COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
VETERANS AFFAIRS AND EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS COMMITTEE HEARING
STATE CAPITOL HARRISBURG, PA
IRVIS OFFICE BUILDING ROOM G-50
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18, 2 015 10:33 A.M.
PRESENTATION ON 911 EMERGENCY TELEPHONE ACT REWRITE
BEFORE: HONORABLE STEPHEN BARRAR, MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HONORABLE FRANK A. FARRY HONORABLE JOSEPH T. HACKETT HONORABLE BARRY JOZWIAK HONORABLE JIM MARSHALL HONORABLE JOHN MCGINNIS HONORABLE RICK SACCONE HONORABLE WILL TALLMAN HONORABLE MIKE TOBASH HONORABLE CHRIS SAINATO, DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN HONORABLE BRYAN BARBIN HONORABLE WILLIAM C. KORTZ HONORABLE PETER SCHWEYER
Pennsylvania House of Representatives Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 2
COMMITTEE STAFF PRESENT: RICK O ’LEARY MAJORITY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR SEAN HARRIS MAJORITY RESEARCH ANALYST LU ANN FAHNDRICH MAJORITY ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT COLEEN ENGVALL MAJORITY INTERN
AMY BRINTON DEMOCRATIC EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR HARRY BUCHER DEMOCRATIC RESEARCH ANALYST IAN MAHAL DEMOCRATIC RESEARCH ANALYST 3
I N D E X
TESTIFIERS
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NAMEPAGE
DOUG HILL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, COUNTY COMMISSIONERS ASSOCIATION OF PA ...... 9
RICK FLINN DIRECTOR, PA EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY...... 40 Accompanied by ROBERT A. FULL CHIEF DEPUTY DIRECTOR AT PEMA
BRIAN MELCER PRESIDENT OF PA NENA, and DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC SAFETY, LAWRENCE COUNTY...... 61 Accompanied by SCOTT KRATER PRESIDENT OF PA APCO, and DIRECTOR OF SCHUYLKILL COUNTY 911
MICHAEL C. MCGRADY CHAIRMAN, JOINT PA APCO/PA NENA LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE
TIM BALDWIN PAST PRESIDENT OF PA NENA, and DEPUTY DIRECTOR, LANCASTER COUNTY COMMUNICATIONS
JOHN GRAPPY DIRECTOR, ERIE COUNTY DEPT. OF PUBLIC SAFETY, and WESTERN REPRESENTATIVE FOR PA NENA
JOHN GEIB EASTERN AREA REPRESENTATIVE, PA NENA
FRANK BUZYDLOWSKI DIRECTOR, STATE GOVERNMENT RELATIONS, VERIZON...... 89 4
I N D E X
TESTIFIERS (cont’d)
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NAMEPAGE
DAVID KERR REGIONAL VICE PRESIDENT, EXTERNAL AFFAIRS, AT&T...... 94
STEVEN SAMARA PRESIDENT, PENNSYLVANIA TELEPHONE ASSOCIATION...... 98
RAYMOND HAYLING DEPUTY CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, CITY OF PHILADELPHIA...... 110
RICH FITZGERALD COUNTY EXECUTIVE, ALLEGHENY COUNTY...... 128 Accompanied by GARY THOMAS ASSISTANT CHIEF, ALLEGHENY COUNTY EMERGENCY 911 CENTER
ROLAND "BUD" MERTZ DIRECTOR, WESTMORELAND COUNTY DEPT OF PUBLIC SAFETY.... 142
GERALD LUCIA MAYOR AND FIRE CHIEF, MT. PLEASANT BOROUGH and PRESIDENT, WESTMORELAND COUNTY FIRE CHIEF’S ASSOC...... 147
DONALD THOMA ADAMSBURG BOROUGH FIRE CHIEF, and DIRECTOR OF ADAMSBURG AMBULANCE SERVICE...... 148
NICK CAESAR DEPUTY 911 DIRECTOR, WESTMORELAND COUNTY...... 151 5
I N D E X
TESTIFIERS (cont’d)
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NAME PAGE
MICHAEL PRIES COUNTY COMMISSIONER, DAUPHIN COUNTY...... 154
STEPHEN LIBHART DIRECTOR, EMA/911 DAUPHIN COUNTY...... 156
BRIAN BARNO VICE PRESIDENT, GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS, BROADBAND CABLE ASSOCIATION OF PA ...... 166
SUBMITTED WRITTEN TESTIMONY
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(See submitted written testimony and handouts online.) 1 P R O C E E D I N G S
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3 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Good morning, everyone.
4 I’m Representative Steve Barrar, the Majority Chairman of
5 the House Veterans Affairs Emergency Preparedness Committee
6 and I ’d like to call this public hearing to order.
7 I would ask Representative Pete Schweyer, one of
8 our new Members, to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.
9 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Thank you,
10 Mr. Chairman.
11
12 (The Pledge of Allegiance was recited.)
13
14 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: I want to thank the
15 Members for being here this morning, and I would ask the
16 Members and the staff to introduce themselves. If we’d
17 start off with the Representatives.
18 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: Representative Bryan
19 Barbin representing Cambria County.
20 REPRESENTATIVE MCGINNIS: Representative John
21 McGinnis, 79th District, Blair County.
22 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: Will Tallman, Adams and
23 Cumberland County.
24 REPRESENTATIVE SACCONE: Rick Saccone
25 representing parts of Allegheny and Washington Counties. 7
1 REPRESENTATIVE JOZWIAK: Barry Jozwiak, Berks
2 County.
3 MR. HARRIS: Sean Harris, Research Analyst for
4 the Committee.
5 MR. O'LEARY: Rick O'Leary, Executive Director
6 for Chairman Barrar.
7 MINORITY CHAIRMAN SAINATO: Representative Chris
8 Sainato. I ’m the Democratic Chairman of the Committee.
9 MS. BRINTON: Amy Brinton, I’m Executive Director
10 for Chairman Sainato.
11 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: Good morning, everyone.
12 My name’s Bill Kortz, 38th District, Allegheny County.
13 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Good morning. Peter
14 Schweyer representing the 22nd District, Lehigh County,
15 City of Allentown.
16 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: We will probably have
17 other Members that we will introduce coming in and out of
18 the Committee since the Appropriations Committee is also
19 meeting. Some of our Members are currently up there.
20 As many of you are aware, this Committee has
21 conducted five hearings across the State of Pennsylvania on
22 this important 911 law rewrite and has conducted numerous
23 stakeholder meetings and many individual meetings with
24 various agencies and organizations that have a vested
25 interest in our 911 emergency communications system. 8
1 Before us today, w e ’re going to call up a couple
2 panels. Before us today, we have several agencies and
3 groups who have been working together on a proposed draft
4 bill, which would modernize our 911 law. I want to thank
5 everyone for your participation in the meeting today.
6 Chairman Sainato, do you have any remarks?
7 MINORITY CHAIRMAN SAINATO: Thank you, Chairman
8 Barrar.
9 I, too, would like to thank everybody for coming
10 today. It’s a very important meeting to move the process
11 forward as we continue to gather all the information. I
12 especially want to thank our Members. Like Mr. Chairman
13 Barrar say, w e ’re going to have some in and out today. I
14 know we have long day scheduled and hopefully we will get
15 some more information as this process moves forward.
16 Thank you.
17 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Okay. And joining us
18 right now is Representative Frank Farry.
19 Frank, you’re Bucks County, right?
20 REPRESENTATIVE FARRY: Yes, sir.
21 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Okay. At this time I
22 would like to call up one of our primary stakeholders, Doug
23 Hill, who is the Executive Director for the County
24 Commissioners Association.
25 Doug, it’s a pleasure to have you here and you 9
1 can begin your testimony when you’re ready.
2 MR. HILL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And it is
3 great to be in front of this group again. We have truly
4 appreciated the working relationship with all the Members
5 of the Committee, and I also want to commend your staff as
6 well. They have done exceptional work in taking the issues
7 and ideas that we brought to the table and synthesizing
8 them and getting them into proper form for everyone’s
9 consideration. It’s been a remarkable effort.
10 You have our testimony in front of you. I’m
11 obviously not going to read that. It’s pretty lengthy, so
12 I do just want to focus in on a few things.
13 W e ’ve been in front of you on a number of
14 occasions now. We are comfortable with your awareness of
15 the system and the system’s issues, the counties’ role as
16 the provider of 911, the disjointed nature, siloed nature
17 of the statute, and we appreciate again the generous
18 opportunity you gave us back in February to review our
19 proposal at length with the Committee.
20 Since then, our working group has been together a
21 few times and w e ’ve met with staff a few times as well.
22 W e ’ve taken the comments that you made at the last meeting
23 to heart and tried to incorporate those into the draft
24 legislation.
25 The draft that w e ’ve come up with focuses on 10
1 three primary objectives: First, to improve 911 system
2 administration by combining silos and preparing for next-
3 generation technologies; second, by sorting out the
4 governance mechanisms in a way that respects counties’ role
5 as a primary provider while balancing our broader interests
6 in coordination statewide; and third, working toward a
7 sustainable and equitable fee and attendant financing
8 structure.
9 We think the draft will satisfactorily address
10 your concerns and issues on the first two objectives, but
11 in that informational meeting and in hallway conversations
12 with you and many of your colleagues since then, we know
13 that the fee that w e ’ve proposed continues to be a sticking
14 point. And with your permission, the remainder of our
15 remarks will simply focus in on the finances of the system.
