them to develop capacity and create long term sustainability and resilience. So what actually is this TA work that we're talking about here? We do a lot of that pre-pre development work also termed as planning. When there is no vehicle to get there for a community, this is some of the things that we can do and I don't want to read these to you because death by PowerPoint, nobody wants that. But so you can kind of see the variety of services that we offer for small and rural. And I'm from a small village of about 1,000 people. We use the term STPs. It's usually you're working with the same three people in some of these towns and they need some help, right? So we're doing that. And you can see there on some of that planning and pre-development work that we do. The water and environmental programs at RD have a couple of pre-development planning programs. We can help that community access if they need an engineering study. Obviously, you all are familiar with the NEPA and the permitting requirements so we can help that community find those resources as well. And then once the need has been identified, and a solution needs to be put in place, and again, here are all a lot of the services that we can help. A lot of times communities and systems don't have current maps. And we have actually a partnership now with Esri where we can go out and actually help a community get updated maps, especially with lead service line inventories now and a number of things that we can do on behalf and for the utility. A lot of times what Gary was saying too, making sure that utility costs are affordable, right? We wanna make sure in our country, the goal in our country is that you can go anywhere and you can turn on a tap and that it's safe. We know that that is still not the case in some parts of our country and that's why Farm Bill programs, especially rural development programs, are critical that wherever you go in America that you should be able to turn on the tap and that you know it's safe and then the rates are affordable for homeowners, commercial customers, et cetera. And then we actually get into the project development work. We work with the local boards there. We work with the commissioners, the local government officials. PER means USDA has a requirements called the preliminary engineering report and then the final engineering report and then hey, we can help the community apply for these funds. USDA right now has a system called RD Apply. It's an online system. They also still have paper applications and so we can help communities get those applications in and we can make sure that they submit it. There's a lot of requirements as you all know, you know, applying for federal funding, especially with USDA. We help work with resolutions too and we help community and decision makers on the ground to approve a funding resolutions. We do community engagement and then obviously the funding application, design and construction. And then once they're funded, they get what's called the letter of conditions from USDA and we can also help with that. That's the other step here. And obviously these are policies, you know, and what are missing policies that the system and the community might need. Obviously drug free workplace requirements, other things like that, permitting, talked about that. So this is really when we talk about technical assistance and capacity building, it's really walking through and being that resource for the community and providing that training too while they go through this. And then project implementation. I got a lot more things here too. You know, and obviously when you look at budget and how once the community applies and the program that I'm talking for is the water and wastewater loan and grant program. It's a real utility service program. It's over on the electric side. It's on the broadband side too. So that's the funding that we're helping these communities access which is authorized in the RD title. And then we work on project closeout and beyond. You know, our caps work with the community usually tip is long term and we usually build trusted relationships with a lot of our communities. Our referrals are a lot of times community-community referrals. We get referrals from you all, congressional staff referrals from the state rural development offices. And at the request of USDA, our cap can do a lot of other services as well depending on the need. And I think it was Alia that said that programs need to be flexible, right? Because once you've been to one rural community, you've been to one rural community. And as we know, there's challenges throughout the country. Some areas might be dealing with lead, might be dealing with emerging contaminants. And on the west part of our country, they're probably dealing with climate events, weather events, drought, flooding, you name it. So these programs are really designed to meet local needs and to meet that systems needs. So that's why the flexibility is here, especially under the technical assistance programs. And our caps commitment, our mission is to make sure that every project is sustainable. And that provides that technical managerial and financial technical assistance and training to build local capacity. And this is how you can support us. How is our caps work for communities supported? Partially the RD title. We also receive funding from the US EPA, HHS, and a few other agencies. But sections 306 in the Consolidated