County welcomes 911 funding boost in budget bills
Gov. Josh Shapiro signed a package of budget bills Thursday containing an increase in funding for 911 center operations among its many provisions.
The 911 funding, included in budget bills the House and Senate approved Wednesday, comes from an increase to a monthly surcharge on telephone bills by 30 cents, from $1.65 to $1.95.
“The money has to be used for 911 operations,” said Steve Bicehouse, county emergency service director. “911 is not a cheap endeavor with technology and staff. We’re staffing a 24-7 department.”
Bicehouse and county commissioners said the amount of money the county will receive has not yet been calculated, but it would reduce the county’s contribution to 911 operating costs. Bicehouse said the county contribution is $1.2 million.
The 911 center’s annual operating cost is $4.6 million, said Leslie Osche, county commissioners’ chairwoman. The phone surcharge fees paid by county residents exceed that amount, but the county does not get that much back from the state, which forces the county to transfer money from the general fund to cover the operating cost, she said.
The 911 center has 20 full-time and eight part-time dispatchers and a few administrators.
County officials said the formula used to determine county allocations is not fair to Butler County.
Commissioner Kevin Boozel said the legislation increases funding, but doesn’t change the formula.
Factored into the formula is the amount of money counties spent on 911 projects when Act 12 took effect in 2015 authorizing the surcharge.
Butler County did not have a 911 project at the time, so it receives less money than counties that were working on their 911 systems, Bicehouse said.
“The old funding formula was not fair. It was not an equitable funding formula,” Bicehouse said.
Based on the formula, the county receives $1.15 per capita while some other counties receive more than $6 per capita, Boozel said.
“The formula is flawed,” Boozel said. “It’s been flawed, and it has not been fixed.”
Osche and Boozel said the county’s distribution under the new surcharge rate hasn’t been determined yet, but the formula has to be changed to make it fair.
“We’re not getting back what our constituents are paying in,” Osche said.
The budget bills allow the state 911 advisory board to consider changing the formula, she said. The board would consider changing the formula only if the fee is increased because it didn’t want to reduce funding for any county, she said.
Boozel said the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania advocated raising the phone surcharge to $2.30 to reduce the amount of taxes counties pay toward 911 operations, and Shapiro proposed raising the fee to $1.97.
Boozel also said he is glad a surcharge increase has made it to Shapiro’s desk, but he wished a higher amount would have been proposed and is disappointed the Legislature waited until its last day in session until March to pass it.
