Senate Bill introduced to "clean up" the 911 Act

Michelle Abbott, KSAPCO Legislative Chair,  Please note below information from Chairman Walt Way.

Several clarifications are needed to the 911 Act and that a bill would be introduced in the Senate in the near future to address those needs. Senate Bill No. 384 was introduced in the Senate on February 6th and referred to the Committee on Utilities on February 7th . This bill is scheduled for a hearing before that Committee on February 14th.

The clean-up items are summarized as follows:

1. To clarify the definition of “Subscriber Account” to address the issue of how many 10 digit access numbers behind a multi-line telephone system switch or equivalent service will be assessed the 911 Fee. There were some varying interpretations as to whether the 911 Fee should assessed on all 10 digit phone numbers served by such a switch or on the outbou nd talkpaths serving that switch. The recommended language in the bill supports assessment of the 911 Fee on the outbound talkpaths serving the switch as that is the actual limit of how many concurrent 911 calls could be made by the 10 digit phone numbers served by the switch.

2. Since we introduced the term “Multi-line telephone system” in the above definition, we are adding that as a definition in the statute.

3. A request was made by the Governor’s Appointments Secretary to have staggered terms for the 911 Coordinating Council members in order to reduce the impact of having to process 26 appointments at the same time every three years. The proposed language in the bill modifies existing terms of members to address this request.

4. The last modification addresses the method of distributing prepaid wireless 911 fees that exceed $2,000,000 in a year. We learned from discussions with KDOR that they do not collect jurisdiction spe cific information with the various sales taxes collected by retailers and would be unable to identify where these fees are collected so the LCPA could remit to the appropriate PSAPs. The proposed language would direct the distribution of the fees in excess of the $2 million threshold to “counties in an amount proportional to each county’s population as a percentage of the population of the state”.

I plan on submitting testimony in behalf of the 911 Coordinating Council to support this bill. If you have any concerns or questions about this bill, please contact me. If you are supportive of this bill, please let me know.

Thanks.
Walt Way