Florida Local Officials – GON Fishin’
Government-owned networks (GONs) are an expensive and ineffective response to broadband affordability concerns. On August 31, 2026, the James Madison Institute released a policy brief outlining how municipal broadband projects crowd out private sector investment and leave local taxpayers and energy ratepayers footing the bill. In Ocala, Florida, local officials are proposing to spend an additional $93,000 on broadband consultants and more than $495,000 on new inventory for Ocala Fiber Network (OFN), the local GON, moving the city down a financially dangerous path.
Citizens Against Government Waste has long warned about the costly and ineffective nature of GONs. Because government-owned broadband projects routinely fail to generate sufficient revenue to sustain operations, they tend to shift substantial long-term risks onto local taxpayers and utility ratepayers who must absorb the financial losses when these speculative projects fail.
The track record for GONs across the country is littered with financial distress and bailouts that leave taxpayers and ratepayers responsible for the failures. When municipal networks face financial trouble, cities are forced to sell assets at a fraction of their original cost or impose taxpayer funded bailouts. A prime example occurred in Provo, Utah, where the city constructed a municipal network that was such a severe financial disaster that the city ultimately sold it to Google for $1 in 2013, leaving local taxpayers stuck paying off $39 million in outstanding debt. Similar stories can be found across the country, as more GONs fail to meet their commitments.
Ocala leaders should take warning from these repeated historical failures before sinking more public resources into their local network. OFN has operated for three decades, serving a small fraction of the city’s area, yet local officials want to double down by spending additional taxpayer dollars on consultants and more equipment despite heavy private sector competition. According to BroadbandNow, there are multiple providers offering a range of broadband options in the Ocala area, including cable, fiber, wireless mobile broadband, and satellite options, with speeds ranging from 100 Mbps to 8 Gbps depending on provider.
Internet service providers invested more than $92 billion in private funding to expand and improve network infrastructure in 2025, delivering fast, reliable and affordable service to customers. Adding a GON with access to the public coffers but little institutional experience connecting households and businesses to high-speed internet will undermine future private investment and endanger fiscal stability in an area where more than 95 percent of Ocala locations already have access to high-speed internet by the 21 existing providers. Florida law does not require voter approval for GON expansions or prohibit subsidizing GONs with tax revenue.
Municipal broadband efforts put local taxpayers at risk of incurring public debts when the systems go belly up and threaten to interrupt the high-speed service offered to the community by experienced providers. Instead of wasting taxpayer funds on endless consulting fees and network inventories for an underperforming system, local leaders should stop expanding wasteful GONs and focus instead on streamlining municipal permitting processes to encourage further private sector investment. Taxpayers cannot afford to keep writing blank checks for speculative public enterprises.