16 The context really is in three parts: First,
17 there is a recognition that for counties the bottom line is
18 a significant growing backfill in local property tax
19 dollars to keep the 911 systems operational, and
20 particularly, given the intent of the original law was for
21 the subscriber fees to pay all of the counties’ costs.
22 Second, we need to have resources to invest and to invest
23 in the next generation 911 and to do so in a way that keeps
24 our system among the best in the Nation. And third, as you
25 all are very much away, prompt action is needed because 11
1 this reaches crisis proportions if we don’t have something
2 on the Governor’s desk by the June 30th expiration of the
3 wireless telephone surcharge.
4 Now, the formal testimony goes into a lot more
5 detail on a number of specific issues. We describe the
6 funding mechanism, we talk about its history, we talk about
7 current issues in the funding mechanism, review some
8 emerging fiscal challenges, we talk about cost savings
9 opportunities because this isn’t all about raising fees;
10 this is also about reducing administrative overhead and
11 other costs. And we have a number of recommendations in
12 the testimony on operational and administrative issues, and
13 I’ll invite you to read through that at your leisure and
14 would certainly be happy to answer your questions about
15 that at the conclusion.
16 But instead, I ’m going to focus on the
17 recommended fee rates and this really starts about page 8
18 of the testimony. Any time the proposal is discussed, the
19 rate is the one topic that we come back to, and so we
20 wanted to elaborate a little bit on the rate, the basis for
21 that rate, and the rationale that we use to arrive at the
22 proposal.
23 And there are three components to the fee and the
24 rate: First, as we indicated at the February 11th
25 informational meeting, we have to meet current and near- 12
1 term fiscal needs, and so the proposal increases the
2 monthly subscriber rate by between 50 cents and $1 for a
3 new uniform rate of $2.
4 Second, going forward, we need to ensure we don’t
5 get caught in a 25-year trap again, in other words, no
6 adjustment to meet need. And so while we support including
7 a cost-of-living provision, that’s not written into the
8 current draft, and instead, the draft says we will visit
9 the rate and the rate structure on a four-year sunset.
10 And then last, between now and the four-year
11 sunset, PEMA, along with the new 911 Board, are directed to
12 study the finances of the system, to study how the
13 marketplaces are maturing to determine whether a different
14 kind of fee structure should be put in place and what the
15 nature and rate of that might be.
16 So there are compelling reasons to consider the
17 fee at the rate that we’ve proposed. Counties have been
18 good stewards of the existing fee. There’s a clearly
19 defined need. The public understands and accepts the
20 subscriber surcharge. The fee structure is efficient and
21 equitable. Any lesser fee would have negative
22 consequences, and it’s a simple matter of equity. And let
23 me just explore each of those a little bit.
24 First, counties have been good stewards. Prior
25 to counties’ assumption of 911 responsibility in 1990, the 13
1 system, for all practical purposes, didn’t exist in
2 Pennsylvania. Under county stewardship we put it in place.
3 We had it operational statewide within five years and we've
4 adapted to every technological change since then, and in
5 most cases, consistent with best practices nationally.
6 Counties from the outset use a centralized call-
7 taking model, and as a result, we have among the fewest
8 PSAPs per capita in the State. Counties also began early
9 to assume the dispatch role, which is and always was part
10 of call-taking systems, which created further system
11 efficiencies and also reduced our responders' costs.
12 We were also among the earliest in deploying
13 E-911 location systems for wireless and we continue to lead
14 nationally in coverage rates and in compliance with the
15 national standards. And counties are also already
16 incorporating elements of next generation of 911, including
17 development of shared broadband backbones and incorporation
18 of text 911.
19 Our second point, there is clearly a defined
20 need. We have one of the best systems in the Nation but
21 we've been doing so on the same $1 to $1.50 monthly
22 subscriber fee that was established in 1990. But like any
23 rate that remain unchanged for any length of time, let
24 alone a quarter of a century, rising costs have begun to
25 erode and in effect have now overwhelmed the available 14
1 funding.
2 So we have included a chart in our testimony.
3 For those unable to see it or those not in the room, we
4 have this in our testimony, which has been posted to our
5 website, PACounties.org. And what this chart illustrates
6 is the cost of the system and the funding sources over a
7 10-year time span. Things that you’ll notice, the
8 wireline, this band right here, you see how the revenue
9 from that has declined at a precipitous rate in just a 10-
10 year span. Wireless and VoIP, by the way -- VoIP comes in
11 here with the adoption of that fee in 2008 -- they’re not
12 direct tradeoffs. If someone at home switches from
13 wireline to VoIP, the wireline fee drops off at a $1 to
14 $1.50 and instead is a straight $1 for the VoIP.
15 System costs, as you say, continue to rise and
16 not at a huge rate but it’s still at a steady rate, and
17 that’s based in largest part on our adaptation to
18 technology, as well as increasing personnel costs. But if
19 you take a look at the line just beneath it, what you see
20 is that the fees that w e ’ve been collecting under the
21 existing subscriber surcharges have, for all intents and
22 purposes, leveled off, and in fact, we had a peak in 2010
23 and it’s been generally declining since. And there are
24 some reasons for that. We go into that in some detail in
25 the earlier part of the testimony. You’re welcome to take 15
1 a look through that or I can elaborate if you like. But
2 the bottom line is that all of these fees are keyed to 1990
3 rates.
4 The other point we want to make is that this top
5 line, the total cost, doesn’t actually reflect the total
6 cost of what counties are paying. These reflect the
7 allowable costs that we’ve filed with PEMA, and so there
8 are costs that are not allowed, bricks and mortar, certain
9 portion of personnel costs, some overhead costs, and then
10 there are costs that counties simply don’t report because
11 there isn’t a compelling reason to do so. Those include
12 sometimes major capital purchases that are either amortized
13 or simply not reported to PEMA, so there are costs above
14 that.
15 But the one thing that you need to see to take
16 away from this chart is this gold band and that’s the
17 property tax. That’s the property tax that fills the
18 difference between what the fees provide and what it costs
19 us to provide the system. In 2005, that was about 18.5
20 million statewide. Last year, that was 103 million. And
21 at this point you can see graphically that represents well
22 over a third of the cost of the system is being provided by
23 the counties out of local property tax dollars.
24 The third point we want to make is that the
25 public understands and accepts the subscriber surcharge. 16
1 Access to 911 is a public necessity and the provision of
2 highest-quality, highest-available-standards 911 is a
3 public expectation and that’s what we try to do. The same
4 $1 to $1.50 has appeared on the telephone subscribers’
5 monthly bills for nearly 25 years. The proposal increases
6 that fee by just 50 cents to $1 a month, the first increase
7 in 25 years. We know the public understands the value of
8 the service they receive and we know they can appreciate
9 the value compared to life and property of what county 911
10 systems deliver at such a remarkably low cost.
11 The fourth point, the fee structure is efficient
12 and equitable. The 911 system is about communications, and
13 the fee structure, which is based on access to
14 communications, has the closest possible nexus to those who
15 use the service. The add-on to the monthly communications
16 bill or prepaid wireless transaction is an incremental
17 cost, unlike an annual tax bill. It’s a dedicated fee. It
18 cannot be used under current law or under our proposal for
19 any other governmental purpose other than 911. And last,
20 it’s efficiently collected and remitted and with low
21 overhead.
22 Now, by contrast, there have been a couple
23 proposals advanced for alternate fees, and the two
24 predominant ones are a local per capita or a local per
25 parcel fee, and we don’t have a lot of detail on those but 17
1 just in general a few thoughts. We do appreciate the
2 discussion. We appreciate the notion that we should have
3 the ability to raise some revenues locally. It’s hard to
4 find what an equitable source might be, particularly
5 compared to what we already receive from the subscriber
6 fees.
7 The issues that we have with the per capita and
8 per parcel fees are equity and efficiency. For either of
9 those, they would be based on roles that don’t exist.
10 Counties would have to develop a per capita role or
11 counties would have to develop a per parcel role. One
12 proposal talks about levies being based to bring some
13 equity, talks about having the business side of the levy
14 raised based on number of employees. That’s a role that
15 doesn’t exist and obviously is changeable almost daily. So
16 to levy the fee, well, it’s money that stays local and
17 that’s appreciated. We would have to develop an assessment
18 role, we would have to develop a billing role, and we would
19 have to develop a collection system to do either of those.
20 Per capita has one particular flaw in that it
21 shifts the entirety of the burden over to individuals
22 because businesses don’t pay a per capita fee. In a
23 different way, a per parcel fee is problematic because if
24 it’s -- pick a number -- $28 per residential parcel, one is
25 a townhome, the next is a multifamily home, and the next is 18
1 a 30-acre estate all at the same rate, and that’s not
2 particularly equitable.
3 And then on the other side of it, locally raised
4 fees have an equity issue for the counties themselves, and
5 here I’m talking particularly about its ability to generate
6 meaningful funds in smaller or less densely populated
7 counties. So it’s a discussion we think we would like to
8 have, something that can work as an adjunct, but certainly
9 not as a primary or major funding source for the system.
10 Now, another point we would like to make is that
11 a fee lower than the $2 we propose has negative
12 consequences. The original law promised counties a fee
13 system that will cover the costs of providing 911 services.
