911 Strike Force OKs Report to Congress

The FCC 911 fee diversion strike force voted unanimously Friday during a virtual meeting to approve its final report as written. It will be sent to Congress and covers the impacts of and recommendations to fee transfers. The document is mandated by the Don’t Break Up the T-Band Act (see 2108020051). All but two of the group’s members participated.

Key findings by the task force are that the practice “negatively impacts public safety”; fee receipts and expenditures should be “distinguishable and auditable” to ensure money is used for eligible activities; “significant capital and recurring operational investments” are required to support 911 systems; “direct enforcement action” by the FCC should be taken if there's fee diversion, and further study is recommended; state and local 911 authorities “should be held accountable as individual actors” if there's fee diversion; the FCC needs “additional authority” to ensure it receives accurate data; and the definition of fee diversion “requires refinement” to ensure 911 fees directly support emergency communications.

“It’s important to realize when we compel people to give us the revenue for a specific purpose, the idea is that we use that revenue for the purpose that we told them we were taking the revenue,” said Vice Chair Steven Sharpe of the New York State 911 Coordinators Association. He's Genesee County, New York, emergency communications director for the sheriff's office.

FCC acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel discussed the task force in a statement Friday, saying "it’s a simple fact that when consumers pay 911 fees on their phone bills, that money should be used to fund 911." She noted "it’s a complex problem that 911 fees are too often diverted to other uses, which delays much-needed upgrades to America’s aging 911 system to keep pace with the digital age."

Public safety communications groups lauded Congressional Next-Generation 911 Caucus co-Chair Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., for filing S-2754 last week in a bid to allocate $10 billion for entities to upgrade to the technology. The House and Senate Commerce committees are proposing $10 billion for NG-911 as part of the Build Back Better Act reconciliation package (see 2109140063). Providing federal NG-911 funding will “give all Americans the modern, secure, resilient, interoperable 9-1-1 service they need,” National Emergency Number Association President Jennifer White said Thursday in a statement. Klobuchar also cited support from other groups.

Working group 1's recommendations should be considered “a holistic approach” and “picking and choosing one and ignoring another would violate the consensus that was used to develop these recommendations,” said WG-1 Chairman Budge Currier, 911 branch manager for the California Office of Emergency Services. The report's text wasn't released.

WG 1 said examples of eligible uses of 911 fees include 911 geographic information systems; cybersecurity for 911 and public safety answering point operations; equipment and services used by PSAPs or emergency communications centers (ECC) for emergency notification systems; and communication systems that “directly support the exchange of information between the PSAP/ECC and the first responder.” Ineligible uses include commercial communication systems and LTE subscription plans that don’t directly support the delivery of data and information between a 911 request for assistance and a first responder.

The WG recommended that federal grant programs allow public safety communications as an eligible expense and 911 agencies as eligible applicants. It also said the FCC should modify its license application for public safety spectrum licenses to include a question about whether the applicant is diverting fees.

State legislators are “the primary actors of diverting 911 fees,” said Richard Bradford, chair of WG 2 and special deputy attorney general in North Carolina. The working group concluded that “some form of criminal penalty” for diverting jurisdictions may help curb fee diversion and should be limited to monetary fines or forfeitures. It recommended imposing a “series of escalating enforcement actions beginning with a fine” against diverting jurisdictions.

WG 3, which was tasked with identifying the impacts of diversion, said basic operations, technology, interoperability, preparedness and planning, public trust and accountability, and 911 fee oversight and administration are categories for fee shuffling. The working group defined 911 underfunding as when funding levels are “below the levels required for optimal performance of 911 operations.”

The working group recommended that states be given additional guidance on how to respond to the FCC’s annual questionnaire. It suggested jurisdictions have mechanisms to review and act on fee diversion or underfunding, and oversight mechanisms to ensure funding is optimized. Additional research is needed to understand the relationship between fee diversion, underfunding, and emergency response, said WG 3 Chair and ShotSpotter Senior Director Karima Holmes, who previously ran Washington, D.C.'s 911 center.