private partnerships could actually assist. and one of the consistent things we heard was lack of reliable broadband. holding communities back from reaching their full potential. one of those communities is a town called troy. it's about 1,000 people in northwest montana. it's indeed a small community. it has so much to offer, located at the banks of a river, scenic mountains, attracts residents and businesses alike for its abundance of economic opportunities. but without broadband new businesses are really discouraged from establishing themselves in troy. growth of any existing businesses is limited and new technology is confined. to address that, we partnered with both our local stakeholders in the telekmuchb indications association, brought in deloitte consulting to slep what would be a connectivity roadmap outlining the steps to make high-speed, quality broadband a reality for troy.

creating that map took about 12 weeks of engaging with stakeholders, hosting those planning workshops. but the result was that framework that laid out the challenges, the approaches to address them and most importantly specific next steps to move forward. funding tool kit explains the funding resources, makes recommendations for the best options for troy. there's 51 different federal broadband loan and grant programs. communities need help actually navigating those complex processes. and as troy moves forward now on its own project, we anticipate that roadmap is going to be a guide for other communities, help correct the nearly 40% of montanaens still without reliability connectivity. we know already in five years that efforts to expand broad band have made a meaningful difference for our montana students. our future progress on that issue will bring economic opportunity then to those rural

communities, also ensure they have the resources to thrive. this really is an area where i think governors can make a difference and find solutions, especially if we look for ways to engage in partnerships and as governors continue to work together. the policies innovative ideas we can put into place to enhance broadband in both of our rural and our urban communities have an impact on every person that we serve. so thanks for allowing me to share a little bit of montana's successes and challenges. now i would like to turn it ove >> thank you, governor bullock. colorado is a very diverse state geographically and from a demographic perspective, cities, colorado springs, denver, aurora, ex. ushz, we've got a swathe of it all including difficult geographical ter tainz, mountains.

we know in the 21st century, broadband is something everyone needs. it's not just about the consumer experience, whether netflix or amazon or hulu, that's the consumer expectation if you want to attract millennials to live in the area they have to have that. it's also when a better education for young people. it gives rural businesses connectivity they need to compete. it's about telecommuting opportunities for people who can have location independent employment in some of those beautiful areas and be able to telecommute. not just high-end jobs. maybe they're an architect or opportunity. it also means it can be high school educated folks living in a call center living in a community with a lower cost of living. it's also a lifeline for first responders, telemedisin, really critical for people's health as well. in colorado 86% of our rural households have accession to

broadband. our goal is to increase to 92%, and 100% by 2024. we have a state broadband deployment board which has committed over $19 million since 2016, and our department of local affairs is spending $5 million per year for the middle mile to help get access to some of the more remote communities. the year before i took office our legislature prevented -- i signed legislation that allows broadband providers to tap into electcal easements that exist so we can start building -- remove barriers to building broadband without having to deal with the myriad of property issues that can prevent the construction of new infrastructure. we engage with private sectors, a couple towns have done

municipal broadband, generally smaller towns. when you take the problem holistically, it's important to note we have to get there. the economic benefits are great. as well as helping to meet the overall goals of rural economicdes. when we launched our blueprint for rural economic prosperity, the expansion of high-speed connectivity to rural was front and center, critical for small businesses and main street retailer just as it is for people who might telecommute from home or need to access life saving medical services from home. look forward to working with the other governors to expand connectivity across our state. >> thank you, governor polis. questions? comments? things happening in other states. governor kelly? >> yeah. i'm intrigued by your discussion of troy and the fact that you've got connectivity at your schools and you're looking for ways to

expand that. i think there's actually an article in the "new york times" today that talks about cotton wood falls, kansas, where we have the same thing. it's dead center of kansas. the school district has connect tifblt but the community does not. it's losing businesses and businesses are refusing to move in because they don't have this access. you figured out some way to fund it for the school. do you have a plan for funding to expand outside the school? >> you know, the challenge, and it is a real challenge as much for the smaller towns too, because on the one hand it may not look like it's cost effective to even be laying the fiber along the way. i'd love to -- not supposed to be putting pitches in for necessarily private companies, but we had folks from deloit that went up there and spent several weeks engaging all the stakeholders, put together that

