On May 20, the federal Community Technology Centers (CTC) program is expected to release it's third grant notice, to help create and expand technology access within the context of educational opportunity and lifelong learning for the public in underserved and economically distressed urban and rural areas. This may, however, also be the last grant notice for the program. The program, begun in 1999 under the Department of Education's Office of Adult and Vocational Education, has, to date, distributed some $72 million in matching grants to more than 200 organizations in support of over 500 community technology centers. This third grant notice, will include some 80 matching grants from $75,000 to $300,000 and will help create and expand technology access within the context of educational opportunity and lifelong learning for the public in underserved and economically distressed urban and rural areas. Under the Administration's budget request for FY 2003, the CTC program would be eliminated, in favor of support of a number of other department initiatives, including the formula grant 21st Century Community Learning Centers (CLC) program. CLC supports academic enrichment opportunities for K-12 students and their families in school districts with high concentrations of poverty and/or low-performing schools during after-school, summer, and weekend hours. Unlike CTCs, CLCs do not provide technology access and training for education or workforce skills as a primary service. CLCs, moreover, are specifically school-based efforts, whose programs are not necessarily open to the wider public. The Administration proposed to offset the potential gap in community technology investments by providing funding for the Neighborhood Networks program under the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Launched in 1995, the initiative has helped to coordinate public-private collaboration between community partners and residents in low- and moderate-income multifamily housing (as well as individual efforts under other HUD-supported programs) around technology access and skills training for residents. While the Neighborhood Network centers directly engage residents in their operations and administration, the scope of activity is heavily focused on services to the residents themselves, and not the broader public -- though in many cases centers do provide activities open to residents in surrounding communities. More significantly, the Neighborhood Networks only provide outreach, technical support and assistance, but not federal grants, to centers and their coordinating partners, which in turn must demonstrate self-sufficiency and sustainability -- including income-generating revenue streams -- before their inclusion in Network activities. Though the Administration's FY 2003 budget requests level funding of $20 million, it does not call for any actual funding to support grants activity similar to the existing federal CTC program. The other key community technology initiative slated for elimination under the FY 2003 budget is the Technology Opportunities Program (TOP), currently funded at $12.5 million. Started in 1994 under the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications Infrastructure Administration, the program provides matching grants for local collaborative efforts to build advanced telecommunications and information technology infrastructure for delivery of social services -- including education, health, employment, and public safety -- to underserved rural and urban areas. Despite leveraging of $192.5 million in grants with $268 million in matching funds from local sources to develop over 530 public-private efforts, the program has been frequently targeted for elimination. Most recently, it was attacked on an unlikely front. In late 2001, as much as $390 million of the $400 million available under the E-Rate program -- under which fees collected from telecommunications firms by way of consumers provide a range of discounted telecommunications services to schools and libraries -- was slated to be funneled to support expansion of the Rural Health Care (RHC) program for the next two years. RHC, a universal service initiative designed by the Federal Communications Commission to provide discounts on telecommunication services to rural health care providers for telemedicine and telehealth efforts, is currently capped at $10 million. Because RHC discounts consist only of the difference between rates charged to urban and rural providers, the program has never enjoyed the popularity of E-Rate. Post-September 11 concerns around bioterrorist attacks and inadequate community emergency response systems, however, prompted House Commerce Chair Billy Tauzin (R-LA) to introduce legislation expanding the scope of RHC to enhance community-level capacity to support telemedicine and emergency information. Concerned that such an arrangement would siphon off funding available for school and library telecommunication connections and services, E-Rate supporters worked with House Commerce Ranking Member Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) on compromise language that instead would have diverted all TOP funding for two years to support RHC expansion for urban, rural and Native American telemedicine projects -- despite TOP's established track record on similar projects. A Senate version of the legislation called for increases in the information and communications technology equipment capacity for health care providers, but without use of TOP or E-Rate to fund expansion or federal-state coordination for such efforts. The differences around the House bill, which passed by an overwhelming vote at the end of February, will be addressed in conference, currently slated for late May. A number of Senate conferees have already expressed support for TOP funds to not be committed exclusively to telemedicine infrastructure improvement. In addition, Sen. Max Cleland (D-GA), along with Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY), introduced legislation in mid-March to establish a digital network technologies program under TOP, which would provide educational and job training opportunities through initiatives aimed at students, teachers and faculty, and related personnel within historically Black, Hispanic, Asian-Pacific Islander, Alaskan and Hawaiian, and tribal-serving institutions of higher learning.