Farm and Rural Development Act, a lot of these programs actually were started in 1926. So when people think environmental programs, they think EPA, but USDA actually was providing critical services to rural America starting in the 1920s. And then in the 1930s with the Rural Electrification Act. So our main technical assistance and training programs here, we've also been able to add GIS TA training and licensing that supported through the Rural Utilities Service technical assistance and training grant program. We have a tribal program that's funded out of this account as well. We do some work in the Colonius area, which is the, there's the four state region along the US-Mexico border. So we're talking about Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. There's a number of these little encampments that are on my minute left. And then the USDA solid waste program. And we also leverage other federal programs for rural communities, as you can see here. And then obviously our services are intended to be wraparound to ensure rural prosperity and sustainability. And you can see that as well. And additional resources are Farm Bill, and these are linked to, these is the link to our 2023 Farm Bill priorities. A number of CSR reports, if you're interested obviously on USDA Rural Development Programs, on the Rural Definitions and Program Eligibility. We can talk about that a little bit more. The USDA Water Environmental Programs website and then our CAHPS website. And happy to take questions. And thank you so much for your time. Ted just listed a whole bunch of resources, and a number of them came from CRS Congressional Research Service. Well, we had Jim Monk at our first Farm Bill briefing. And if you've read a CRS report about the Farm Bill, chances are you've seen the words Jim Monk or the name Jim Monk on the title page. He's an incredible resource. And if you haven't yet, I encourage you to go back and check out that first briefing a couple of weeks ago. I'm gonna, while I'm introducing our next panelist, I'm gonna go back to our title slide. See if I can go all the way back to the beginning. And that brings us to actually, before I introduce Dwayne, I have two other quick things. One is a reminder, you know, Ted, you were maybe a little hard on yourself. I wouldn't say death by PowerPoint. You had a lot of good information on your slides. And if you wanna go back and read every word on Ted's slides, everything is available for us and everyone online. If you wanna go back and rewatch, of course, everything's archived on our website. Now I'm gonna introduce our fourth panelist, Dwayne Sherman Sr. is the managing partner of Sherman and Sherman, an emergency management and environmental organization that serves as a tribal affairs and advocacy group. Dwayne has had years of elected tribal leadership and executive management experience representing federally recognized tribes. And Dwayne, you received the award today for traveled furthest to be here, which we really, really appreciate. I'm really looking forward to hearing your remarks. So I'll welcome you to the lectern. Excellent, thank you. Well, I don't know if I can outdo these guys. Hey, young, do what the auntie. Nechwang nechwang. That's the key one young, key one young, Dwayne Sherman, but little thing, Rancheria. Not a nook, not in a way. Hight don't think. Nechwang ah, you know. Maybe we can come together in a good way and be here for each other in a good way. And I am from Hupa, where all the trails begin in return. And we are known as acorn eaters, slow on. We live in the mountains and hunt and only take what we can use. So that's my word to my people. I appreciate the opportunity. I did, I've had a very varied background. The last posting was as the tribal administrator for a Susanville Indian Rancheria, which is Maidu, Paiute, Pit River, Washow for the Northern California tribes. Before that, I was the chief of police for Pama, which is a part of the La Seño Band of Indians. They don't call themselves missions anymore, but they used to be known as the Mission Band of Indians. It's along with the Cuiya. I was the tribal administrator for Cuiya as well, down in the southern part of California, as well as being the chairman and CEO of the Hupa tribe, which is one of the largest tribes in California. We have over a hundred thousand acres. We have several hundred employees, half of our workforce is Indian. The other half is non-Indian. And despite those things, we still suffer about 60% unemployment on the Hupa Valley Indian Reservation. And it's like the chicken or the egg, because you start providing programs for school and you get involved in school, and then you start requiring and lifting the community up and the job requirements and paying more. But unfortunately, if you're a level one water quality operator or a treatment two or three, you'll definitely get more money to go work for a city or a county or a state agency. And so Indian tribes suffer from brain drain. You just, the best and brightest will leave the community because the tribes don't have enough resources. And I think it's interesting because we, when I say we don't have enough resources, I mean it's almost comical. And I guess that's where I'll get back to today. We have a lot of mandates in California. California is a very progressive state with regard to renewable energy and electric vehicles. And so the state was going around giving out these