911 surcharge set to expire at end of year

DUSTIN ENSINGER

Staff Writer

Coun­ties across Ohio are set to lose a com­bined $29 mil­lion in fund­ing for 911 com­mu­ni­ca­tions if law­mak­ers in Colum­bus allow a 28 cent sur­charge on cell phone ser­vice to expire at the end of the year.

Delaware County alone stands to lose nearly $500,000 in rev­enue. County com­mis­sion­ers are not likely to reduce emer­gency ser­vices in any way if the rev­enue stream dries up, but it could lead them to divert fund­ing from else­where to make up the dif­fer­ence, accord­ing to board of com­mis­sion­ers Pres­i­dent Den­nis Stapleton.

“I think it is prob­a­bly one of the most impor­tant issues fac­ing the county com­mis­sion­ers as a whole,” he said.

The sur­charge was first estab­lished at 32 cents on each cell phone in 2005 to pay for statewide upgrades in the 911 com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem and was orig­i­nally set to expire in 2008. Instead, leg­is­la­tors reduced the rate to 28 cents while also extend­ing its col­lec­tion until Dec. 31, 2012.

It brought in more than $432,000 in rev­enue for Delaware County last year, mak­ing up about 12 per­cent of DELCOMM’s $3.5 mil­lion annual budget.

State Sen. Kris Jor­dan (R-Ostrander) is only will­ing to sup­port extend­ing the sur­charge on the con­di­tion that it be accom­pa­nied by a spend­ing cut of the same size from another state bud­get expenditure.

“I would pre­fer to elim­i­nate an exist­ing tax for the mil­lions of Ohioans with cell phones,” he said.

The vast major­ity of coun­ties have already made the tech­nol­ogy upgrades that the sur­charge was meant to pay for and it is time for local gov­ern­ments to give that money back to the tax­pay­ers, Jor­dan said.

“Local gov­ern­ments become depen­dent on taxes once they are given to them and its tough to wean them off or stop them cold turkey from money they have come to expect,” he said.

Jordan’s coun­ter­part in the house, State Rep. Andrew Bren­ner (R-Powell), said that he does not have enough infor­ma­tion to take a posi­tion on the issue. How­ever, gen­er­ally, “If some­thing is set to expire, I would like to see it expire,” he said.

Bren­ner said that he expects both cham­bers of the leg­is­la­ture to take up the issue in Novem­ber or December.

Sta­ple­ton acknowl­edged that there are some “ultra-conservatives” in the leg­is­la­ture that will sim­ply refuse to budge on the issue. But with Speaker of the House William Batchelder (R-Medina) and the County Com­mis­sion­ers Asso­ci­a­tion of Ohio sup­port­ing the exten­sion of the sur­charge, he hopes that some law­mak­ers can be swayed.

“What we are try­ing to do is con­vince them that it is not a tax increase,” he said.

State Rep. Mar­garet Ruhl, who due to redis­trict­ing is vying to rep­re­sent a por­tion of Delaware County, is open to extend­ing the sur­charge. Due to the increase in cell phone usage, she believes that the rate at which the sur­charge is col­lected could be reduced while main­tain­ing the same level of fund­ing for Ohio’s 88 counties.

“I think we really should extend it because of tech­nol­ogy chang­ing all the time,” she said. “I’m lean­ing toward pos­si­bly reduc­ing it but renew­ing it.”

The money will be needed in the com­ing years to pay for addi­tional upgrades to the 911 com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tem, accord­ing to pub­lic safety sys­tem admin­is­tra­tor Patrick Brandt. He expects the next major tech­nol­ogy change to come in the form of the capa­bil­ity to text mes­sage infor­ma­tion to 911 dis­patch­ers. Such an upgrade could prove to be very costly, he said.

“It will prob­a­bly be a man­date but it will be unfunded,” he said.

With or with­out the rev­enue from the sur­charge, the county will make all nec­es­sary changes to its 911 com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem, Sta­ple­ton said. But the money will have to come from some­where, and it could come at the expense of another program.

“What we could pos­si­bly hurt is some­thing else,” Sta­ple­ton said.

Posted by Gary Henery on Sep 26 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.