14 The original law was simply designed as a PUC rate-making
15 and the counties would file with the PUC on what their
16 rates should be. If the PUC agreed, then that was what
17 rate the counties would have. When the law was finally
18 passed, the caps were added, the $1 to $1.50, and so that’s
19 really where the focus has been because, by and large,
20 we’ve hit those caps. PUC approval is meaningless and
21 unnecessary. But the bottom line for us is that the $2
22 begins to restore the promise that the original law
23 intended that the fees pay for the cost of the system.
24 There are immediate consequences if we would go
25 to a lower rate. First, as you may remember in the 19
1 proposal, we distribute the funds largely on a formula
2 basis. So 5 percent is distributed across all PSAPs, 70
3 percent is driven out by direct mathematical formula, 25
4 percent is set aside for special purposes, and that
5 includes 2 percent for PEMA to run its side of the 911
6 system, 8 percent to do statewide backbone on broadband
7 basis, and 15 percent is set aside for incentive grants for
8 consolidation and improving systems efficiency.
9 If we were to go lower than $2, we would have to
10 eliminate the 8 percent, we would have to probably halve
11 the amount that goes to PEMA, the 2 percent would drop to
12 1, and depending on what rate you ultimately decide, you
13 would probably have to reduce or eliminate the 15 percent
14 incentive fund because if we didn’t do that, the remaining
15 75 percent doesn’t represent enough of an increase to keep
16 us even to where we are right now, and there are counties
17 that could be losers.
18 The long-term effect is also important to note
19 because we’re trying to build in system capacity, and most
20 particularly, we know next generation is coming. We don’t
21 know how quickly, we don’t know what it’s going to cost,
22 but it’s going to include things like video, nonhuman
23 dialing on Star, those kinds of things, and those are going
24 to be important elements of the system. I know you can
25 understand that. It would improve the outcomes for those 20
1 in need. It would improve the efficiency and the safety
2 for our first responders if we can take advantage of those
3 technologies. They're not quite ripe yet for us to install
4 but we know it's not a 10-year timeline. It's going to be
5 shorter than that before the demand hits us, and if we
6 don't build in fiscal capacity, then we're not going to be
7 able to do that in any kind of a timely fashion.
8 The last point I want to make is that we are also
9 talking about the fee as a matter of equity. As we noted
10 in the formal testimony, the Legislative Budget and Finance
11 Committee in its 2012 report suggested that just adjusting
12 on the basis of inflation, the $1 that was available for
13 first-, second-, and second-class-A counties would be
14 $1.72. The $1.25 that was available for third- through
15 fifth-class counties would be $2.15. And the $1.50 that
16 was put in place in 1990 for sixth- through eighth-class
17 counties would be $2.58 just on a simple inflation basis,
18 and that doesn't include the additional costs we've
19 incurred over time because of unanticipated changes and
20 accommodations we needed to make in technology.
21 So we have one more chart and this is on the last
22 page of the testimony. And what we did here was to
23 illustrate where a sample of subscriber rates would fall.
24 And it includes the three wireline rates, the $1.50, $1.25,
25 and the $1 across the top, and then as you go down the 21
1 chart, you can see inflation by year and how that
2 translates out for each of the fees that have been under
3 discussion. The $1 column, by the way, also represents the
4 amount of that collected under wireless and a VoIP; and
5 then the last column, the $1.06, if you remember the
6 testimony at the February 11th hearing, the industry said
7 $1.06 more or less represents the blended rate statewide.
8 So we thought we would put that column in as well to give
9 you some comparisons.
10 And I think the things that you find here are
11 striking. For example, let’s examine the low end of
12 numbers that w e ’ve already talked about. $1.50, if we were
13 to move to $1.50, what would that mean? Well, every county
14 would be at about 2005 for their wireless and VoIP rates.
15 Just catching up to inflation w e ’d be clear up to 2005.
16 Third- through fifth-class counties would only be up to
17 1996, and sixth- through eighth-class counties would still
18 be at 1990 where they started if we were to only go to
19 $1.50. Even the blended rate only catches up to 2003. And
20 that’s in the light blue here on the chart.
21 By contrast, our proposed $2, which you see on
22 the chart in green, sixth- through eighth-class counties
23 would get up to at least 2000 inflation, third through
24 fifth get as far as 2007, and the wireless VoIP rate
25 actually translates out to about 2018 for projected 22
1 inflation, which is just in time for the proposal’s sunset.
2 Now, admittedly, when we talk about the
3 distribution, the distribution is going to be handled in a
4 different way so this isn’t exactly what counties are going
5 to receive it so I don’t want to be misleading in that
6 respect. But it does show you that we need to be
7 aggressive on the rate; we need to understand that there
8 are costs that have been incurred. We have projected costs
9 that we need to deal with in the name of public safety.
10 That’s why we’re asking the Committee’s consideration for
11 the rate that we have proposed at $2.
12 So let me just conclude again by saying how much
13 I ’ve appreciated the work that the Committee has done on
14 this and the work in the Senate chamber as well. Counties
15 are proud of the role that we play in providing this
16 critical public service but we need a statute and funding
17 mechanism that allows us to continue to do so in a manner
18 that the public expects.
19 So we look forward to working with you on
20 continuing to develop the draft legislation. We hope we
21 can make final adjustment in the next few days and get the
22 bill moving out of Committee so that we have it on its path
23 to the Governor’s desk ahead of the June 30th sunset.
24 And thank you again. I will be happy to take
25 your questions. 23
1 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Thank you, Doug.
2 We’ve been joined by Representative Donatucci.
3 Where’s she at? Oh, over here. There she is. Good, thank
4 you for joining us today.
5 Doug, on your comments, I didn’t get a chance to
6 read your testimony, but on the concept then of
7 consolidation, which we know would save money, what is the
8 attitude amongst the County Commissioners on some type of a
9 forced consolidation to bring the cost down?
10 MR. HILL: Well, when we talk about
11 consolidation, there’s two different kinds. One is
12 consolidation of PSAPs, Public Safety Answering Points.
13 And Pennsylvania already has the fewest per capita among
14 all the large States, and that’s because of the model the
15 counties put in place back in the 1990s. Further
16 consolidation might help but there’s a cost to that. And
17 first, let me mention, too, our smallest counties already
18 typically use neighboring counties. Potter dispatches by
19 Tioga, for example.
20 But when you talk about combination, you have a
21 capital cost to do that and then you have training issues
22 that have to be overcome as well because Pennsylvania is
23 large, geographically diverse, a lot of old names that get
24 used repeatedly and street names and all the rest. And for
25 a dispatcher to understand your database in one county is 24
1 one thing. To have knowledge of a database on a three-
2 county area is another threshold. And so just
3 consolidating PSAPs for its own sake we don’t think really
4 makes sense, and particularly not on a forced basis.
5 On the other hand, counties are already
6 consolidating back-of-the-shop efforts. You’re familiar
7 with WestCORE project, the projects in the northwestern
8 part of the State as well to do a combined backbone among
9 the counties. And what that does, it saves direct costs.
10 Admittedly, there’s a capital expense to do it, but once in
11 place, it saves monthly costs for the switches, the
12 connection to the phone system.
13 It saves on a developing system redundancy so you
14 don’t need to build your own backup center in your own
15 county; you can use your neighbor as a backup. You can
16 even move your staff to the neighbor’s facility if
17 necessary and still maintain control of your own console
18 remotely using those technologies. And that’s the kind of
19 thing counties are already doing and that’s the kind of
20 thing that the 15 percent set-aside would also intend to
21 support in our proposal.
22 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: I know in our
23 legislation we have now we want to incentivize
24 consolidation, and we understand that any type of a forced
25 consolidation, do our measures go far enough? Is it 25
1 adequate, the language that we have in there to try to
2 incentivize the consolidation?
3 MR. HILL: I think we do. In addition to setting
4 aside a portion of the fund specifically for that purpose
5 -- so it’s a competitive grant basis -- we also incorporate
6 standards that PEMA, in conjunction with the 911 Board, is
7 to develop a set of statewide standards that become the
8 target for the counties. And that target can include, in
9 addition to technological standards, things on optimal
10 staffing levels, for example. And those targets can be
11 achieved by shared services among counties in the types of
12 systems that w e ’ve described and some of the counties are
13 already putting in place.
14 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: I don’t know about the
15 other Members but I’m convinced if we went to a $2 fee,
16 that any concept of consolidation is dead because to give
17 them all the money they want, not all the money they need,
18 it’s almost $100 million more at the current level than
19 what they need today. And I think certainly any type of
20 consolidation would be dead for a while until inflation
21 eats away at that $2 fee.
22 MR. HILL: I appreciate your point, Mr. Chairman,
23 that the available funding is one reason counties are
24 looking at consolidation, but bear in mind, even now, those
25 projects that we’re talking about, they have to put 26
1 millions of dollars upfront in costs to be able to do that.
2 Second, we want to provide the service as
3 efficiently as we can and consolidation allows us to do
4 that.
5 And then third, remember, we have the gun pointed
6 at us of next generation. We know that cost is coming.
