Diane Valden reports in The Columbia Paper that Columbia County is “two hours north of Manhattan and it has worse broadband than the most rural farm in Kansas,” Gallatin Town Supervisor John C. Reilly said. Reilly also heads the Columbia County Board of Supervisors’ Broadband Subcommittee and spoke at the Roe Jan Valley Broadband Forum at the Copake Town Hall Feb. 24. Reilly said the state is currently in the third phase of broadband funding, giving private companies public money so they hook up citizens with Internet. Reilly was not optimistic at the forum. “We’ve called every provider” to invite them to come to this forum, but “they don’t come,” he said. “They will not talk if they don’t have to talk. They fear the competition. They are worried their competitor will get their paraphernalia up before them. They leave it up to you to contact them directly.” But, he says, $75 million is going to Columbia County Internet providers, paying them 95 cents on the dollar to install fiber. “They would never go there otherwise,” he said. Read the full story in The Columbia Paper.