plan of how they can get there. and then we're doing it again with them for one of our tribal nations, where connectivity just doesn't exist. and it's bringing all the stakeholders together, figuring out -- but i don't have necessarily a pot of money that i can from the state level to give to a community like troy. what i can do is try to marshal the resources and recognize the myriad of programs you can get from a federal loan and grant programs that exist. >> other questions? comments? what you're doing in your state? oh, governor bergam. >> first of all, governor polis, bullock, congrats on the great work you're doing. i would say maybe it's part of the question to governor kelly, having the same issue once we got the schools connected we got to get it out to every combine,

tractor, every rancher on a horse, get it to every one of the 2,000 wind towers we have in our state. some of that may have to go wireless for that last mile. we're trying to explore a number of different things, whether it's a tv white spaces which is spectrum that's available, whether it's other forms of extended wireless. but that's one of the things that we're trying to do, because it's just not cost effective to string the fiber all that extra distance. you guys are doing great work. keep it up. when your states do well, we can use that as examples to help push stuff forward in ours so we all climb the ladder when we're pushing each other. one thing i would say, when we get all the schools connected, we've got a giga byte to every school and did that through a private sector plus a cooperative, and so that is created docota network across the rural co-ops. they laid the back beaned were

able to get everywhere. now we run into the situation we talked about with the cyber issues. we did push through last year, which we think may be the first cyber crimlum for every grade level. you wouldn't think about it, what does have a second grader have to know to be safe when they're connected doing their work at that school? what's a fourth grader need to know? instead of just teaching computer science, we're teaching cybersecurity kil cybersecurity skills at every level. and added it as a coarurse for people to be able to take in high school. it's a growing field. there's hundreds of thousands of jobs available. it's got to protect students, but a long-term workforce component. we'd be happy to share what we did. >> that's great.

i'd also say to governor kelly and others too, if you ask, let me have a map of my state and all of -- who has broadband access and who doesn't, it's not an easy thing to get because it's all private entities and sharing that information makes it that much more difficult. we have been under ttaking just trying to get broadband mapping. we all try to get these biggive structure projects and proposals through our legislature. i've never included broadband as part of the definition of that infrastructure. because there's such unmet water, sewer need, schools, bridges. but we need to have to start thinking of it as not only the economic drierch but base infrastructure. local communities like troy or others could also look to some

money at the state level as well. >> actually, we have started to include it in our infrastructure plan. you know, we've got a new ten-year comprehensive transportation plan before the legislature right now, and part of that plan includes, as long as -- one, digging, and then lay the fiber. that won't get us the last mile, but it will get us a long way down. >> we have made an investment at the state level and for a small investment. if you leverage private sector funding you can make a difference. i asked for $20 million which allowed me to leverage $120 million. i was able to get 5. we were able to implement 17 projects in iowa, and then we tacked that with usda qualifying.

we qualified for four projects. relatively smaller investment we've been able to scale some of these rural areas and provide them the connectivity that they need to survive. we're not going to grow rural iowa without connectivity, not going to get our young people to stay. i'm asking for another $15 million to continue to leverage not only the private sector but take advantage of the federal funding that's there too, and i think they're coming out with more opportunities for states to take advantage. >> at the western governor's meeting, one of them said there may be additional opportunities for federal dollars to either match or either complement. governor hogan, you mentioned trying to put together overall ideas for what the federal government could do. those investments in rural infrastructure, if we're ever going to be that country where everybody has that opportunity to succeed educationally and

economically, we can't leave rural communities behind and that's an area where the federal government can help fill gaps. >> thank you very much. great discussion. we're going to move on to our final panel, closing out, and batting cleanup, we have the chair of the economic development of commerce committee, governor ducey is going to lead a discussion along with governor kelly on removing licensing barriers to employment. >> thank you very much. and thank you governor bullock. i want to say while you'll hear governor kelly and i talking about occupational licensing, i hope what you're really hearing is how to grow prosperity in your individual state, because that's what this reform really does do. in arizona we've worked hard. we've been fighting for occupational licensing reform for years. in 2015 we eliminated