7 Even with the $2 w e ’re proposing, we think that might be
8 adequate but we don’t know that to be the case. And if you
9 look at any kind of system conversion, and particularly if
10 you’re talking about bringing in video, which is a whole
11 different set of equipment, we know from our experience
12 moving over to E-911 for wireless, for example, huge
13 capital cost. We think the $2 is still justified. We
14 don’t think the available funding would serve as a
15 disincentive for counties to try to do the job better.
16 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Representative Barbin
17 for a question.
18 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: Thank you, Mr. Hill.
19 Your testimony, I went over it and your prior testimony
20 before the Committee. You’ve made great strides to try to
21 get a structure in place where everybody pays the same
22 amount, which I think is a really good thing. The problem
23 that I still have with this proposal is there’s like four
24 groups of people. You’ve got the people that are the
25 service providers that have to pay the money and really 27
1 it's the rate -- the individual residents of Pennsylvania,
2 it's a pass-through but their bills are going up.
3 MR. HILL: Right.
4 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: Number two, you've got
5 that county who wants the money because they want to build
6 out the best services possible for their individual areas
7 that we've got 67 counties. And then you've got the State
8 Legislature that has to approve any increase. And then you
9 have PEMA, which I still don't understand under this
10 proposal what role they're serving because you've got a
11 board that has -- you've gone from advisory board to here,
12 we're going to come up with the rules to help PEMA and help
13 the Commonwealth but you don't have the State Police in it
14 and you don't have the emergency medical providers in it.
15 And I still don't know what the role of PEMA is.
16 And to me, because you've got inherent conflicts
17 between the one who has to bill it, the one who has to pay
18 it, the one who has to approve it, and the one who has to
19 get the money. And what is it that you're getting the
20 money for?
21 And the part that I still think we should have,
22 especially in light of the fact that we're going to need a
23 new backbone and because we had the problems because
24 everybody went out and bought their own stuff and we had to
25 reimburse it, when you look at the last 10 years, we've 28
1 gone from like $191 million total cost to $291 million in
2 cost, and that’s a fairly large slope of increase. So why
3 shouldn’t this bill, if w e ’re going to deal with the
4 funding that w e ’re going to authorize the county to get
5 more reimbursement, why shouldn’t we be making PEMA or
6 somebody else the person who says in your four counties you
7 really should have a combined system, or in your four
8 counties you should use this provider? And I don’t see
9 your proposal doing that. And how do we address that?
10 MR. HILL: Those are all good questions. Let me
11 approach it in a couple of different ways. First, in terms
12 of the role of PEMA, from the draft that was in front of
13 the Committee in February to the draft that we have now,
14 we’ve recognize that concern. There has been a shift in
15 final authority in a number of respects from the 911 Board
16 over to PEMA.
17 The element that we envision for PEMA is the
18 statewide planning and coordination. The 911 Board,
19 because it represents the diverse interests that you
20 mentioned, obviously not all of them but the heart of that,
21 provides the advice, the technical expertise to be able to
22 do that in a logical way. Plus, w e ’ve referenced
23 throughout the bill current national standards. And it
24 says specifically that we can’t fund systems that do not
25 meet those standards. So we have clearly established that 29
1 as a target.
2 Now, whether that is a matter of locally elected
3 officials making that decision or the State making that
4 decision, we think that should be local because that’s
5 ultimately who built the system and that’s ultimately where
6 the service is delivered, but in a consultative role with a
7 statewide coordination. And that’s the balance that we are
8 trying to strike in the legislation.
9 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: I guess just as a final
10 follow-up, we had this same problem with hospitals. We had
11 something called Certificates of Need. Well, we threw out
12 the Certificates of Need, and as soon as we threw out those
13 Certificates of Need that said do we really need to have
14 three MRIs in a city with a 20,000 population, everybody
15 decided they needed an MRI. And the role of the Department
16 of Health up to that point was to say, no, you’ve got
17 20,000 people in your community. You don’t need three
18 MRIs; you need one.
19 MR. HILL: Right.
20 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: And since your testimony
21 is we need the funding because we know this next-generation
22 backbone is going to be necessary, which is going to carry
23 a picture of people Skyping us with emergency calls and
24 whatever, since that’s true, doesn’t it make much more
25 sense to say let’s get everybody involved, let’s pick out a 30
1 number that provides most of the money that we need at the
2 county levels, and then let’s have a State person who is
3 working with this board to say here’s what we’ll pay for
4 but you’re not going to be on your own, Cambria County or
5 Allegheny County, to decide what backbone you’re going to
6 pay?
7 MR. HILL: Right. Well, a couple points. First,
8 what we do locally is not in a vacuum. And again, I return
9 to the point that we’re working toward a national standard.
10 We are developing a State plan against which the county
11 plan is compared, and so there are going to be some of
12 those checks and balances in place.
13 But I think you raise another very good point and
14 something that Pennsylvania needs to point to with some
15 pride, and that’s a fact that in most of the other States,
16 it is a fragmented system and so you have a lot of local
17 jurisdictions that for whatever reason want to retain their
18 own individual piece of the pie and run it their own way.
19 Pennsylvania from the outset developed a model that was
20 centralized and, okay, it’s centralized in the county but
21 it’s still much more centralized than our responder systems
22 are. And in fact that trend continues.
23 Several years ago, Allegheny County took on
24 dispatch for the City of Pittsburgh so that was one less
25 layer. Last year, Dauphin County took on dispatch for the 31
1 City of Harrisburg and Cumberland County took on dispatch
2 for the Borough of Carlisle. So that’s the trend that we
3 started in 1990 and that’s what we’re continuing. So we’re
4 trying to work on those efficiencies and trying to work
5 toward that unitary system but still be responsive to local
6 needs and conditions.
7 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: And thank you. And I
8 appreciate it. It’s a balancing and we’re working through
9 the process. The thing that it all comes back to is if
10 you’re the guy who’s asking for the money, you shouldn’t be
11 deciding what it is we’re paying for. That’s just my
12 opinion.
13 MR. HILL: One other point I ’d like to make, too.
14 When you talked about the rate being set in statute and
15 being set on a statewide level, if there were a way
16 practically to do that at the county level for the
17 subscriber fee, we would probably do that. But there are
18 billing issues; there are equity issues that I mentioned in
19 the testimony. A core urban area is going to be able to
20 generate better money than a less urban county and so it
21 needs to be done on a statewide basis and then apportioned
22 based on local needs and circumstances. And that’s again
23 that balance w e ’re trying to create.
24 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: Thank you.
25 MR. HILL: Thank you. 32
1 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Thank you,
2 Representative.
3 We’ve been joined by Representative Tobash and
4 Representative Hackett is just walking in. Are you going
5 to sit up with us, Joe? We have room for you up here.
6 For a question, Representative Jozwiak.
7 REPRESENTATIVE JOZWIAK: Hi, Mr. Hill. I have a
8 pretty simple question. Do the municipalities and the
9 counties pay the county any money for these services?
10 MR. HILL: There are a couple counties where
11 there is a municipal payment but it’s nominal and it’s
12 historic in its -- it has some basis in the statute but not
13 a clear and distinct authorization.
14 REPRESENTATIVE JOZWIAK: Is that a local county
15 rule when you say that only some counties pay this?
16 MR. HILL: It just is simply how it evolved from
17 1990 when we assumed responsibility for the system.
18 REPRESENTATIVE JOZWIAK: I know in my district
19 there’s counties that are paying the county and they keep
20 complaining that the costs keep going up and they’re
21 looking to get out from under some of the pressure. The
22 county, I don’t know if they assess them or they’re
23 required to pay it but they’re concerned about the
24 continued cost to the municipality as well.
25 MR. HILL: Right. Understood. 33
1 REPRESENTATIVE JOZWIAK: Thank you. Thank you,
2 Mr. Chairman.
3 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: I will tell you when
4 we gave the municipalities the right to take that emergency
5 service tax from $10 to $52, they found a way very, very
6 quickly to make sure everybody in their municipality got a
7 tax bill and it wasn’t an issue as far as finding a way to
8 tax people. So I would disagree with you strongly that if
9 we give the counties the authority to find a way to tax
10 people for 911 that they won’t be able to come up with a
11 solution for that.
12 Representative Schweyer.
13 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Thank you,
14 Mr. Chairman.
15 And honestly, congratulations to you and Chairman
16 Sainato and Mr. Hill. This is significant work. I may be
17 a freshman but I did work for the Legislature for 11 years
18 and I know a dense and difficult bill when I see one and
19 this is certainly one of them.
20 My concern and my challenge with this actually is
21 going to run counter to what has been talked about a little
22 bit. It’s not necessarily the cost. I think we need to
23 fund 911 systems. But I represent the City of Allentown
24 and the City of Allentown, City of Bethlehem are two of the
25 holdouts of municipal control over our own 911 systems. 34
1 And part of the reason why is both Allentown and Bethlehem,
2 in addition to traditional dispatch and communications with
3 our emergency services, they also monitor a very robust
4 camera network. The City of Allentown has something like
5 150 cameras that are watching key intersections and helping
6 to dispatch and direct our vehicles.
7 I'm wondering how many counties have you seen
8 that have adopted -- you mentioned Dauphin and Harrisburg
9 perhaps -- have adopted not only the dispatch but also
10 taken on those responsibilities and those roles.
11 MR. HILL: There's other panels that will be in
12 front of the Committee later that know the technology for
13 video capacity. I don't know.
