In the letter to the NTIA (obtained from the Baller Herbst website), the special assistant to the governor of Florida, Charlie Crist (R), made seven timely and specific complaints about the review process. Most important were that the states did not receive the full applications — a problem I was not aware of of — and that states were asked to review all the applications that covered many or all states.
A staff that had been expecting to review 12 applications ended up having to look at 120, and the letter complains about the resulting dilution of review resources, a legitimate complaint. For the multistate appplications especially, NTIA could have helped by sharing their own reviewers’ scores of those applications, but did not do so.
As for specific applications in Florida, I will withhold comment because I worked on one of them and am therefore biased strongly in its favor.
In summary, I think the state of Florida did excellent work and also did well in speaking out.
Tags: florida