That actually was about as close to free as it gets. At least it was for the similar money (same program) that Wisconsin turned down.
In Wisconsin’s case it was about $800MM with no local match needed and the catch was committing to running the service for 20 years.
Even as someone who wasn’t a big fan of the project I’m still annoyed because we’ve now spent significantly more than 20 years of operating costs for work that would have been paid for if we took the money.