Supervisors urged to equalize phone charges|Monthly fees pay for E-911

Published 12:00 am Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Phone taxes must keep up with phone technology, a Lauderdale County supervisor told Warren County’s governing board Monday in making a pitch for legislation to raise and equalize the fees people pay on their monthly bills.

“Land lines are going away,” Craig Hitt said during the informal session. “There’s $400,000 a month we’re not collecting in Mississippi.”

Hitt is also a member of Lauderdale’s E-911 Commission, which manages emergency dispatch services in the Meridian area.

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In Warren County, a commission of elected and law enforcement officials manages the E-911 Dispatch Center, a city-county agency created nearly 20 years ago. For the coming year, the local center will operate on a $1.3 million budget with 41 percent of the money coming from phone fees and the balance coming from city and county treasuries.

Hitt is backing a push to ask legislators, who set the fees, to stop charging $2 per month on wired lines and $1 per month on cell phones and start charging $1.50 per month per line across the board. The new fees would also apply to Internet-based phone services, such as Vonage, for the first time, according to a proposal by the Office of the State Auditor.

Supporters of change, including Michael Gaul, local emergency dispatch director, contend Mississippi is in violation with the federal New and Emerging Technologies (NET) 911 Improvement Act of 2008 because of the dual rates collected depending on phone type. The NET law requires IP (Internet Protocol) phone service providers to provide 911 services. The bill also required plans for a nationwide IP-enabled emergency network that can handle requests via text message, e-mail and instant messaging in addition to phone calls. Gaul has said emergency calls from cell phones or Internet-based services totaled 62 percent of the center’s call volume in 2008 and approached 70 percent during the first half of the year.

Another proposed change expands the Mississippi Commercial Mobile Radio Service Board board to 11 appointees of the governor from its current seven, bringing in a mix of industrial and political memberships, such as an E-911 coordinator, a Voice-over Internet Protocol service provider and the heads of the Department of Public Safety and the Mississippi Association of Supervisors.

In his pitch, Hitt said his involvement was borne out of inquiries by state panels on misuse of public funds in Lauderdale County, where Meridian is located. One matter separate from 911, involving fuel cards, was investigated by the state auditor. Hitt admitted 11 members would be cumbersome, but had advantages.

“It covers all the players at the table,” Hitt said.

The meeting brought together two-thirds of the local legislative delegation and six of seven local commission members. Vicksburg Mayor Paul Winfield, like fellow E-911 commissioner and District 2 Supervisor David McDonald, said groups such as the Mississippi Association of Supervisors, Mississippi Municipal League and the Mississippi Sheriffs Association should “take the lead” on efforts to raise the surcharge in 2010.

“The more associations we have pushing for something, the better off we’d be,” McDonald said.

Despite the gradual shift from land line phones and rising number of 911 calls placed by cell phones, raising the current $1 maximum fee on cell lines has been a non-starter in the Legislature for nearly a decade because of opposition from anti-tax advocates and cell phone providers. Bills filed by individual counties to that effect usually don’t get out of committee, especially changes tailored only to specific counties.

State Rep. George Flaggs, D-Vicksburg, said he’d “highly suggest” supporters of higher cell phone fees involve the state’s executive branch in the process. “It’s important the governor and lieutenant governor get involved,” Flaggs said, pointing out Gov. Haley Barbour and Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant have been resistant to tax changes.

State Sen. Briggs Hopson III, R-Vicksburg, who filed a bill during the regular session last spring to create a board with the same makeup as the plan pitched by Hitt, indicated his support for higher fees would remain the same in 2010 despite the legislation’s failure to emerge from the Senate Public Utilities Committee and sentiment that higher fees amount to a tax on consumers.

“I understand that part, but you’re talking about government services already stopped,” Hopson said, referring to the sluggish economy’s effect on state and local revenue.

Reached late Monday, Rep. Alex Monsour, R-Vicksburg, said he has not supported efforts in the past to raise cell phone surcharges because they are akin to a tax hike, but couldn’t predict how he’d vote if the issue comes up in the 2010 session without “hard facts” on phone usage and revenue.

Cell phone lines in use in Mississippi rose to more than 2.1 million in 2007 from less than 1 million in 2001, according to figures from the state auditor. Vo-IP usage increased to 339,571 accounts in 2007, up from 21,185 in 2001.

Formerly separate, law enforcement, ambulance and fire dispatch functions for Vicksburg and Warren County were consolidated by referendum in 1988, with service starting three years later. Generally speaking, the phone fees pay for overhead, phone database access and managers’ salaries. Municipal funds pay 65 percent of dispatcher salaries and county funds pay for 35 percent.

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Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com