grants, $250,000, $300,000 to put electric charging stations in your community. And so Hupa was no different. We went after those grants. We hired some, a workforce, trained them up to be able to utilize energy like that and put in all these workstations. Unfortunately, PG&E doesn't have Pacific Gas Electric Company, International Conglomerate, doesn't have the backbone built out to the reservation. And so despite the fact that we have like 30 charging stations, they're lit up because they can be lit up, but they can't charge anything because the system itself is not big enough to allow that power to flow through to be able to charge electric vehicles. That's the first thing. The second thing is, because they've been up for like two years and so now they've got graffiti all over them. And the other thing would be that, I don't know of anybody in my community who can afford an electric car. So it's like, I like the idea, I like the concept, but you're talking about people who live at the poverty level. You know, when I talk about the farm bill and the reauthorization and critical programs, I think of the Food Commodity Program, the Reservation Commodity Program, HUPA provides, I think, 17 other tribes in Northern California assistance. And part of the problem with the Food Commodity Program is none of those commodities are built around our traditional diet. So you get all of these extra things that are in high sugar, fructose, corn syrup, everything's packed in a separate kind of way. And I would hope that as we go forward, we look at the nutritional value because I think it would be, we would be better off, we would be stronger for it if we looked at the traditional diet. Now, we didn't necessarily have buffalo, but bison's very healthy, deer meat's very healthy, salmon, eels, they say there is no better superfood than eels. And I think that the US Department of Agriculture looked at that type of diet versus packing all of these items in higher fructose corn syrup, it may be better off for those communities because Native American communities have a higher mortality rate than everybody else, almost five or six-fold. And then it's augmented by the fact that diabetes is one of the prevailing problems within the Native American community. So when we think about what the farm bill can do, I think that there has to be a real understanding of issues that affect Native America. And if you look at California as an example, California has over 10% of the federally recognized Native American population for the entire United States, over 10% of that population resides in California. And if you went to California, you would see the haves and have-nots with regard to Indian tribes because of Indian gaming. So a lot of the tribes in the South are very successful because it's all about location, location, location. But the tribes in the North, again, they don't have that population. They're not outside San Diego, they're not outside LA, they're not outside of Santa Barbara. It's just where we were. Those are our traditional territories. So the tribes in the North face much different situations and Indian tribes across the nation face the fact that they don't have the infrastructure. So when we look at loans and we look at economic development and we look at broadband, the reservation at Hoopa, which has over 700 households there, doesn't have a broadband. Now we're working on broadband, but when you talk about Blackboard and you talk about online classes and you talk about online learning and you talk about tutorials with regard to COVID, it was almost non-existent. In fact, the test scores have just plummeted in these Native American communities because there's no access to broadband. And it's not just about building out broadband, it's hopefully that you would develop that technical expertise and build it up in those communities so that they could assume and take those jobs and that would be a long-term investment. One of the other things that I would like to see is I would like to see an office of Native American Affairs established in the secretary's office for the U.S. Department of Agriculture under the foreign bill. I think it would be recommended that every single agency have an office of tribal affairs staffed with somebody who understands tribal governments. I was the tribal liaison for the governor's office of emergency services in California and my office was within the office of international affairs. So the governor's office in California felt like dealing with tribal governments was better suited to have the response be out of the international affairs office so like they deal with Honduras and like they deal with Salvador and Japan, that's where our head of our leadership was out of. And so they don't understand that every single tribe, there's 110 federal claims tribes in California, speak a different language, have a different history. They don't understand that you may be only 20 minutes down the road but you're an entire different population. And I think that you have to have a minimum level of understanding to be able to work in those communities so that you can bring an idea that could be successful. Now, it may seem like a monumental task but it's not really because there are a bunch of programs out there who are doing a good job. Commerce is doing a good job. Labor is doing a good job. Department of Interior is doing okay job. I think we all can learn from that. I think oftentimes nobody wants to mention the systemic racism that exists within these governmental entities but all too often it's this relationship of a parent and a illegitimate child. It's not a great relationship. And the best example of that was when the Department of Interior created the Office of Self-Governance, the Department of Interior did a study. 