Grant money used for GPON is never a good idea :( And the reason why they are using fiber is obviously the large average distance between potential subscribers in rural New York. Note how they are talking about broadband in the article, the poor people don't have any broadband yet. So they didn't even had ADSL yet and therefore it's no surprise that they are directly jumping to fiber.

It would be interesting to know if they are going for 100% coverage? Or are they only building fiber to the lucrative communities?

And the 100Mbit/$60 plan is too expensive if there is no cheaper option.