14 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Yes, not only do we
15 have the technology but our dispatchers actually are the
16 ones who are monitoring those cameras -
17 MR. HILL: Right.
18 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: — not our police
19 officers. As we know, cops are a whole lot more expensive
20 for municipalities than the 911 dispatchers are and it
21 makes it very difficult. It would be an added cost for
22 Lehigh County, for example.
23 In addition, Bethlehem has multiple counties.
24 MR. HILL: Right.
25 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Bethlehem is split 35
1 between the two. So in this particular instance would they
2 pick one? If there was some sort of forced consolidation,
3 would they pick one? Would 2/3 of the city be represented
4 by Northampton County and 1/3 by Lehigh County, like it is
5 with everything else, which is ridiculous, but that’s
6 neither here nor there. We have no kind of conversation
7 for that particular mechanism, aside from this notion of
8 regionalization.
9 MR. HILL: In our draft it is purely a voluntary
10 regionalization and it would be up to local circumstances
11 to figure out how best to do that.
12 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Okay. Duly noted.
13 How many county systems or regional systems -- I
14 know we have counties as small as 11 and 15 to 20,000 in
15 terms of population -- but what are the smallest regional
16 911 systems that we have in terms of population that they
17 serve?
18 MR. HILL: Yes, well, total size I don’t know. I
19 would guess probably the smallest out of the group might be
20 Elk and Cameron.
21 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Okay.
22 MR. HILL: Cameron is about 5,000 population.
23 Elk, you know, not huge -
24 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: So between the two of
25 them -- 36
1 MR. HILL: — so it’s --
2 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: — 20,000, 25,000?
3 MR. HILL: Relatively small but also covering a
4 pretty broad geographic area.
5 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Yes. And so when I
6 compare that to Allentown and Bethlehem when we talk about
7 consolidation, Allentown has a population of about 120,000
8 people, Bethlehem about 85,000 give or take, so it is fair
9 to say that even though they aren’t "regional" systems,
10 they cover a much larger number of folks.
11 MR. HILL: Yes.
12 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: And so you’re sort of
13 seeing where I’m coming from with this. It’s not that I
14 have any objection to funding our 911 systems. I know some
15 of my colleagues will have concerns about the cost and I
16 respect that very much and I do respect the notion of
17 consolidation. In fact, Allentown, Bethlehem, and
18 Northampton Counties are working towards some of those
19 back-office things that you’d mentioned, understanding that
20 there are efficiencies of scale and those sorts of things.
21 But ultimately from my perspective Allentown and
22 Bethlehem have seen dramatic reductions in crime over the
23 last 10 years, and a large part of that is because of the
24 incredible work that our 911 professionals have done, not
25 only dispatching, our public servants, but monitoring those 37
1 cameras and some of those other things. And frankly,
2 anything that would risk that progress would be of ultimate
3 concern to me. And so as I continue to tear through this
4 lengthy and dense piece of legislation, I’m going to
5 continue to point out parts where I think we should be
6 supporting those two municipalities that are doing an
7 incredible job for public safety.
8 MR. HILL: Thank you. And I appreciate that.
9 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Thank you,
10 Mr. Chairman.
11 MR. HILL: And I appreciate your comments on
12 video as well. To be clear, the video that w e ’re talking
13 about in our testimony isn’t static street video. We’re
14 talking about the ability for an individual -
15 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Live stream,
16 FaceTime -
17 MR. HILL: Live stream -
18 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: — those sorts of
19 things.
20 MR. HILL: -- here’s my camera, there’s the
21 incident.
22 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Right. Thank you, sir.
23 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Thank you,
24 Representative.
25 Representative Kortz. 38
1 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
2 Thank you, Mr. Hill for your testimony.
3 Sir, I clearly understand we need to make a
4 modification and help to improve the funding for 911. That
5 being said, from Allegheny County you’re proposing a $1
6 increase. That’s a 100 percent tax increase on all my
7 residents, constituents. I’ve been given some information
8 that if we broaden the base, which is what you want to do;
9 you want to capture other technologies. But if we
10 broadened it to broadband, we would pick up an extra $134
11 million if we only went to the $1.25 level. So if we get
12 that extra $134 million, that puts us $30 million over of
13 what you need.
14 MR. HILL: Right.
15 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: Why are we not broadening
16 the base and considering a smaller tax increase of 25
17 percent?
18 MR. HILL: That’s an excellent point and that
19 actually is something that we’ve reviewed. PEMA developed
20 a proposal along those lines last March. There are a
21 couple hurdles that we would have to cross to do that. The
22 first is we anticipate resistance from the industry to
23 getting something done. And the difficulty there is, given
24 enough time, I think we could negotiate past that, but last
25 year and now again this year we’re looking at a three- to 39
1 four-month window before an expiration of a major component
2 of the fee. And so the educational effort and the
3 negotiating effort we’re not certain could be accomplished
4 in that period of time.
5 And so in the alternative, our proposal does a
6 four-year sunset and with a requirement that the PEMA and
7 the 911 Board do a study in the first two years to present
8 to you to talk about whether this is the best system using
9 the subscriber fee. Very specifically, we are pointed in
10 the direction of a broadband-based percentage fee because
11 you’re absolutely correct. It makes sense not only on a
12 fiscal basis because there are people whose bills would go
13 down. A household rate of $1 could go down to 90 cents.
14 But at the same time, there are a number of practical
15 issues to be dealt with on how it’s levied and how it’s
16 collected.
17 It does provide other advantages, too. If you
18 look at how our communication system is headed, we’re going
19 away from copper. We’re heading to broadband backbone for
20 almost all of it. The video that we talked about, if you
21 have a home security system, your camera images are stored
22 on the cloud. That’s a broadband-based activity. How it
23 would get to our PSAPs would largely be the same way. And
24 so, yes, we do think broadband has that close nexus and it
25 makes all the sense in the world to head in that direction, 40
1 and had we time to do so, that’s what w e ’d be doing.
2 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: So you’re saying there’s a
3 four-month gap to get to that point?
4 MR. HILL: We have a June 30th deadline for
5 expiration of the wireless fee, yes.
6 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: Okay.
7 MR. HILL: So we need something on the Governor’s
8 desk.
9 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: Thank you, sir.
10 MR. HILL: Thank you.
11 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
12 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Are there any other
13 questions from Members?
14 Doug, I want to thank you for being here today,
15 taking time out of your busy schedule -
16 MR. HILL: Sure.
17 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: — and great seeing
18 you. Thank you.
19 MR. HILL: W e ’ll be talking.
20 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Our next testifier is
21 Mr. Rick Flinn, Director of the Pennsylvania Emergency
22 Management Agency.
23 Mr. Flinn, it’s a pleasure to have you here.
24 MR. FLINN: Thank you, sir.
25 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: And thank you for 41
1 taking time to be with us. You can -
2 MR. FLINN: I've asked my Chief Deputy, if it's
3 okay, to be with me since he's been here through this the
4 last three or four years and I've been dealing with this
5 for two months. But I -
6 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: He's a very familiar
7 face -
8 MR. FLINN: Yes.
9 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: — and we've talked to
10 him many, many times so -
11 MR. FLINN: Yes —
12 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: — it's good to have
13 him here.
14 MR. FULL: Mr. Chairman.
15 MR. FLINN: -- and certainly been involved with
16 the Director of 911 in Allegheny County and others, so he's
17 been -- tremendous experience there.
18 And I just wanted to let you know it looks like
19 we got through the freezing pipe issue that we've been
20 dealing with from an emergency management perspective and
21 providing some water out. We're still keeping our fingers
22 on the pulse of the flooding that exists with the ice jams
23 and such and there's some significant issues.
24 And, by the way, we're getting another little
25 winter event tomorrow night around two to four inches here 42
1 so just -
2 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Did you stop it?
3 MR. FLINN: I do what I can, sir. I really wish
4 I could have that authority.
5 Thank you again. I sincerely appreciate the
6 opportunity to be here today. And I’m not going to read,
7 as Doug had not done, the entire testimony because I know
8 you have a lot to go through. There’s been certainly a
9 tremendous amount of work.
10 And so again, Chairman Barrar, Chairman Sainato,
11 and Members of the Committee, I really sincerely appreciate
12 the opportunity to be here. The rewrite we got last
13 Thursday so we have a little bit of an issue that we didn’t
14 get a chance to really comprehensively review it, but we
15 focused in on some key points and that’s really what we’re
16 going to do if you don’t mind today. So if I could ask you
17 to turn to page 3 of my testimony.
18 I think the emphasis here, and at least talked
19 about it, but we all agree that statewide interconnectivity
20 is essential to integrate next-generation technology across
21 the Commonwealth. This bill apportions part of the 911 for
22 that statewide interconnectivity. But the language needs
23 to be sharpened a little bit to make sure that the State is
24 taking the lead to establish this system. And again, I
25 think it goes back to what Representative Barbin had 43
1 indicated, that if we don’t have that lead per se, there
2 could be a danger that we could have disparate systems
3 throughout the Commonwealth itself.
4 And again, it could be different generations,
5 next-generation solutions, different capabilities,
6 increased cost, so one of the key points that w e ’re asking
7 for is taking a look at how that language is written
8 relating to who has the lead for the program itself.