10 years they looked at the funding for Native American country, for Indian country and they found out for every $100 that was appropriated by Congress, $1 was actually getting out to the tribe. Washington would take its cut, the West office would take its cut, the administration would take its cut, the agency would take its cut, the regional office would take its cut, the local agency would take its cut and then what was left would be provided to the tribes. So the Office of Self-Governance was created so that those seven layers of bureaucracy wouldn't get to take their cut, that it would be right off the top that Washington would send the appropriation directly to the tribe. And I think tribes are capable enough to manage their own affairs and to be able to participate in these programs. So we have to look at taking down the barriers, the barriers that allow tribes to manage multiple projects. Maybe the match isn't as great. Maybe there should be an Office of Self-Governance or self-governance-styled legislation where direct appropriations to tribes for food distribution programs. Here's the other problem with food distribution. People don't know how to cook anymore. So when you give them this beef and this chicken and these beans and this rice, there's nobody in these households who can cook it anymore. And I saw that with COVID. We responded when I was with the governor's office to Northern California and we sat around brainstorming what should go in elders boxes because then the senior nutrition program, another USDA program, is a great program, but part of the problem is it's five days a week. Well, we're all getting older, I'm 50 and I never thought 50 was old. And now I'm like 50 is old. And so we're all gonna get there. But I think of all the people in my community and in those communities I've worked in who don't have access to food on Saturday and Sunday and who don't have anybody who can cook the food. And a lot of times what you have is we're not talking about the substance abuse that exists in these communities, but mom and dad no longer have the ability to be good parents. And so grandma and grandpa are the parents. And sometimes it's not even them. It's great grandma and great grandpa. And that amount of stress we're just depleting the resources that are available to our community. And when I spent time in the sheriff's department and the police department, it was the hardest thing to go into these homes that didn't have access to electricity because nobody paid the bill. There was more important things to put it on. There was no food in the home. There was no commodities or those parents were trying to figure out whether they take AFDC, another great program, aid to families with dependent children, and whether they get that cash stipend with those that before it was a EBT, it used to be food stamps. So they would get the food stamps and the small cash and they would alternate that with commodities every other month. And they had to watch out because the commodity budgetary guideline was so low that if they went over they got penalized and couldn't get it for two months. So I think that these programs have to have flexibility built in to take into consideration that you're not talking about Beverly Hills, you're talking about the lowest rung in economics. And one of the things that I came up in when I worked for the Forest Service is their cooperative education program. It wasn't race-based, it was economic, socioeconomic-based. And the Forest Service had a program where they would pay for you to go to college if you were from this socioeconomic class. And so they went out and recruited and in Northern California you just have to go to the reservations because that's the lowest socioeconomic denominator there is. And so there was a lot of Native Americans who were recruited into that program. And so I think it would behoove USDA and these other agencies to look at those programs, to get progressive, to look outside the box because you have experts in the field who can bring resources. And I think that's what I would say today is that we wanna make sure that tribes have a place at the table and that they have a voice and that the individual who's working in the office has the ability to understand where they're coming from. So I appreciate your time. Appreciate the opportunity. It's a long trip from Cali. Thank you. Thank you, Dwayne. Thanks very much for that. We are now gonna pivot into our question and answer period which I'm really looking forward to. If you are in our online audience and you still have a question but haven't been able to ask it yet, you can send us an email and the email address to use is AskASKADESI.org. But we'll start with folks in the room. Parthov has a microphone so if anyone has a question, just catch my eye and we'll direct Parthov over to you. And to get us started, I'm gonna ask a quick question about workforce development and specifically, Alia, maybe we'll start with you and we'll go down the line but I'm curious if each one of you could share some examples of how these rural development