occupational requirement for citrus, fruit and vegetable packers, yoga instructors at their request, and driving school instructors. in 2017 we waived licenses fees for people earning less than 200% of the federal poverty level. last year arizona led the nation in lifting people out of poverty, and we believe that policy had a place in that good result. so several years ago, we wanted to expand this further. arizona began recognizing licenses that were out of state for military spouses. it worked well, so the thought was, why not extend this same freedom to everyone? today we're proud to say that arizona is leading the way as the first state in the nation to grant universal recognition of occupational licenses from other states. so the idea is straightforward.

we believe that you don't lose your skills just because you pack up a u-haul and move from one state to our state. we're happy that you did. we want to welcome you. we want you to be able to get to work and earn a living. this is about working men and women of america who are looking at their shot at the american dream. we want to make sure there's no on sta obstacles. over 600 arizonans have received licenses under this new law in just a few months. just one example is after we passed the law, and i believe before it even went into effect, i was back here in d.c., visiting, arizonan came up to me in the airport, introduced himself, and was thrilled about the law, but didn't think that it would support the license that he had. i asked him what his license was, and he said he was a

certified public accountant. and while we did pass it more for the trades and those types of things that you see in it other states, the law does cover certified public accountants. so now he's in arizona. wanted to move there full-time. he's going to get his license and get to work. so we're proud of this progress. we're not going to slow down or rest on that laurel. we've got a bill that will require regulatory boards and commissions to have ordinary people, and i mean ordinary people and not industry insiders or cronies that are there to block or stifle competition, to make sure that it's those citizens that reflect a majority of the membership of these boards. the goal is to give unbiased public members more influence on these boards' decisions. there's also a bill that will stop these boards from

collecting additional fees once they hit a threshold of fash reserves. we have some of our boards stockpiling millions of dollars in cash while still connecting fees on hardworking arizonans and we want that to end. we are going to waive occupational licensing fees for our military heroes and their spoiss. just as zblairarizona, this sam setting, has been able to glean so many great ideas from so many states over the years, i believe this is a competitive advantage for arizona in terms of population growth, i'd like to see every other state apply it because i think it will help the prospate of our nation and aplow people with skills to get to work without obstacles in their way. this is something i think you'll find broad bipartisan support for. that's what we found in arizona. i want to thank you and turn it over to governor laura kelly from kansas to tell us about the

heart land. >> if i could i would walk out of the room, fly back home and talk to my legislature about passing the job. i'm very concerned about losing kansans to arizona. because i agree with you. i think it is a very smart thing to do and in some ways to me it's personal. i grew up in a military family, and it would have been impossible for my mother to have a career as we moved every year and a half to three years. just from that vantage point, i think that is this is important. that's one of the things that we are looking at in kansas is ways to essentially emulate what you have done in arizona. we've taken sort of baby steps at this point. we have entered into a nurse licensing compact with other states so that at least folks in the nursing field can move to

kansas and continue to practice. that is particularly important on our military installations. we have also, you know, and here we're looking more at the reentry issues. and we are -- we've worked with our licensing boards to prevent them from considering any offenses that occurred five years before the application goes in. and we've also had them remove phrasing like, moral turpitude and good character, because that allows way too much subjectivity to occur when those license applications are being considered. another way we're approaching this though is our department of revenue is actually taking mobile units down to our corrections facilities, and working to get some of those folks their commercial drivers licenses, so that when they are released from prison, they'll be

certified to do that. we have a tremendous shortage in cdls. we got a lot of loiz highways and a lot of distribution centers in kansas. and that's a real high need. so we are looking at that. and then we are continuing to look just across the board. i mean, i'm not sure, you say it's bipartisan. i'm not sure i could get something, you know, as sweeping as your bill through the legislature. but we're going to continue to just chip away at this, because we, like every other state, really have severe workforce shortages in just about every area. i will say that, you know, i think kim, it was you, who talked about the welding. >> yeah. >> in the prisons. we do have a number of programs now that -- at where our inmates actually go to the workplace and are participating. a lot of it is welding.

