911 Fee Diversion Likely to Get 4-0 FCC Vote

An NPRM on curbing 911 fee diversion (see 2101270060) is likely to receive unanimous support during Wednesday's meeting, FCC officials told us. Congress in December passed the Don’t Break Up the T-Band Act, which required the commission to issue rules defining what constitutes a 911 fee or diversion.

Former Commissioner Mike O’Rielly told us the draft order gives the FCC the opportunity to call balls and strikes on what is and isn’t considered fee diversion. “There was agreement amongst commissioners when I was there, and I think that will continue,” O’Rielly said. “I'm pretty confident that this isn't a universe where we can't find commonality of what is an acceptable expenditure.” O’Rielly and now-acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel had advocated, sometimes jointly, against shifting money taken out of consumer telecom bills for 911 from being used for other government purposes. The agency didn't comment Tuesday.

The proposals may have some unintended consequences, 911 stakeholders said in recent interviews. And the law caught some by surprise because it was “one of the bills that got swept into the COVID relief package at the end,” said Harriet Rennie-Brown, National Association of State 911 Administrators executive director. As the FCC crafts its rules, it needs to keep in mind that “when diversion happens, the state 911 offices often have very little to say about it or do about it,” Rennie-Brown said: “We actually likened it to sending your daughter to bed without supper because your son took a cookie out of the cookie jar.”

One proposal in the draft includes barring individuals in states that divert 911 fees from participating in FCC advisory committees. But doing so could cause “collateral damage,” said National Emergency Number Association CEO Brian Fontes: “The unintended consequences here is that we may in fact be restricting people who could be very helpful [and] informative.” Excluding states that divert fees from other programs could also do more harm than good, Rennie-Brown said. If a state is no longer eligible for grant money because it's diverting fees, “you’re doubling down on the injury to the 911 system” when that system is already losing money from the diversion, she said (see 2012030052).

The draft was encouraging to Dan Henry, NENA director-government affairs. “We really want to make the size and shape of this circle that we draw around 911 eligible expenses to be the right shape and the right size,” he said. “The shape changes a little bit when you move to a next-gen environment, and that's one of the big things that we have to account” for.

Fee diversion is becoming less of an issue as states clean up their laws, and “the biggest culprits” are New York and New Jersey, Fontes said. Those states have accounted for more than 95% of all fee diversion in recent years. Officials from New York and New Jersey didn’t comment now.