9 And then I ’ll look at the next page. When we
10 talk about the authorities, it is important. I think if we
11 have the responsibility, we being PEMA, have the
12 responsibility to develop, implement, plan, and be good
13 fiduciary agents of the taxpayers’ money, we need to have
14 the authority. And right now, the way the current draft
15 is, it’s not real clear I will say. What we need to do is
16 ensure that PEMA’s authorities are not diluted throughout
17 any new legislation.
18 The third issue centers on this phraseology we
19 were using, "chasing technology.” W e ’ve changed it to
20 "catching-up technology." I mean the reality of it is is
21 that there’s no reason in the world for this body to have
22 to continue to come back to address this issue. You’re
23 doing it. There’s been a sunset in the law. Frankly, I
24 don’t think there’s a need for a sunset in the law if we
25 get it right this time. 44
1 And our recommendation is really that we look at
2 ensuring that the legislation covers and in fact is
3 agnostic in relationship to the technology at this point so
4 that we’re able to address those new services, those new
5 technologies that are coming down. I mentioned that in my
6 first testimony last month and I really believe that for
7 this body to be able to be comfortable with a piece of
8 legislation that’s going to provide for the funding that’s
9 going to cover this system but is also going to provide for
10 that no matter how one accesses the 911 system, there’s
11 some fee that goes towards that system itself.
12 And again, I will also say to you that w e ’ve
13 talked about the four-year sunset. I don’t think there’s a
14 need for that if we do this technology agnostic approach
15 and go from there.
16 The fourth issue, and it goes back to the
17 discussion of the Board, and I think it was also pointed
18 out, one of the things I mentioned in the testimony last
19 time was -- and this is personally -- I don’t feel we have
20 a comprehensive public safety communication system in the
21 Commonwealth, "soup to nuts" if you will. The nuts part of
22 it, if you will, in the sense is when that 911 call is
23 received, information is transmitted by highly trained and
24 competent call-takers and dispatchers.
25 That part that is critical is the public safety 45
1 side of it, and if you’re going to have an advisory board,
2 the public safety community needs to be engaged, police,
3 fire, and EMS. I served as fire chief and a paramedic for
4 many years and it was critical that we got that information
5 right. It was information that’s important for us to
6 provide the services to the citizens we serve. Without
7 that very important body or those constituencies involved
8 with advising the lead agency, I think w e ’re missing
9 something. So I wanted to bring that up in relationship to
10 the advisory board.
11 And I will say to you, again, just to reemphasize
12 the structure, I had the opportunity to serve for 24 years
13 as Executive Director -- well, I served for 24 years in the
14 organization but served 12 years as the Executive Director
15 of the Statewide Advisory Council to the Health Department.
16 We had over 100 statewide organizations, physicians,
17 nurses, paramedics, fire service, EMS, hospitals, and then
18 we had a board of directors, a 30-member board of
19 directors. Our role was to advise the Secretary of Health
20 on all aspects of EMS and we developed a comprehensive EMS
21 plan. We worked on comprehensive EMS legislation.
22 And the key is is that by law we’re identified to
23 advise the lead agency that was designated, and that was
24 the Health Department. And I ’ll tell you, the system
25 worked from the perspective that, again, it was a 46
1 recommendation but when you have those stakeholders
2 intimately involved in the process -- the Secretary was
3 obviously very intimately involved and paid attention to
4 those recommendations -- I think that’s how the board
5 should be structured. I think the recommendation is there
6 needs to be a defined lead agency and I think the advisory
7 board has to have the ability to be representative of all
8 the stakeholders.
9 But the key is it’s an advisory board, not a
10 regulatory board. I think that anybody put in the position
11 of leading any organization is responsible to ensure that
12 there’s a return investment on every dollar, ensuring that
13 the taxpayers’ money is going to the appropriate services,
14 that you can’t really have I think a board that does that.
15 And frankly, I mean in one sense it’s kind of like running
16 a volunteer fire department. I did that many years. It’s
17 volunteers or representatives that will participate, and
18 being able to have them review every single plan and go
19 through that approval process could be a logistical
20 nightmare.
21 The last thing I wanted to mention on page 5, I
22 talked about that. I ’m sorry. W e ’ll go to -- did you want
23 to say something?
24 We heard from the counties the 911 folks since
25 the beginning of this is the fact that it doesn’t match up 47
1 with the county budget year. That needs to be addressed in
2 the bill. We wholeheartedly support that, that we work on
3 administering the -- instead of having to work and
4 administrate on a State fiscal year, it’s administered on
5 the county calendar year. And that’s important I think
6 because again they’re challenged when they develop their
7 budgets how much they’re going to get and they’re
8 challenged with spending the money, so we really think the
9 current draft legislation does not address that and we
10 really think it should be.
11 Again, I think we’re close if you will in the
12 legislation that’s here. I think there are some key points
13 that need to be addressed. And I refer to the last page.
14 Governor Wolf’s philosophy really is -- he’s very much
15 making a commitment to public safety. He’s shown that in
16 his participation in the events that w e ’ve had so far in
17 the State. H e ’s heavily engaged with many tabletops w e ’ve
18 had with the Cabinet members and I can tell you he’s
19 heavily engaged in this concept of the 911 system.
20 But we need to ensure that we get it right this
21 time and not do a Band-Aid approach to the problem and that
22 you’re not continually coming back and that we in fact make
23 sure that any money spent is well spent for the citizens of
24 Pennsylvania.
25 So I appreciate the opportunity to talk. I 48
1 briefed through this really quickly but I wanted to make
2 sure that there was time for questions but wanted to bring
3 out the key points in the initial review of this draft
4 legislation that we've seen.
5 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Thank you.
6 Questions from the Members?
7 Representative Tallman.
8 Oh, and we were also joined by -- Representative
9 Marshall is here.
10 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
11 I have submitted, by the way, a funding formula
12 to staff that I developed amongst counties that I've had
13 conversation with, and the overwhelming theme -- matter of
14 fact, I was told this Monday night -- they're very
15 concerned in south-central Pennsylvania, any State funding
16 formula, we are on the short end of the stick. I don't
17 care where you go with a State funding formula; we do not
18 make out.
19 They're very concerned with, number one, the
20 advisory nature of the board and then PEMA, a Harrisburg
21 agency, having say over how those funds are distributed.
22 We have four areas in my funding formula that need to be
23 weighted and I'm going to give those weighted numbers to
24 staff here probably by the end of the week.
25 But what do we do to allay the fears of the 49
1 counties in south-central Pennsylvania that money that we
2 send to Harrisburg doesn’t come back? What are you going
3 to do to allay that?
4 MR. FLINN: Well, I think in fact I agree with
5 you; the legislation needs to be clear that the system has
6 to be based fair and equitable and it goes back to
7 obviously how busy is that county in relationship to
8 receiving 911 calls. What are the populations, special
9 events that they have to address? You’re absolutely right.
10 The system has to be fair, it has to be equitable, but it
11 also has to have a standard that also takes care of those
12 very less populated areas in the Commonwealth that they
13 have that base standard.
14 So, sir, I ’m with you on the percent. There has
15 to be -- and living in the south-central area, I can tell
16 you there has to be -- and working the 911 system in
17 Cumberland County as a fire chief, there has to be that
18 ability to ensure that the funds are there to deal with
19 their workload, especially -- and this was mentioned in -
20 Cumberland County dispatches another county. But being
21 able to go ahead and have the resources that they need is
22 critical and I think the legislation has to define those
23 parameters that any director or any State agency, whoever
24 will be in charge of this, or even the board would have to
25 follow. So there’s no disagreement there, sir. 50
1 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Director, are you of
2 the opinion then that -- I’m trying to figure out with your
3 last statement -- I think one of our concerns while
4 drafting this legislation has been that some people feel
5 that the fee should cover 100 percent of the cost and the
6 county should have no skin in the game. Or should the
7 counties have skin in the game? Should they be paying part
8 of the 911 cost to the county? I know I ’m of the belief
9 that I truly believe that the counties need to have some
10 skin in the game here, and that’s the fee that w e ’ve looked
11 at.
12 MR. FLINN: Yes, and I ’ll be honest with you
13 because again we received this last Thursday. We were
14 working with the Governor’s office to get the specifics on
15 the financial side, but what I can tell you is is that I
16 think the legislative intent is to obviously ensure that
17 there’s a minimum standard across the Commonwealth of
18 Pennsylvania, and I think this bill and the way we’ve
19 proposed how to fund it should cover those minimum
20 standards and work towards the goal of next gen and work
21 towards those other issues.
22 If a county chooses to be able to go above and
23 beyond that minimum standard, maybe there should be some
24 skin in the game, as you say, sir. I can’t give you a
25 specific answer right at this point on that but I do know 51
1 if anything it needs to cover that basic standard across
2 the Commonwealth, and I personally think the system should
3 be able to fund that.
4 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: We’ve wrestled with
5 many figures here based on population, based on call volume
6 coming in -
7 MR. FLINN: Yes.
8 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: — to the counties,
9 and no matter what formula we come up with, there’s
10 somebody unhappy.
11 MR. FLINN: Yes.
12 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: There’s no way except
13 to just basically say that the State is going to be
14 responsible for 100 percent is the only way you’re going to
15 make everybody happy, and then even then I think you’re
16 going to make us unhappy here because we’re going to spend
17 more money than we can afford. So the dilemma here is on a
18 fair funding formula, we all want it to be fair -
19 MR. FLINN: Yes.
20 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: — but if
21 Representative Tallman or you have the secret answer to
22 that that will make everybody happy, I ’m more than willing
23 to listen to it.