some of it is kind of manufacturing. and what we're getting those folks into apprenticeships, getting them licensed and trained. and then actually we're finding that they are staying and being employed. and we are working very hard to expand that kind of programming within our connections system. our new secretary of corrections we stole from idaho is working very closely with our community tech colleges, and with our employers in the area. so we expect that to expand. and i believe governor leon ger aira, it was you who talked about getting businesses? we've approached a number of the businesses on this issue of reentry and they've been very open. they're so short of workers. i if i this the unemployment

situation was different we might not get that kind of response. but they're very, very engaged with this. in fact we are working together with coke industries to -- who has -- they have a real serious interest in criminal justice reform overall. but specifically in this kind of thing. because the -- getting people licensed, getting them certified, really will prevent a lot of recidivism. >> thank you very much, governor kelly, and congratulations on the success that you're having. thanks for the kind words. and also reaching out to find all the different available partners for this. much like criminal justice reform, this is a fairness issue. and that's how we positioned it, and when you hear the testimony of some of the people that have -- or are living in your state and can't access work or have these obstacles in front of them that cost thousands of

dollars and hundreds of hours, when they have the skill right now and they've been certified somewhere else and they're in good standing, and if we can help with any of that, we're happy to. like i said i'd like to see this expanded everywhere across the country. any questions or comments or states that are doing other things? governor herbert, utah. >> thanks to all three of you. i appreciate the leadership you've demonstrated on this and the issues you've brought to the forefront. a few years ago we did what you're doing, governor ducey, in allowing military spouses to come, particularly those who are teachers, to come and have reciprocity from another state. i'm fascinated by your idea of expanding it to all other occupations, and interested to know what that will look like. but my question i have for you is, do you have any concern, whatever the threshold is in arizona, as you've said, here's

the threshold for qualification to do whatever, dental assistant, welder, teacher, are you concerned that you're going to not meet that threshold when you have reciprocity from every states that may not have as high threshold, not saying that's the case, but is that a concern for you that you may not get the same kind of quality that maybe comes from reciprocity would have lesser education? >> thanks. it's a good question. it was certainly something on our mind, because you know whenever you expand something there can be an unintended consequence. but with the diligence we did looking at the other states, the requirements out there, the fact that there is a check and balance, meaning you don't have your license automatically transferred. you have to check in and rechlkster, and then you're checked to make certain that you're in good standing in the state from which you came from, and then working with our industry leaders, they were also -- because they're having a

tough time filling these jobs and positions. they need to hire people. it was really some of the folks that sit on these boards that might operate the training schools that would benefit from someone having to delay weeks or months to go into the workforce. so it's been a good experience so far. and we think it's going to be a positive. >> i can tell you i'm fascinated with it. i want to look into that a little more. it reminds me of becoming a free agent. the power of the worker, they have more options where more places they can sell their skills, so i think there's a benefit to those in the labor force. >> i think in this booming economy, i hear from every governor we all have issues finding employees, whether at the entry level or highest level. it's a way for us, we found that many of these boards and commissions were standing in front of us and blocking us. as an obstacle. this is something that like i

said we had bipartisan support on. we were able to leapfrog over that and expand our workforce. governorpo governor polis? >> we're working on opening it up more. thanks for your leadership and in zblairds on this, it's a great national model we can learn from. one of the ones, mixing up the boards, we wanted to do that too. many of the statutes allow flexibility. how do you get people that aren't in the game to apply and want to be on the boards? if you're trying to find disinterested lay people, it's easier said than done? you don't want people with a bias against or for. you want a disinterested person to do something for their state? how do you get people to step up, that are less gramrous, let's say.