programs have helped increase job opportunities and role communities and especially if that's happened in sort of unexpected ways or ways that maybe isn't immediately obvious. So Alia, happy to start with you and then Gary will hear from you and Ted and get Dwayne's perspective as well. Yeah, thanks for the great question, Dan. Within the cooperative community, we're seeing a lot of opportunity for workforce development and a lot of cooperatives and cooperative development centers that do that on the ground work within rural communities implementing the Rural Cooperative Development Grant Program seizing on the opportunity although they have limited resources through the program with pretty small funding and appropriations compared to the authorization level but they're doing really innovative things to ensure that they are preserving jobs, creating new jobs within the community by preserving those small businesses. You know, especially over the next 10 years when we see a large percentage of small business owners who are set to retire looking at how we can keep those institutions within the communities as the community institutions that they are known as versus having maybe some other actors who may not have that skin in the game and over the last five years since the last farm bill through the Rural Cooperative Development Grant Program, RCDG, the centers working in almost all 50 states across the country have created 3,500 new co-ops within 3,500 new co-op committees, excuse me, to explore the possibility of saving those small businesses in rural communities, 3,500 new jobs across sectors. As I mentioned during my remarks, co-ops touch every sector of the economy and rural communities are diverse in those sectors. They've created 300 new cooperatives and saved 5,000 jobs constantly while still doing the good work of that education and outreach to folks who either wanna become entrepreneurs or are looking to do that successfully. So we see that some of the flexibility that they have through the RCDG program is driving that innovation on the ground ultimately. Thanks, Aliyah. Gary, you've been CEO of Aiken Electric for a long time. What have you seen change in your service territory when it comes to job opportunities? Recently, with us getting into the broadband business, it's probably the best and closest that we've got recently. When we contracted with McCall Thomas, which is a local engineering consulting firm to manage our fiber project, they also had a workforce. They had installers, they had splicers, they had people that could do the installation of the fiber. But as you can see with us having 400 and some odd people, we overran their workforce. We've had to go out as far as Tennessee to get subcontractors to come in to do because of the sheer demand on that workforce. So that is an opportunity we're seeing in South Carolina is we're needing because there's quite a few people in the broadband business, a lot of work being done because a big initiative is to connect America with broadband. And so we see a big need in rural America for those type of skill sets. Thanks. Ted? Yeah, I think we can probably have this conversation pre-pandemic and post-pandemic. I mean what we've seen at least in the water workforce as a whole, we're seeing a grain and retiring workforce in rural and especially smaller communities being able to retain their local government staff, their water operator, their wastewater operator. But through our trainings that we do and our partnerships on the ground with community colleges, career and tech ed, we've been able in some communities to really kind of create a pipeline like actually, you do not need a four year degree to do water operations. You need to pass tests and you need to get your certification with the state. So we work with communities on what those state requirements are. But we've seen some challenges, but if we look at rural and after the pandemic, people have decided that you can work wherever if you have good broadband, right? And that you don't necessarily need to be in the city. So we've seen a lot of a younger folks kind of move back home, but also having those programs, we have a few, we were just in Ohio, there's a couple of USDRD programs where we're actually working with an entrepreneurship class at a local high school. And they've actually done some partnerships with the city government and we asked the students, well, how many of you wanna come back after you're done? Most all of them raised their hand. So I think thinking about innovation, how to retain talent and retain people in rural because we've had that challenge where the rural population is aging, but if you look at the last census data, rural America is becoming more diverse and we are starting to see some population gains. So thanks. And Dwayne, you've got a lot of experience to draw upon. What have you seen in terms of how these programs contribute to economic development opportunities? Well, I think it's critical that we look outside the box and look locally. And I'll give you a good example. The Dixie fire was the largest fire in California's history in the nations over a million acres. And just one component, you have the initial attack, you have the response and you have the recovery. Just in the recovery, $1.8 billion was spent by the federal government there in California for the recovery. But part of the problem with that is that the rules that that money