FOCUS: 911 SURCHARGE

Surcharge for public safety goes elsewhere

State puts most of 911 tax in general fund instead of using it to help find cell callers

By Stephen T. Watson

NEWS STAFF REPORTER

Updated: July 14, 2009, 7:45 am /
Published: July 14, 2009, 12:30 am

It’s the 911 tax in name only.

New York State imposed a 70- cent monthly surcharge on New Yorkers’ cell phone bills in 1991.

The money was supposed to go toward technology to help find people making emergency calls from their cell phones.

Instead, New York’s governors and legislators have diverted the lion’s share of that money to the operations of state agencies.

“Basically, they’re using that money as general revenue,” said Genesee County Sheriff Gary T. Maha, whose office oversees 911 operations. “We have not seen any of that money.”

The surcharge — raised in 2002 to $1.20 per month — has generated about $600 million over 15 years, but just $84 million has gone to the municipalities that operate 911 centers, the State 911 Coordinators Association found.

And a report by the state comptroller highlights millions of dollars spent on hotel rooms, meals at restaurants, office supplies and laundry service.

While state officials say that most of the revenue has supported key public safety initiatives, county emergency officials say this budgetary shift has forced local governments to bear the cost of investing in needed technology.

“It’s absurd. One only has to do a little research to see how little of the money has been spent how it was intended,” said Chautauqua County Sheriff Joseph A. Gerace.

Every county in the state now has the ability to trace most cell phone calls to within hundreds of meters of the caller, but the cell phone fee remains.

Emergency officials acknowledge that the system doesn’t handle calls perfectly; 911 calls from cell phones in this region can be picked up by a wireless tower in the wrong county, Pennsylvania or even Canada.

“It does work well in general, but with all technology, you need to know the limitations,” said John M. Merklinger, director of the Monroe County 911 center and president of the 911 Coordinators Association. “. . . With a cell phone, we’re not going to know exactly where you are.”

Valuable time may elapse before dispatchers can transfer the call. This is a concern because about 70 percent of 911 calls are made from cell phones, according to the Federal Communications Commission, plus Internet phone connections, which produce similar tracking problems.

“Seconds are critically important in emergency situations,” said Peter M. Vito, commissioner of Erie County Central Police Services.

The Niagara County emergency communications center in Lockport handles all cell phone calls made to 911 in the county. When the center receives a cell phone call, a program reveals the date, time and number of the call and the address of the cellular tower that picked it up.

Within seconds, the center can “rebid” the call to get a more precise location, said Marc E. Kasprzak, senior dispatcher for the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office.

In this case, the dispatcher sees a longitude and latitude for the caller and an accuracy reading. Depending on factors such as weather and geography, this reading can range from 10 or 20 meters to as much as 300 meters, Kasprzak said. “There are a lot of variables,” he said.

The system in Chautauqua County has been able to find boaters who call from Lake Erie, missing riders of all-terrain vehicles and victims of accidents along the Thruway. “The large majority of the calls are locatable,” Gerace said.

In Niagara County, as in other 911 centers, dispatchers can pull up a street grid to plot the call. Many counties also subscribe to imaging software that generates an aerial photograph with cross hairs over the location. One more step lays the address of the call over the photo.

Problems develop in areas along county borders. Cellular towers in Niagara County pick up calls from communities along the borders with northern Erie County, Orleans County and even Ontario.

Wireless calls from communities just inside Niagara County can be picked up by a cellular tower in the wrong jurisdiction, and other counties face similar problems.

The call transfer is done as quickly as possible, but getting the caller to the right county still takes precious seconds.

The FCC sets standards for wireless providers for accuracy in tracing 911 calls made by cell phones.

To find cell phone callers, providers rely on either global positioning system satellites — most cell phones now have GPS chips in them—or triangulation from the closest cellular towers.

Each method has its benefits and its drawbacks, but officials acknowledged there is a basic limit to network accuracy.

“It’s an imperfect system, presently,” Gerace said. “We are trying to manage a system based on private vendors that we have no control over.”

Phone calls made over an Internet or cable connection present their own set of challenges. Calls to 911 through Voice Over Internet Protocol, or VOIP, can be traced to the addresses at which subscribers register their service.

Emergency officials say they have received misdirected 911 calls made through VOIP by people who travel for business or who used to live in this area but didn’t change their address after moving.

Niagara County got a 911 call through VOIP about a baby who wasn’t breathing. “The call came up in our county, but the people actually lived in North or South Carolina,” Kasprzak said.

There are no minimum standards for accuracy in tracing VOIP calls, though the FCC is considering establishing some, said Robert Kenny, a spokesman.

Buried on your cell phone bill, the 911 surcharge was imposed to provide money for upgrades.

All of the surcharge revenue initially was sent to the State Police, which spent most of the money on items unrelated to the 911 system, according to a 2002 state comptroller’s audit.

“It makes me mad because the public thinks it’s going to 911, and it’s not,” Merklinger said.

In 2002, the state added 50 cents to the monthly surcharge and broadened the list of acceptable uses for the money, said Matt Anderson, a state Budget Division spokesman.

The state also borrowed $100 million to create a second pool of money for county 911 services, but the state uses surcharge fees to pay off the bond.

Surcharge money also goes to the general fund and to the State Police, the Department of Correctional Services and other agencies. The National Guard, for example, paid for hotel rooms, dry cleaning and meals at Denny’s and other restaurants, the comptroller’s office found.

“Our position as a company has always been that every penny collected for the enhanced 911 surcharge should be used to fund a statewide E-911 system and for nothing else,” said John O’Malley, Verizon Wireless spokesman for this region.

Over the last two years, New York spent $21.2 million from the surcharge as part of efforts to develop a statewide emergency radio network, according to the comptroller’s office.

This system failed numerous tests, and the contract was scrapped in January, said Lee Shurtleff of Tompkins County, a member of the New York State 911 Board.

Last year, the surcharge generated $175 million, and $9.8 million went to the state’s 62 counties, officials said.

The comptroller’s office could not provide a county-by-county breakdown of the surcharge revenue sent to, or back from, the state.

Genesee County has received $35,000 per year to pay for 911 operations, Maha said. Erie County gets about $500,000 per year, Vito said, adding that the county attorney is looking into whether the surcharge-distribution method can be challenged.

“Just simply doing the math, you can see the tax isn’t going where it’s supposed to,” Niagara County Sheriff James R. Voutour said.

All Western New York counties except Allegany levy a 30-cent-per-month cell phone surcharge on top of the $1.20 state fee. But for the most part, counties rely on a land-line surcharge and property taxes to cover the cost of their 911 systems.

The state has no plans to change how 911 surcharge revenue is spent.

“We believe ultimately there are a number of important public safety programs that deserve funding and help New Yorkers beyond E-911 services,” Anderson said.

There is one change in the budget, however: Wireless providers were asked to change the description of the surcharge on bills from “911” to “public safety communications.”