24 MR. FLINN: And you’re absolutely right. It’s a
25 challenge. I think that we define what the standard is and 52
1 what we’re shooting for from the goal and then determine
2 what those costs are.
3 The reality of it is is that -- and just simply
4 an example, between Allegheny County and the City of
5 Philadelphia, they’re looking at 43 percent of all 911
6 calls across the Commonwealth. They currently are getting
7 26 percent of the money. Is that enough? And I think that
8 those kind of issues need to be looked at as to where are
9 they, what do we need them to have, and in fact what’s the
10 work associated with making sure that every citizen in
11 their respective areas have that same level of service that
12 they would have in any other county in the State?
13 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Do you support the
14 concept of giving the counties then the option to come up
15 with their own type of a 911 fee like an emergency service
16 tax that we had to the municipalities to give our counties
17 the same type thing to either tax a partial living dwelling
18 or a per capita tax?
19 MR. FLINN: I wish I could comment on that, sir.
20 I don’t know. I don’t really know at this point. And
21 again, we just haven’t had that dialogue -
22 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Okay.
23 MR. FLINN: -- at the Governor’s office. I
24 really can’t give you an answer on that. I look through
25 emergency management across the country, including 911 53
1 emergency management, and a lot of emergency managers and I
2 just went to the national conference in D.C. this past
3 week, a lot of the emergency managers don’t deal with 911.
4 A lot of them do. But the reality of it is is that you’re
5 looking at a whole community approach dealing with
6 emergency management, the private sector, obviously the
7 public sector, and emergency management can’t be
8 government-centric alone. We have to use that whole
9 community.
10 So, in fact, in answer to your question, there
11 may be also other sources of income or other sources w e ’re
12 looking at, and when I worked at FEMA, national level,
13 philanthropists getting heavily involved with disaster
14 recovery responses.
15 So in answer to your question, there may be other
16 resources, capabilities out there. I don’t have a specific
17 answer in relationship to the county being able to do that
18 right at this point.
19 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Okay. Thank you.
20 Representative Kortz.
21 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
22 Director Flinn, thank you for your testimony.
23 MR. FLINN: Thank you, sir.
24 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: Chief Full, always a
25 pleasure to see you, sir. 54
1 Sir, on page 3 of your testimony, you have
2 mentioned about a percentage-based fee. Do you have any
3 percentage in mind what we should be looking at?
4 MR. FLINN: Again, I think what we -- yes, we
5 outlined -- and I’ll ask, Chief Full, you’ve been engaged
6 with this conversation specifically because this has been
7 proposed last year, I believe, if you could talk a little
8 bit about that.
9 MR. FULL: In regards to the percentage-based
10 fee, in regards to increasing the amount of money available
11 for 911, it’s referred to again, expanding the base. In
12 regards to picking up all these technologies out there
13 literally that there exists right now that you can utilize
14 to call 911. You can call 911 from your smart TV in your
15 home right now. There is no money that is coming in to the
16 911 operations to offset the cost. There’s many Wi-Fi
17 devices that are out there right now that aren’t connected
18 to cellular networks.
19 So with that said, if it’s not connected to an
20 actual cellular company, they can call 911 through a Wi-Fi
21 where they walk into a business or walk into another place
22 and they’re able to access an application right now and
23 make a phone call. And so with that, the trend of
24 everything is IP, broadband technology, along those lines,
25 and if we don’t do it right now, all indications that we 55
1 have, even from things that we're hearing from the
2 industry, everything is going in that direction anyway.
3 And right now the only thing that we can track
4 are the individual cell phones that somebody has or an
5 individual telephone that's in somebody's home or business,
6 along those lines, because those are absolute. But there
7 are so many other different things out there that can
8 access the system and services that they should be paying
9 because the 911 center, the men and women right now as we
10 sit here even today, they're in those centers right now
11 taking calls from other services that they really not
12 realizing any money to come in and offset the cost of their
13 operation. So the percentage fee would be in regards to a
14 device but also on the service level that gives you access
15 into that communications network, whether it be through a
16 cable system, whether it be through a business application,
17 something along those lines.
18 So, again, the number of devices, the way that
19 it's collected right now is antiquated, and by expanding
20 the base, the cost would come down. And literally it was
21 already said here right now -- and we use the analogy even
22 the person that's at home right now, that individual that's
23 got the landline phone, the old landline, the old Ma Bell
24 copper phone, the rotary dial, believe it or not, there's
25 probably still some people that have that. My grandmother 56
1 and grandfathers, they’ll always have that. They are
2 paying whatever rate that they have.
3 But at the same time, as we increase the rates on
4 those folks, there’s all these other folks that have high
5 tech equipment and so forth that literally we could be
6 getting a fair amount of money from those devices, those
7 services, and we could drop that individual’s rate down
8 from paying $1, $1.50 by expanding the base, bringing money
9 up here. And we have done the calculations and everything
10 that we’ve seen, it’s not absolute, that we could literally
11 drop the rates on a number of different people by that
12 move.
13 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: But you are proposing a
14 percentage-based fee? You’re looking at a percentage so it
15 would hinge on the fact, if we were to expand the base -
16 MR. FLINN: Correct.
17 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: — that percentage would
18 hinge on that?
19 MR. FLINN: That’s correct. And one of the key
20 points I think the proposed bill did include a cost-of-
21 living adjustment, that there would be no cost-of-living
22 adjustment necessary if you have a percentage-based fee
23 because it automatically increases with price inflation.
24 So you wouldn’t have to have necessarily that cost-of-
25 living adjustment in there. 57
1 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: Okay. Thank you.
2 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
3 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: So assume for a minute
4 that the City of Annapolis is in Pennsylvania. Annapolis
5 has a free Wi-Fi service to their residents. So if I’m
6 living in Annapolis, how would I be billed as a percent of
7 my Wi-Fi? I can connect every device into their free Wi
8 Fi. How would I pay it?
9 MR. FULL: You wouldn’t pay. Right now, you’re
10 not paying if you had that in Pennsylvania, if it’s in
11 Pennsylvania.
12 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: So if I was at an
13 internet cafe, I log on to their Wi-Fi, are they billed
14 then for my -- I mean I just think right now -
15 MR. FULL: The charge would go -
16 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: — I don’t think we’re
17 ready to start billing for that technology. Plus, I think
18 we’re going to be involved in lawsuits until at least we
19 see something coming from the FCC.
20 Have any other States used this type of billing
21 process to fund 911?
22 MR. FULL: Our research has shown, yes, that
23 there are some States that have already started this move
24 in billing for this service, yes, sir. And we can provide
25 that to you -- 58
1 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Can you?
2 MR. FULL: -- if you’d like.
3 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Please.
4 MR. FULL: That’s fine.
5 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Okay. Representative
6 Tobash.
7 REPRESENTATIVE TOBASH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
8 Thank you, gentlemen, for your testimony. Happy
9 to see you here again and appreciate the fact that you’re
10 getting up to speed so quickly on this piece of legislation
11 that we absolutely have to get done.
12 I’m still just not completely comfortable with
13 the addition of this advisory board into the equation. Let
14 me just talk about that for a brief moment. How do you
15 envision the goal, the role, the mission statement of the
16 advisory board, and more importantly, as part of your
17 discussion, how is that going, that additional level of
18 bureaucracy? Do you think it’s going to keep us light on
19 our feet and save money within the system?
20 MR. FLINN: Yes, and actually it’s a good point
21 in the sense of the draft that you have in front of you.
22 It kind of gives them, if you will, that bureaucratic step
23 in my opinion.
24 But I will say that every government needs the
25 subject matter experts, the individuals that are not only 59
1 involved day to day with, in this particular case,
2 receiving the information and transmitting the information
3 and dealing with the technologies, as well as the
4 stakeholders that are in fact out there providing that
5 service. We don’t have all the answers. I would not want
6 to have the sole authority without having some kind of
7 forum, consensus-based, consensus, 51 percent, a consensus-
8 based system that is in place that they can make
9 recommendations to the lead agency for it.
10 So I think there’s value. And I’ll tell you
11 there’s value in it from the perspective because not only
12 are those individuals experts and do what they do every day
13 but they’re also keeping up on the latest if you will of
14 how to improve their services. And I bring it back to my
15 experience. H. Arnold Muller was the Secretary of Health
16 quite a few years ago. He was an emergency physician. He
17 saw that the Health Department at the time just didn’t
18 really grasp -- didn’t have the resources or the personnel
19 to understand the comprehensive emergency medical services
20 system. He’s the one that started that advisory body
21 that’s defined in law. And by the way, maybe the law
22 should specifically say what that mission is, what the
23 purpose is, the comprehensive review of the statewide plan
24 and being engaged with the system. And that expertise is
25 needed on the organization. 60
1 But my point is I think, sir, I think it needs to
2 be written so in fact it doesn’t imply it’s a bureaucratic
3 step but it serves as a think tank, that tiger team
4 approach to dealing with challenges and problems, and it
5 doesn’t make any difference who’s sitting in the seat but
6 the agency would need to be able to implement the system.
7 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Are there any other
8 Members with questions? Anyone?
9 Director, thank you for your testimony today. We
10 appreciate you taking the time to be with us.