from USDA or US Forest Service and FEMA was spent didn't allow the local workforce to take advantage. So those communities that were completely devastated, counties that were completely moonscaped, homes, hundreds of homes, hundreds of people without jobs, people who lost their lives, couldn't work on the recovery because of the state's guidelines saying you have to have this much experience and have to have this much bonding capability. So we've been working even as tribes and collective private partnerships, the Sierra Alliance, the Sierra Institute, Ishwi is the inner tribal workforce, stewardship workforce, where we've gone out and gotten, I think 17 tribes are a part of that to go out and be able to bid those projects so that when that $1.8 billion is spent in the recovery, that that money could stay locally and get spent three, four, five, seven times over. I think the other thing is during that when I was with the state, they were really thinking outside the box and looked at the communities that had been devastated and no mills wanted to come in there and mill up these standing trees because there wasn't much money to be made. So what they did was they created a public, private partnership, created a non-profit mill, hired the workforce back for the non-profit mill, milled up the wood to rebuild those homes and sold it to the individual homeowners who could prove that they live there at cost so that they could get the most bang for their buck with regard to insurance. And if they were only getting the $25,000 from FEMA, that $25,000 went a lot further because all of the volume of wood was being sold at cost. So I think we have to think of things like that. And we don't have to recreate the wheel, we can just look to what's been successful and done already. Thanks. We've got a couple of really cool questions from our online audience and I don't see any hands in the room. So I'm gonna start with this one and I actually haven't heard it come up today but I think it's really interesting. And that is academic institutions and opportunities for organizations in rural areas to partner with academic institutions. Do any of you have any examples of partnerships that have involved academic institution and academic institutions and rural development programs that you could share? I mean, I did mention like community colleges. I mean, obviously academic partners are super important. You know, I've worked, this was probably my third Farm Bill and I know that there's an organization called Rupri. It's the Rural Policy Research Institute and I think it was based at the University of Iowa. And so there are partnerships there. Obviously land grant institutions, HBCU's is an important provision and obviously in the Farm Bill of course. But in our work, we're usually trying to find that local either community college to make sure that we have the technical and the workforce there. But you know, look with our programs, but I think the USD as a whole, I think supports a lot of that important, both research, ag science, ag research and that stuff. Thanks, Leah. Yeah, I think in the cooperative world, specifically working in close partnership with the Rural Business Cooperative Services, the RCDG program is oftentimes implemented by university partners as they have co-op development centers that are tied to universities like with University of Wisconsin and Illinois and a number of other states. And we've seen the ability not only to implement the current program with existing co-ops, but also integrate that education component within the university among students themselves and oftentimes we'll even have specific programs to train the next generation of cooperators and getting folks back into rural communities in terms of the demographic changes that I think Ted was speaking to and that we expect to continue. Thanks. Gary, maybe we'll start with you on this next question. And that is, all of you have talked about this to some degree, but Aiken Electric has gone to USDA to access dollars itself. And I'm curious, you know, the idea of making these programs more accessible for more communities, you know, in order to apply for one of these programs, you have to have capacity, you have to have some expertise, you have to have resources to, you know, devote to the application process. I'm curious, Gary, if you haven't, we'll open it up to the panel, but I'm curious if you have any thoughts about how the barriers to access could be lowered for REST or for other programs within the Rural Development Title? Well, and yes, we have answers for that. It might be a little oxymoron to talk about it in Washington, but cutting out the red tape would help tremendously in the application process. One of the things that we've seen in our broadband program is the federal government has been very generous on some of the broadband programs to send dollars to the states. And now we've got, in South Carolina, the Office of Regulatory Staff has to make sure that they are meeting the guidelines because they are the ones held responsible for the dollars. So one of the things that would assist in rolling these dollars out quicker is take a hard look at the red tape. What does it take to get it to the end user? Sort of gets back to what Duane talked about with 1% of the dollars benefiting those tribes. If they could reduce a lot of the timing because here again, we are in a very aggressive in our service territory to get