>> sure. i've gone after our boards and commissions because they've been bullies in this, and we had government-funded lobbyists that were actually sitting on these boards, and we did have the executive authority in the governors' office to terminate those lobbyists. i didn't know why the taxpayers should pay for lobbyists that want to block folks or protect industries from a fair and level plague fiel playing field. we will have to be active. i imagine you have friends that don't want to come work in the governor's office or people you want to know that participate as a citizen and will be fair arbtraytors on these boards, to level the playing field. i'm talking about the amount of constituents that contact, to what want to get involved, but outside of the industry, are not part of the crony people that block positive reforms and good decisions.

governor bullock. >> yeah. i'd say high school friends even. i mean, like, for some of these boards, because we all have citizen representatives. i'm just leaning on people, please. by and large once they do it they're quite engaged. i don't know if any of you have had realdesesuccesses. i tried the last -- i don't know that we should be regulating a lot of these boards. i had this thought we're going to get rid of a whole bunch of boards. i think by the end i got rid of four boards. it is a challenge legislatively because there's always vested interest in saying no, we have to be able to continue to regulate these even if the regulation is probably limited utility. >> yeah, our posture on this has been, we want to make sure that we're measuring twice, cutting

once, what's the purpose, what's the reason, how does it protect health or safety? we have been able to eliminate a number of boards, but we want to see this reform, and we think the best way to do it is to have unbias the citizens that participate. any other questions? >> i have a question. >> yes, please. >> so is this occupational reform only for u.s.-licensed occupations, not foreign-licensed occupations? >> it would be a united states license. and i would want to check the fine print. i believe any reciprocity between the territories would be accepted. 50 i'd want to double-check. >> we did a bill, we now count foreign work experience for cos metology hours. so when we have an immigrant who did work experience in mexico or china, whenever it is, that can

count towards their requirement. it's not exactly what you said. i have no idea what those countries do for licensing. if they do have real work experience it can count so they can practice sooner. >> good stuff. >> thank you. >> if there's no more comments or questions, i'm going to thank governor kelly and turn it back over to governor hogan. >> i want to thank everybody for helping us get on schedule. thanks everybody. it was a great discussion. for the governors, our next governors only meeting is 2:45. this is our last public plenary session. i want to take this opportunity to thank the 44 governors and spouses, staffs, all the state officials, all of the folks that came out from the presenters and everybody who attended the conference, it's been a terrific i think couple of days, and we want to thank everybody for

participating. i'll officially end the 2020 winter meeting of the national governors association.

the next coming up on the calendar is the south carolina primary, saturday, february 29th, the first and the south with 54 pledged delegates. the following week is super tuesday with more than 1,300 delegates at stake, with a total of 15 states and one territory participating, including the delegate rich states of california, north carolina, texas and virginia. and on tuesday, march 10th, six more states, idaho, michigan, mississippi, missouri, north dakota and washington. with a total of 416 delegates up for grabs. during this election season, the candidates beyond the talking points are only revealed over time. but since you can't be

everywhere, there's c-span. our campaign 2020 programming differs from all other political coverage for one simple reason, it's c-span. we've brought you your unfiltered view of government every day since 1979. and this year we're bringing you a view of the people seeking to steer that government this november. in other words, your future. this election season go deep, direct, and unfiltered. see the biggest picture for yourself. and make up your own mind. with c-span's campaign 2020, brought to you as a public service by your television provider. tonight on the communicates, from the state of the net conference sue jit ramen and former fbi counsel james baker on encryption technology and

privacy. >> if facebook enkripts its platforms, the company itself will lose visibility into what's happening on its platforms, and the estimation is about sfit to 75% of the tips will go dark. think about all the children who are being abused we won't be able to track down. >> my view is law enforcement needs to rethink it's approach in light of the fact that congress won't act, there are these cyber threats, and embrace encryption instead of trying to find ways to so-called break it. that's not really what law enforcement is trying to do, but in other words it needs to embrace encryption as a way to enhance the cyber security and therefore the security of all americans. >> watch the communicators, tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2. next, we head to the

national governor's association annual winter meeting in washington, d.c. governors from across the u.s. came together to talk about efforts to boost resiliency and respond to natural disasters in their states. we're going to get started right away with the next panel. we're running quite a bit behind schedule, but we're going to not cut these guys short, so we're going to move into fortifying our future, states becoming more resilient. all of our states, whether they're located on the coast, in the noounz, in the midwest, or anywhere in between, have struggled to meet the challenges that come with the disasters that impact the nation and our states. and next we'll have an important discussion own how to meet those challenges and how we as governors can prepare our citizens for the resiliency

