(b)

1. (1) First, the Arkansas Department of Commerce Broadband Office will determine, for each application or set of interdependent applications, the eligibility of the municipality, unincorporated community, county, or group of these for which a project is proposed.

2. (2) It will use the best generally available and sufficiently granular data sources, which at the time of writing are the:

   1. (A) FCC Form 477 data for broadband coverage; and
   2. (B) Most recent United States Bureau of the Census data for population.
3. (3) If other evidence related to eligibility is provided with the application, it will be assessed at this time.
4. (4) On this basis, a determination will be made by the broadband office about whether the project covers an eligible area or not.
5. (5) Projects from ineligible areas will be eliminated from consideration.

(c)

1. (1) Second, the broadband office will:

   1. (A) Conduct a process review by studying the project development process documentation in an effort to discern possible conflicts of interest; and
   2. (B) Examine the financial information about the applicant ISP to confirm that they have:

(i) Sufficient working capital to carry out the project in advance of reimbursement; and

1. (ii) A one-year track record of delivering consumer broadband service.

2. (2) The broadband office may eliminate projects where:

   1. (A) Public officials representing municipalities, unincorporated communities, or counties appear not to have acted in the public interest; or

   2. (B) One (1) or more ISP applicants appear to be undercapitalized or insufficiently experienced.

      1. (d)

3. (1) Third, technical reviewers selected by the broadband office will:

   1. (A) Examine the implementation plan and budget for the project as well as information on the service track record and financial situation of the ISP; and

   2. (B) Affirm or deny that the:

      1. (i) Project is feasible and sufficient to achieve project objectives; and
      2. (ii) Budget is appropriate.
4. (2) Technical reviewers may request more information from ISPs in order to assist with their determination.

(e)

1. (1) The broadband office will assign a score to each project, using the following rubric:

2. (2) The project score for each project will be the sum of the points awarded for:

   1. (A) Cost effectiveness;
   2. (B) Current service deficiency; and
   3. (C) Poverty.

(f)

1. (1) For each application that passes technical and process review, the broadband office will calculate the percentage of the maximum state grant that the project will request.

2. (2) It will then perform the following process iteratively:

   1. (A)

      1. (i) Compile a candidate list of all noneliminated projects that are ranked by applicant counties, or municipalities and unincorporated communities that are partly or wholly located in counties that did not apply for ARC grants or have been eliminated, as their most preferred among noneliminated projects in ascending order of project score.
      2. (ii) If multiple projects have equal project scores, they will be ranked in descending order of the number of locations to be served;
   2. (B) Compute, for each project, the cumulative grant request for that project and all those ahead of it in the queue;
   3. (C) Eliminate all projects for which the cumulative grant request exceeds the available budget for the ARC round;
   4. (D) Eliminate all projects which are interdependent with eliminated projects;
   5. (E) Check whether each eliminated project comes from a municipality, unincorporated community, or county that also has less-preferred projects, and if so, place less-preferred projects into the candidate list to replace eliminated projects;
   6. (F) Also, if a county project is eliminated and there are no other project proposals from that county, check whether any municipalities or unincorporated towns fully or partly contained within that county have projects, and if so, add the most preferred projects from each municipality or unincorporated town to the list; and

   7. (G)

      1. (i) If the total grant request for all projects remaining in the candidate list is less than the budget constraint, stop.
      2. (ii) Otherwise, return to step 1.
3. (3) This process will result in a list of projects for which the grant requests are less than the budget for the ARC round, and which will tend to economize state tax dollars and maximize their impact.