broadband to everybody because of the tremendous need because everywhere we go, the question I get is when are you coming to my house? I had a gentleman on the phone the other day. He's raising two grandchildren and they need broadband at their house before August, before school starts. And so if that could be given a hard look, that would help. Great, thanks. Ted, ideas for lowering access barriers and then we'll hear from Duane and Alia. You know, I mean, when you look at any federal applicant, whether that be a local government, whether that be a utility, a nonprofit, there is a lot of upfront information and you don't even know if you're gonna get a single dollar. So how do those communities, how do you cover that time? It can be really challenging. We understand that there are federal requirements, of course, but when you look at over a hundred years of legislating, that piles up and so are there ways that you could have a common application? Could there be more of a pitch? You submit a concept first and you don't have to provide, we're talking about applications that are over hundreds of pages. I mean, you've heard Chairwoman Stabenow and Ranking Member Bozeman that it shouldn't take a team of consultants to help you apply for USDA funds. Our cap we're always trying to work ourselves out of business too, but it really shouldn't be so onerous, especially when you're talking about communities of a thousand or under, tribal nations, the same one person, they don't have grant writers, they don't have a team of, we're not the city of Chicago that has a department of grant writers. So I think coming up with ways in providing additional capacity to help smaller communities navigate, especially now too, with all the additional resources through IAJA, through IRA, through CHIPS, it's even overwhelming for advocates and stakeholders, all of the different programs. So I think, number one, that's important. And then number two, making sure that there is, at least across USDA that there's a similar process, because rural utility service has a different process than rural housing. Some programs still use paper applications. So that ITP, somebody mentioned, improving IT and operations is critical and also the USDA field staff. And you all know that federal programs, when appropriations doesn't happen on October one, that further tightens deadlines and application windows too, because getting the dollars out the door by the end of the technical federal fiscal year, which is September 30th can be a challenge. So when an omnibus happens, it really puts strain on the agencies too. Yeah. Dwayne, thoughts about lowering access barriers? I would agree. I think that if there was one standard process across all of the various agencies and programs with the USDA, I think that if it was one portal, one process, one application, it's the same organization, it's the same secretary who signs off. And so I think that's frustrating. I think the other thing is that it almost becomes so cumbersome that it's not worth it for me as a tribal administrator, as the general manager of a tribe, to spend any more than 10 hours writing a grant application, but then the program manager who doesn't know where I'm at, who's like, how come you didn't call and I'm like, you wouldn't believe this, but we had a wildfire that burnt down the cell tower and so we didn't have anything. There's no hard line backup. There's no fiber optic at all, burn up. And for them to understand that, but then say, all right, well the monthly report didn't get done, the quarterly report didn't get done, the biannual report didn't get done and the annual report didn't get done. And I'm like, it was only $100,000. Like, let me write you a check and you can take it back. And we won't ever talk to each other again. That's a... It's the same requirements for a $5 million or a $50,000. Right. The same requirements no matter what it is. And you hit the nail on the head with regard, I'm not Chicago, we're a little tiny nook. The one thing I did want to say about educational institutions is CSU Chico, California State University at Chico and California State University at Humboldt Polytechnic now are offering fire conservation certificates. And so they're going out and teaching people, they're using the traditional Native American ecology to use fire, reintroducing fire into these forest landscapes because what they're finding out is they create these swaths and that it not only limits the devastating wildfire, but it also burns off the duffy layer underneath the trees and the mushrooms that we collect and eat grow back bigger the next year. And then the tree, the smoke goes up and it kills all the bugs. And so the tree doesn't have to fight so hard to produce acorns or berries or anything because he doesn't have to fight off or she doesn't have to fight off the bugs. So reintroduction of fires, a really big thing that right now in California State University is really kind of leading the charge for developing certificates that encourage people to get in there and understand that type of behavior. Just wanted to highlight that. Thanks, Wayne. Aliyah, I think we'll give you the last word today. Thank you, Dan, for the privilege. And I think my other panelists put it very succinctly it echoes all of what we're hearing on the ground not only from getting a foot in the door to providing a competitive grant application that oftentimes folks don't have