BEATRICE – Gage County will appeal a district court ruling against it, in a case involving denial of a permit to a communications company for a broadband upgrade.


The Board of Supervisors voted 6-1 to appeal District Judge Julie Smith’s ruling that the county acted arbitrarily without evidence, overstepping its authority into an area administered by the Nebraska Public Service Commission.


The case involves denial of a permit to Pinpoint Communications for a project a county official felt infringed on project area of NextLink Communications, where the county used American Rescue Plan Act funding to help finance the work.


Board member Emily Haxby made the proposal to go ahead with an appeal of the ruling, through the Nebraska Intergovernmental Risk Management Association.


"I just think we have a job, or commitment to protect our constituents, our voters and their hard-earned tax dollars, no matter where they are spent. We can see it, find it, and protect and make sure everything is done in a correct way and wisely. That's our job to watch out for those things. Our attorney put together a really good brief, there's a lot of good points made in there that shows we do have that right. I won't be able to articulate it as well as he did in the brief, so I'm not going to try. But, I think it's important that we follow through with this."


The vote to appeal the ruling was taken in public after the supervisors went into a 25-minute closed session to discuss the matter.  The supervisor who objected to appealing the case, Gary Lytle…said he’s ready to move on from the issue.


"When you're talking about our right-of-way, we have not been in the business of not approving people putting services to our people in our right-of-way. We've not denied other people in doing these things. I feel that some of the other optics of this case is more related to the PSC and maybe some mistakes that they made. I feel like, personally, that's on the state legislature to take care of PSC and state government, It isn't our job to do their work. It's our job to decide whether or not somebody is capable of doing the job in our right-of-way, and not creating issues."


Supervisor Rex Adams said his opinion had changed and he was leaning toward an appeal. Board member Rick Clabaugh described it as a complicated case.


"I agree with what Gary said, but then there's a lot of other factors involved in this, too...the overbuild really does potentially add a lot of money to this project....and that money might be able to be used in a better sense."


Judge Smith ruled that the board’s decision to deny the permit was an attempt to circumvent public funding decisions made by the Public Service Commission and was based on irrelevant evidence that made the decision arbitrary.  Both NextLink and Pinpoint have received public funding for projects.


The PSC has sole authority, the judge ruled, to administer the Broadband Bridge Act….aimed at projects that assist unserved or underserved areas of the state.  The judge said the county board should have only considered whether the underground fiber network interferes with use of public right-of-way or surrounding public land.


The ruling stated the decision to deny the permit was based on county disagreement with the PSC’s allocation of funding.