Missouri lawmakers pressed to mandate 911 service fee for cell phones

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Missouri 911 directors and other emergency officials believe state lawmakers’ fear of raising taxes is keeping Missouri from making needed improvements to emergency phone systems.

Read additional details in our newspaper or e-Edition. Newspaper subscribers: Click on an e-Edition article and log in using your current account information at no extra charge. For e-edition help, e-mail circ@newstribune.com. Click here to purchase the full version of archived articles.

Rallying at the Capitol, the Missouri 911 Directors Association, Missouri National Emergency Numbering Association and Missouri Association of Public Communication Officials went to several lawmakers offices Tuesday hoping to get support for legislation mandating a 911 service fee for cell phone users.

More like this story

MK 2 years, 4 months ago

I hope the State tells them to take a hike on that idea. If they need more money and this is important enough to them, they should cut spending somewhere else instead of attaching their tick like mandibles to Missouri citizens' wallets. Raising taxes is just such an easy cop out solution. Any halfwit can come up with the idea to force more money out of our people in order to deal with an issue. We elect these people to put in some effort, to think and come up with real solutions.

JCLifer 2 years, 4 months ago

How about raising the pathetic cigarette and alcohol taxes to help pay for this? My cell phone bill already has a half-dozen taxes on it already.

MK 2 years, 4 months ago

Why raise taxes on those items? I don't smoke and I hardly drink so it wouldn't be costing me anything really, but that's not the fair way to go about raising money for the State's needs, to tax addictive substances. Drinkers and smokers shouldn't have to shoulder the burden for this idea.

Why raise taxes at all? Why is this always seen as the cure all method?

Rison 2 years, 4 months ago

Cell phone rates, fees and taxes are unbelievably ridiculous already.

M9 2 years, 4 months ago

We can pay for free cell phones to low income families on our phone bills, but not for life saving services? We need to look at these OTHER fees on our phones and where they came from...I would rather pay to know my family would be located if they called 911. Missouri is the ONLY state that doesn't have a fee for 911 services on wireless devices....that is what is rediculous.

MK 2 years, 4 months ago

then maybe instead of mandating it for all cell phone users, they should allow a choice for people who wish to pay for this enhanced 911 service to be the ones that receive it.

Rison 2 years, 4 months ago

Good call. Pun intended.

M9 2 years, 4 months ago

Missouri allowed 71 million dollars to go out for these free cell phone last year...you pay for this fund right now on your cell phone bill. 911 centers only get funding from landline phone. Please visit save911.org. Most people don't realize that there are places in Missouri that if you call 911 from ANY phone, they will not be able to see your location OR have proper training to help your choking child or family member having a heart attack. Please educate yourselves, because 911 needs help in order to help you.

M9 2 years, 4 months ago

MK-you do not want to be able to dial 911 on your wireless device and get a certified 911 operator?

MK 2 years, 4 months ago

I don't want the state to keep turning towards taxing us and charging fees everytime there's a new issue for them to solve. I would much rather they find ways to cut spending (hopefully wasteful spending) from other parts of the budget than to automatically force the citizens to pay even more. If its an important enough issue to solve, than I would expect there are many other things of lesser importance to draw the funds from.

M9 2 years, 4 months ago

I understand what you are saying completely...I wish we could find a way do that. I do know that if legislation was passed or went to a vote of the people it would allow the DPS to reduce the amount collected which would be evaluated on a yearly basis.

MK 2 years, 4 months ago

The whole point I am trying to make is that when money is going to be forcefully taken from us by the State for any reason, we should automatically go on the defensive and push for alternative methods to solve the alleged problem or State needs and maybe even question if its actually a valid need in the first place.

Our money and our freedom should be the most important thing to us first and foremost. Our ability to do for ourselves instead of looking to our government for all the solutions is what I feel should be encouraged. We have much less ownership in ourselves today than our grandparents and great grandparents did for themselves in their days.

As citizens we are constantly finding ourselves being herded around by new laws and hardly ever seeing some of these laws abolished. We are constantly being looked upon to fund more projects and pay for more ideas through fees and taxations yet rarely seeing a decrease in our financial burdens imposed by our governments as time moves on.

I would love to see the momentum finally swing the other way where we as citizens are entrusted with more freedoms when it comes to our families, our property, our minds, our bodies and our financial assets than to see anymore of that control being taken away from our courts and elected officials.