the resources to do, to the then reporting requirements oftentimes that are cumbersome and duplicative sometimes between the state RD offices even though they're great partners and incredibly helpful, but eliminating some of those redundancies between communications with state and the DC office and what is needed for tenured partners who often have a long history with RD and what we're hearing as well is on matching requirements again for not incredibly monumental grants, but that is oftentimes a barrier that locks folks out when they look at that matching requirement depending on what it is, they say, I can't come up with this money. So how can we better maybe leverage some of the resources that are out there through some additional flexibility to even get that foot in the door to then get to the grant process and the reporting process, but folks put it perfectly. Okay, thanks. Well, that was a really great discussion. I'm afraid that we'll have to end there because we're getting close to time. I'd like to give very heartfelt thanks to Alia, Gary, Ted, and Dwayne for joining us today. Thanks for being tremendous panelists and sharing all of your insights and perspectives and expertise. I'd also like to say special thanks to Senator Welch and his staff for helping us get this great room and Representative Clyburn and his staff for helping us with the introduction video today. I'd also like to say thanks to two of our good friends and our online audience today, Shauna and Benay for helping us pull our panel together as well. I just stand here for an hour and a half. A lot of work goes into putting these briefings on and I have this much to do with it. So I'd like to say thanks as always to Dan O'Brien, Omri, Allison, Anna, and Molly for all of the hard work to pull these briefings off. A lot goes into them and it's a lot of thought about how to put everything together and all of the great resources that's all brought to bear. We also happen to have really great interns. Parthav is here, he's great, but it's only his third day. We also have Linley and Isabella, who have also been doing a great job for us lately. So big thanks to them. And then thanks as always to Troy, our great videographer who helps us look great and sound great on our live cast. We have a lot of upcoming briefings. I've already mentioned the Farm Bill ones. Let me skip ahead to that. But a lot of the staff people who are with us today are watching online. You may be here for the Farm Bill. And that's great, we cover a lot of Farm Bill topics, but I would challenge anyone to find or come up with a climate change topic that we haven't recently covered. And Duane, you just reminded me what you were talking about. Almost exactly a year ago, we had a briefing about wildfires. And we had Margo Robbins, who's the executive director of the Cultural Fire Management Council and co-lead of the Indigenous Peoples Burn Network talking exactly about what you just talked about. So coincidence, yes, but it's because climate change is a really big subject and it affects people in lots of different ways. And so we're always trying to come up with ideas for how to cover climate change topics. So maybe you know Margo? I do. Okay, good. Well, you said, Teller, I said hi. She was a great panelist for us about a year ago. That was actually on June 13th, as part of our Living with Climate Change series. So visit us online to take advantage of all of our resources. They're all free, they're all easily accessible. And like I said before, they're all very practical. This is a snapshot of our Farm Bill Briefings. We'll be back here in two weeks for Future of Forestry in the Farm Bill and we'll be back here on June 21st for conservation practices from farms to forests to wetlands. While we were sitting in the room, we sent out a briefing announcement for next Thursday. We'll be talking about hydrogen with our friends with the Environmental Defense Fund. That'll be a really, really great briefing. We've covered hydrogen before, but it's such an interesting topic. And they've got a really incredible report that we'll be highlighting together. And then on July 18th, we will be upstairs in the Heart Building, the ninth floor for the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Expo. This is something that we do, this will be our 26th year holding it. We will have a six panel policy forum over the course of the day. We'll also have an exhibition element so you can come by and meet people from across the clean energy sector. And then also secret, we're gonna have a reception. Not posted on the website yet, but if you're here in the room or on the livecast, at five o'clock, we'll turn the lights down and the bar carts will roll out. So it should be really, really fun. The last slide that I have today is a survey. I know we're two minutes over, but if you have a moment to take a survey, help us do better. We read every response. And if you have any feedback about the audio quality, video quality, or if we have suggestions for what might come next, please let us know. We'll go ahead and wrap it. It's a gorgeous day here on a Wednesday in Washington. So I hope everyone has a great evening. Thanks to everybody who joined us in the room and thanks to everybody who joined us online. We'll see you back here next Thursday for Hydrogen and then two weeks from today for Forestry and the Farm Bill. Thanks everybody. Have a nice day. Thanks panelists.