Sponsors (3)
The bill directs multi-year federal funding and assistance to strengthen cybersecurity at rural and municipal utilities—improving resilience and incident response—while imposing federal cost, reducing some public transparency, and risking uneven access if competitive awards favor better-resourced applicants.
Rural and municipal utilities (and the customers they serve) receive grants, technical assistance, and prioritized support to deploy cybersecurity tools, strengthening grid resilience and reducing outage and attack risk for rural communities.
The program encourages and facilitates threat information sharing among utilities and state partners, which can speed detection and coordinated response to cyber incidents across the grid.
Congress appropriates $250 million for FY2026–2030 to implement and sustain the program, giving utilities predictable funding for upgrades, training, and implementation over multiple years.
Competitive grant awards risk favoring better‑resourced applicants and, unless noncompetitive pathways are effectively used, could leave some small or underfunded utilities—and the communities they serve—without needed cyber protections.
Information that utilities voluntarily share under the program is exempted from FOIA, reducing public transparency about utility cybersecurity posture and potential risks to local communities and governments.
Taxpayers bear the $250 million appropriation cost, which represents federal spending that could be used for other priorities.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Reauthorizes and expands a federal grant and technical assistance program providing cybersecurity funding and support to rural, municipal, and small investor‑owned electric utilities, authorizing $250M for FY2026–2030.
Authorizes and updates a federal program that provides cybersecurity technical assistance and grants to rural electric cooperatives, municipal and other locally owned utilities, small investor‑owned utilities, and multi‑utility nonprofit partnerships. The amendment clarifies eligible entities and priority criteria, protects voluntarily shared information from public disclosure, allows competitive or noncompetitive awards as authorized by appropriations, requires outreach to underserved utilities, and authorizes $250 million for fiscal years 2026–2030 to carry out the program.
Introduced January 27, 2026 by Mariannette Miller-Meeks · Last progress July 13, 2026