Jab 2 years, 4 months ago

MK,MK,MK, God forbid that if anything happened to you or one of your loved ones, and emergency personnel couldn't find your location because you happen to be in one of the 18 counties in Missouri that doesn't have the capability to locate you using your cell phone GPS because they don't have the technology. I have kids and all of them use cell phones, I would be willing to pay a monthly fee if I knew one of them was in trouble and needed help and knew someone was going to find them. I'm willing to give up the cost of one bottle of coke per month, knowing 9-1-1 will work as we hope and depend on it to state wide. Our law makers need to wake-up or will we have to wait until one of them experience what others have experienced, loosing a loved one. I hope not.

MK 2 years, 4 months ago

Doesn't most everyone involved with the government payroll and funding especially when it comes to issues that involve law enforcement? I actually believe in this situation they want more money so they can provide a better service or at least I have no reason to believe otherwise. I just disagree with the methods we seem to usually first look towards in making that money available.

M9 2 years, 4 months ago

wow...you obviously have never taken a call with a frantic mother that has her baby in her arms not breathing, desperately pleeding for your help and not be able to give it to her because you don't have the funding for training....more money and power to play with? Believe me, the people that do that job, which is the 3rd high stress job there is, don't do it for the money and power...what a joke.

M9 2 years, 4 months ago

Your right graceful, those things only happen in the movies :)

M9 2 years, 4 months ago

The 911 dispatcher may tell YOU that one day "911 what is your emergency oh, you had a wreck and your trapped and bleeding to death....well....we can't have everything we want can we?." then what...YOU would take to court the 911 agency for not serving you for something YOU don't want to pay for.

bluesfan13 2 years, 4 months ago

Ok... You'll fight the tax by not using a cell phone. BUT, you're against them passing this particular tax, so you're GOING to be paying the tax by having it included with all the other taxes you pay instead of being tied to actual cell phone usage. A bit counter-intuitive, isn't it?

bluesfan13 2 years, 4 months ago

So you think that 911 service is a waste of taxpayer money?

bluesfan13 2 years, 4 months ago

Ok, so how do you plan to keep paying for 911 service? There fewer and fewer land-line phones where the tax currently comes from. They are being replaced by cell phones. Cell phone users still use the 911 service, they just don't pay for it.

Rison 2 years, 4 months ago

If they repeal anything and everything that pays for free cell phones for low income families, I'll gladly support this.

bluesfan13 2 years, 4 months ago

Well, let's just get rid of the whole 911 system then.
After all, the only people who use 911 are those who were irresponsible enough to get themselves into trouble, they can get themselves out of trouble. Why should we taxpaying, hard working, cell-phone bill paying citizens have to foot the bill for their negligence?

MK 2 years, 4 months ago

I like the way you think. Maybe some kind of private enterprise with healthy competition would be the way to go instead of us always turning to the government monopolies in order to warm our bottles and then tuck us into bed.

JCsleeper 2 years, 4 months ago

No.

JCsleeper 2 years, 4 months ago

In the full article, it is noted that in this area we already have an enhanced 911 system funded by Cole County and Jefferson City. The article also states that 18 MO counties do not have this service. Those localities should deal with it - we did. If this were to pass, does anyone think the county and city would reduce our local taxes accordingly?

M9 2 years, 4 months ago

JCPD needs help too. Just because you have the service now doesn't mean that it is protected and will always remain. I challenge you to visit your local 911 center and ask about it.

JCLifer 2 years, 4 months ago

Maybe a more effective use of universal technology can transform hundreds of little inefficient systems into one universal system that works for everyone, but costs a lot less to run than maintaining all these multiple little systems?

Kind of like why does the state need 523 individual school districts with all the various layers of duplication, red-tape, and inefficiencies. Just think of the economies of scale if there was only one district per county in this state!

JCLifer 2 years, 4 months ago

I think this might be the point that Graceful is trying to make: instead of adding more and more taxes and little bandaides, how about looking at the whole system and fix everything to be more efficient. Technology can do some amazing things today for very low cost that we didn't have even ten years ago. How about thinking outside of the box and fixing whole systems instead of treating little symtoms here and there?

Or login with:

OpenID

News Tribune