LAS VEGAS, Nev. Nevada’s Interim Finance Committee met on Oct. 15 and, among a long list of budget items, signed off on something that had been building for months: pulling $52 million in pandemic relief money away from a rural broadband buildout that was not going to finish on time.
The money had been earmarked for Stimulus Technologies of Nevada to connect homes in and around Pahrump, the Nye County town of roughly 43,690 residents that holds more than four out of every five people who live in the county. Instead, that $52 million is now going to mental health care in jails, a food insecurity program and efforts to build more multifamily housing.
The reason is blunt. Every dollar of Nevada’s $2.7 billion in pandemic relief funding has to be spent by Dec. 31, 2026, or it reverts to the federal government. From today, that is 69 days away.
A Quarter of the Whole Program, Not Spotted in One Place
The $52 million is, as The Nevada Independent first reported, more than a quarter of the roughly $203 million Nevada had approved for rural broadband out of its ARPA pandemic relief funds. That framing alone is striking. What no outlet covering the Oct. 15 meeting put next to it is how little of that $203 million had actually gone out the door before the cut.
Nevada’s own numbers, reported in a separate Nevada Independent story from January, show that only 20% of that broadband allocation, about $40.6 million, had been spent as of December 2025. That left roughly $162.4 million unspent going into this year. The $52 million just taken back is not only more than a quarter of the original program. It is nearly a third, 32%, of everything that was still sitting unspent ten months ago.
$203 million: Nevada’s approved budget for rural broadband under its pandemic relief funds. $40.6 million: what had been spent as of December 2025, 20% of the total. $52 million: what the state just took back and redirected elsewhere. That is more than a quarter of the whole program, and nearly a third of what was still unspent ten months ago.
Nevada had already flagged trouble before this. The same January report found 20 ARPA funded projects statewide, out of nearly 400, with “spending concerns,” meaning less than 40% of their money was spent with the deadline closing in. Those 20 projects alone were holding about $300 million. By that same 40% threshold, Nevada’s rural broadband allocation, at 20% spent, qualified as a trouble spot in its own right.
Why the Pahrump Hub Fell Behind
Stimulus Inc., the contractor, told the state it could not finish certain Pahrump area connections in time. Company CEO Nathan Whittacre first signaled the delay at an Interim Finance Committee meeting in August. The company’s plan to use Pahrump as a hub for reaching surrounding rural areas is now also in question.
The delays stacked up for reasons that had little to do with Nevada. Utility pole access was held up in part by wildfires in Washington state, and a new franchise agreement requirement pushed the project back about another month. Northern Pahrump is expected to feel the cut the hardest.
Britta Appel, director of Nevada’s Governor’s Office of Science, Information and Technology, which oversees the project, did not dispute any of it. “This was a decision that was a challenging decision to make,” she told lawmakers. “It was really based on the totality of the circumstances.”
That is a shift from where her predecessor stood barely a year earlier. Former OSIT Director Brian Mitchell told the same committee in October 2025 that the broadband work would be done on time. “Are we going to be able to get these projects done by Dec. 31, 2026? The answer is yes,” he said then. It was not.
Where the $52 Million Is Going Instead
- Mental health care in jails. Part of the redirected money funds mental health services inside Nevada jails. The state has not released a dollar breakdown of how the $52 million splits across its three new destinations.
- A food insecurity program. A second share goes to a state program combating food insecurity.
- Multifamily housing development. The remainder goes toward efforts to increase the supply of multifamily housing in Nevada.
Some lawmakers were not satisfied with how the state got here. Assemblymember Howard Watts, a Las Vegas Democrat, told the committee that “part of this frustration is aimed at OSIT, and particularly at previous leadership.” Watts summed up the broader ARPA bookkeeping in three words: “This has been clear as mud.”
A Broadband Plan Built on Two Pots of Money That Kept Moving
The $203 million broadband allocation now losing $52 million is not Nevada’s only shot at wiring up Pahrump. It is one of two. The other, the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, known as BEAD, has had its own rough year.
In June 2025, the Trump administration’s Commerce Department rescinded its approval of Nevada’s already approved BEAD plan, worth $416 million, and ordered every state to rebid under new rules that dropped several Biden era requirements. Sen. Jacky Rosen called the move “a betrayal of Nevada’s rural communities” in a statement from her office.
Nevada rebid, resubmitted and got a new, partial approval on Jan. 8, 2026. Gov. Joe Lombardo’s office announced that approval unlocked more than $170 million of that $416 million BEAD total, aimed at an estimated 28,000 homes, businesses and institutions statewide still without reliable high speed internet. Deployment was expected to begin in mid-2026, running over four years.
The same Jan. 8 announcement described a second, separate tranche, funded by ARPA and the federal Capital Projects Fund combined and put at more than $150 million, that the governor’s office said was on pace to connect about 20,000 Nevada homes and businesses by the end of 2026. That is the same deadline, the same year, now forcing $52 million out of the broadband program nine months later. Nevada’s own broadband dollar figures do not line up cleanly across programs and press releases, a separate complication from the spending delays themselves, but the overlapping deadline is not in dispute.
Stimulus had separately bid for BEAD funding on the premise that Pahrump would serve as a hub for the surrounding area. The Nevada Independent reports the company is reviewing those bids, and that Pahrump may get money in a second round of BEAD allocations, though nothing is guaranteed.
How Nevada’s Broadband Money Got Here
- 2021: Nevada receives $2.7 billion in flexible pandemic relief funding through the American Rescue Plan Act, including an allocation later set at roughly $203 million for rural broadband.
- December 2024: Nevada announces separate BEAD award winners worth more than $553 million.
- February 2025: Stimulus Technologies of Nevada announces it was awarded $142.6 million of that BEAD funding, covering more than 17,000 unserved and underserved locations.
- June 6, 2025: The Trump administration’s Commerce Department rescinds its approval of Nevada’s BEAD plan and orders a new bidding round under revised rules.
- October 2025: OSIT Director Brian Mitchell tells lawmakers the ARPA funded broadband work remains on track for the Dec. 31, 2026 deadline.
- December 2025: Only 20% of Nevada’s $203 million ARPA broadband allocation has been spent. Twenty ARPA funded projects statewide, holding about $300 million, are flagged for spending concerns.
- Jan. 8, 2026: Nevada announces a new, partial BEAD approval unlocking $170 million, and separately touts a 20,000 home connection goal for its ARPA and Capital Projects Fund backed broadband work by the end of 2026.
- August 2026: Stimulus CEO Nathan Whittacre tells the Interim Finance Committee that parts of the Pahrump project will not finish on time.
- Oct. 15, 2026: The Interim Finance Committee approves pulling $52 million from the broadband program and redirecting it to jail mental health care, food insecurity and multifamily housing.
What Happens to Pahrump Now
Not everyone in the area is reporting a setback. Robby Hamlin, CEO of Valley Electric Association, told the Nevada Independent after the story published that the cooperative’s broadband subsidiary, Valley Communications Association, already serves Pahrump residents and that this arrangement is unchanged by the state’s decision.
Appel told lawmakers it remains unclear when, or how, the rural areas losing this funding will eventually see their broadband buildout completed. With 69 days left before Nevada’s pandemic relief money disappears for good, the state has already decided that parts of Pahrump will have to wait on one of the other pots of federal money still working its way through its own approval process.