challenges of the future. we'll have governor mills of maine, governor newsom, and governor mills will lead the discussion with the governors. [ applause ] >> i thought they were going to put chairs up here. i guess we'll do it from the thing. i'm not in charge of moving the seats. >> thank you, governor hogan. welcome to all of you to this discussion about fortifying our future. let me start by talking about my own state. i'm getting wroo ready. for the august meeting in portland maine. my state has 1.3 million people. it's small, the most dispersed. it juts out of the northeast corner of the country. borders canada, only state that only borders one other state other than hawaii and alaska.

we're 90% forested. we have clean water and rolling hills and fertile farmlands and mighty rivers and deep ports. and if you take our state and stretch it out as far as you can, the coast line, as jagged and crazy, you'll find about 3500 miles of ocean coastline. so it's remarkable in many areas. but we're seeing the effects of disasters both natural and manmade. in small town of ma chooias, for instance, one of our eastern most towns, we saw extensive flooding in the historic downtown during the 2018 winner storm. vinyl haven oopz ooch, beautifu off the coast, it lands 10% of maine's lobster catch. but the offshore island itself could lose more than 10% of its

land to sea level rises rising by betwe2100. vinyl haven is taking critical steps to understand their vulnerable and plan for the future. in portland where i look forward to greeting you in august, they're already seeing a three-fold increase in average annual hours of flooding. in the past 20 years versus the past 100 years. that's impacting businesses along the commercial working waterfront and working-class bay side neighborhoods. the city is developing a comprehensive climate action plan. and our state since i took over 14 months ago has taken some decisive actions to prepare for incidents that could disrupt our state. mittgation i think is the best

addaptation. the cost of avoiding climate change impacts is 4 far lower than the cost of not adapting and living in the worse case scenario. some of the steps we're talkiki we want to cut emissions. we're addressing that. since january 2019 my state has joined the 25 states of the u.s. climate alliance. which represents now 55% of the united states population. we've set a goal to achieve statewide carbon neutrality by 2045. we are seeing rising oceans. the gulf of maine is warming faster than 95% of all ocean bodies. with the legislature's agreement we established a counsel which will recommend a more comprehensive plan this december. they're looking at transportation sources, heating sources, and resiliency. we're the most fossil fuel

dependent state. we've set in statute a requirement for a 45% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2030. we've taken great pains to redo our portfolio. we're looking at 80% renewables by . we have the most significant renewable standards in the country. and we've established by law an aggressive goal of installing 100,000 heat bumps by 2025. many of us were at the korean ambassadors residence last night. he was describing the architecture on the building and how it was modeled on historical homes in korea. i looked up and above our heads were two large heat pum pz. i thought that's adaptation. in the governor's mansion where i reside during the week there

are 22. those were put in about i my predecessor. it's a bipartisan effort to reduce our dmens on fossil fuels. we think maine consumers can save on heating bills by using heat pumps. we have facilitated the launch of the first floating offshore wind in the united states with leadership and research from the university of maine which has developed the prototype for a platform concrete based, not steel, much more adaptable to manufacturing on shore and to movement on the coast with support from the federal department of energy. we've launched an electrical rebate program using not taxpayer money but the volkswagen settlement funds, some of us, mr. bashir, cooper,

myself, mr. bullock, sued volkswagen of america over several respects in tandem with the federal government and using those monies in the state of maine to provide rebates for consumers to purchase electric vehicles and to increase our infrastructure across the state of maine for electric vehicle charging stations. we know we have to prepare our state and communities for climate change and impacts that can't be avoided. our governors office of the future during my campaign for governor i quoted kurt vonnegut who once said every government cabinet ought to have a department of future. we don't have that. now we do. it's called an office of innovation, policy innovation, and the future, which i created, and we've hired a coordinator, fancy term, to lead our

communities dealing with issues on climate change and accommodations and resiliency, adaptation to rising sea levels and the like. we're investing in road infrastructure and steam crossings. cul vertsz. the more modern cul verts that don't strangle the fish. an