Federal Agency Appoints Former Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke to New Position

 

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) this week announced that former Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke will serve that agency in a senior leadership position and will have direct influence over President Joe Biden.

Berke is joining NTIA as a special representative for broadband.

An agency press release cited Berke’s time as mayor in Chattanooga where he used city resources to provide high speed broadband at no cost to every family with a child on free or reduced lunch. Chattanooga was the first community in the nation to offer this.

Will Berke try to carry out this program on a national level?

Agency officials did not return The Tennessee Star’s request for comment Thursday.

According to its website, the NTIA, located within the Department of Commerce, is the Executive Branch agency that advises the president on telecommunications and information policy issues. NTIA’s programs and policymaking focus largely on expanding broadband internet access.

NTIA announced other senior leadership following the confirmation of Alan Davidson as assistant secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information.

April McClain-Delaney, formerly the Washington director of Common Sense Media, is now the deputy assistant secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information.

Davidson was most recently a senior advisor at the Mozilla Foundation, which, according to its website, promotes “a healthy Internet.”

Berke, before he left office, wanted in 2019 to spend more taxpayer money on the homeless, even though past initiatives haven’t accomplished much in terms of results.

Nashville officials launched an initiative nine years ago to end homelessness as we know it. The program, part of the “How’s Nashville” campaign, promised homelessness would end before 2017.

Back in 2013, the city’s Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency paired up with the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission and announced 200 housing opportunities for the chronically homeless.

They offered an unspecified amount of federal taxpayer money, via Housing and Urban Development Community Development Block Grant money.

Apparently, though, city officials didn’t get enough cash the first go-round.

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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star and The Georgia Star News. Follow Chris on Facebook, Twitter, Parler, and GETTR. Email tips to [email protected].