11 MR. FLINN: Thank you very much, sir. I
12 appreciate it.
13 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Our next panel,
14 Mr. Scott Krater, President, APCO, Director, Schuylkill
15 County 911; Brian Melcer, President, Pennsylvania NENA,
16 Director of Public Safety with Lawrence County; Mr. Mike
17 McGrady, Chairman of the Joint PA APCO/PA NENA Legislative
18 Committee; Mr. Tim Baldwin, past President of PA NENA,
19 Deputy Director, Lancaster County Communications; Mr. John
20 Grappy, Director of Erie County Department of Public
21 Safety, Western Representative for PA NENA; and Mr. John
22 Geib, Eastern Area Representative, PA NENA.
23 It’s a pleasure to have you all with us. Do we
24 have everybody that I mentioned? I think I mentioned five
25 people. There’s four. 61
1 MR. MELCER: Yes.
2 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Okay.
3 MR. MELCER: They’re all here.
4 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Okay. Do we need an
5 extra seat up there for you? Okay. Oh, you guys are back
6 there? Okay. Good. Good. I hope all five of you aren’t
7 reading testimony, all six of you. So -
8 MR. KRATER: It’s just 15 minutes each.
9 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Good.
10 MR. MELCER: No. Chairman Barrar, Chairman
11 Sainato, thank you for having us back and we really
12 appreciate having this additional hearing. You’re really
13 showing your commitment to trying to fix this problem.
14 And I also am not going to read my testimony, nor
15 are all five of us going to read it. In general what w e ’re
16 going to focus on is the operational and technical side and
17 be here to answer your questions that some of you may have
18 had.
19 I’ve jotted down some notes from the previous
20 testimonies that may answer some of the questions that you
21 have, but I do want to say in general we support the joint
22 legislative effort this been brought to you in working with
23 CCAP, our organization APCO, and also the other
24 stakeholders. But w e ’re going to focus on the
25 technological side of it but we will be happy to answer any 62
1 funding questions that maybe we might have some expertise
2 in.
3 Just a couple of things before I go into the key
4 parts of our testimony, we do feel that our 911 system is
5 one of the best in the Nation, and that's a credit to
6 everybody that's in this room, you all, us at the lowly
7 level that are operating the system, PEMA, APCO, CCAP, and
8 all the stakeholders that have been involved.
9 We had a pretty good history I think when it
10 comes to doing this, and it might be rough as we're going
11 through this process and we'll have disagreements, but
12 ultimately, you all passed Act 78 so we got 911
13 legislation, and relatively quickly, we were able to spread
14 enhanced 911, which was the cat's meow, as they say, across
15 the Commonwealth, a little faster than some other States
16 have done. In fact, there are still some areas around the
17 country that still have basic 911, which is no location
18 information, so that's something we should be proud of.
19 In the '90s you probably remember a show "Rescue
20 911,” and "Rescue 911" really put a spotlight on what it is
21 that a dispatcher or telecommunicator does. There were
22 some incidents, some in Pennsylvania, that really put a
23 spotlight on errors in the 911 system. And we worked
24 collaboratively, all of us, including the counties and PEMA
25 to institute quality assurance and training standards. So 63
1 we do have a standards-based system, some better than other
2 States. So that’s something to be proud of as well.
3 And obviously after wireless 911 legislation was
4 passed back in 2005 we all did a good job then I think in
5 quickly deploying wireless services across the
6 Commonwealth, and there are some areas still in the
7 Commonwealth where we need to work better with the carriers
8 to open up the access to that service. But PEMA, the
9 counties, the Legislature, our two organizations, and the
10 professionals in the carrier level and the technology level
11 helped us to deploy that across the State. So we feel we
12 have a good history and w e ’re just at one of those
13 crossroads right now and we need to figure out how we can
14 get it right this time, and I ’m comfortable that we will.
15 Just before I go on to the next point, a couple
16 points, there was some talk about technology-agnostic
17 funding. And I think in theory everybody on this panel
18 supports looking at that, but w e ’re also being realistic in
19 knowing the time frame that we have, and there’s a lot of
20 questions still to be answered, like Chairman Barrar’s
21 question about what happens in that scenario. There’s an
22 answer to it but I think together, like we did in the past,
23 we need to work together to answer those questions. And
24 that’s why we do support a placeholder in the legislation
25 to charge that advisory board and PEMA and the counties 64
1 collaboratively of looking at the data around the Nation,
2 try to come up with some revenue models and see if we can
3 replace a per-subscriber fee to some sort of a percentage
4 fee. But once again, w e ’re being realistic.
5 W e ’re also the ones that are in the funding
6 crisis and w e ’re the ones that have to go stand in front of
7 our Commissioners or our executives and say every year that
8 amount of money, the General Fund taxes needs to cover is
9 quite more.
10 I ’ve heard the question about skin in the game,
11 and we understand that. We understand that the counties -
12 we do have skin in the game. I can use as an example in
13 our county w e ’re finally going about building a new PSAP.
14 And out of that project about 10 percent of it is actually
15 going to be funded by the 911 fee. So bricks and mortar
16 are not allowable.
17 There are several other fees that are not
18 allowable that I think we ultimately envision there has to
19 be so that there’s no areas where w e ’re misusing the fund.
20 There are other States that didn’t get it right that are
21 now fighting where there’s other entities raiding the 911
22 fund and it’s not going to 911 purposes. So we certainly
23 don’t want to see that happen in Pennsylvania and I think
24 the measures that this proposed legislation, as well as
25 some that we could institute in the future, would help keep 65
1 that from happening.
2 We talked about consolidation and I ’ve shared I
3 think at one of the hearings I think when we were in
4 Allegheny County a year-and-a-half or so ago it was asked
5 of us, and this has been in several of our testimonies, but
6 we support what Mr. Hill said, that we do have a relatively
7 consolidated system. W e ’ve taken some data -- there’s a
8 chart on page 2 of our testimony -- that shows the number
9 of citizens that are served per PSAP. And if you see,
10 w e ’re in good shape when it comes to that. There are
11 several States along our borders that have tremendous
12 amount of PSAPs that are serving up to 33. I think the
13 smallest one is West Virginia. Our figures show that
14 they’re serving 33,000 people per PSAP. Ohio next to me
15 and Chairman Sainato in Lawrence County, they have 318
16 PSAPs. So when they talk about consolidation and
17 regionalization of technology, it’s not county to county.
18 It’s within the county, fire department to police
19 department or so on and so forth.
20 So, now, is there room for additional work on
21 that? Yes. We do believe that there could be work but we
22 strongly feel that it shouldn’t be a forced consolidation
23 but it should be done through two means: number one, to
24 incentivize these regionalization-of-technology projects.
25 There’s been some discussion about PEMA’s role and the 66
1 authorities that PEMA would have in the system. We feel
2 that’s an area where PEMA could make a big impact is by
3 setting that incentivization. Maybe there’s more
4 percentage of funding going to counties that are
5 regionalizing projects or that are looking at
6 consolidations, and we feel that that would be a way to
7 increase the amount of skin in the game by looking at it.
8 But we don’t think coming from the State level and forcing
9 a consolidation on a local operation is the right -- it’s
10 kind of a knee-jerk reaction in our eyes and we don’t feel
11 that it’s going to do a good job of consolidating. We
12 think that we can write it so that we can do it properly,
13 get it right like we have previously. And there are
14 several counties, as Mr. Hill mentioned, that have
15 consolidated their systems.
16 I think the other area that’s operationally a lot
17 of times overlooked when it comes to consolidation is the
18 value that the PSAP serves to the emergency management
19 operation during natural disasters. In my county I oversee
20 the 911 center but I ’m also the emergency management
21 director, and I just couldn’t see during a declared
22 disaster or even an undeclared disaster in our county
23 working in that type of operation. Now, some counties may
24 be small enough where a regional PSAP would work for them,
25 but our COM center is so ingrained into our emergency 67
1 operations plan that we would see a difference in the way
2 that we respond to the day-to-day emergencies.
3 So those are things that need to be looked at but
4 they need to be looked at in a collaborative approach and
5 looking at the funding but also looking at the operational
6 deficiencies that it may or may not create if there was a
7 consolidation. So we support counties who want to do that
8 if it works for them and we support measures to incentivize
9 them.
10 Now, we have also talked a lot about the
11 regionalization projects, and once again, we feel that by
12 incentivizing those projects will give the best impact.
13 Now, w e ’ve acknowledged that even those regional projects
14 -- we’ve mentioned the WestCORE project in our region that
15 I come from where w e ’ve been able to save close to $5
16 million just on the 911 phone equipment and a lot in the
17 operation costs as well.
18 Another one that hasn’t been mentioned as much
19 but Mertz will mention it when he comes up from
20 Westmoreland County is the ICORRS project, which is a
21 shared radio switch where six counties are sharing that
22 radio switch. That saved over $6 million; and then the
23 Northern Tier 911 project where you have 10 counties that
24 were also able to save 2.1 in capital and ongoing costs.
25 Those are great but they do represent a small percentage if 68
1 you look at the actual revenues collected.
2 But we feel that we can increase the impact that
3 they do by incentivizing those projects and having it
4 almost a no-brainer. That was how we did it. It was a no-
5 brainer. We looked at it and said buy our own switch or
6 share the switch, which also has operational benefits with
7 our regional partners. It was a no-brainer. So I think by
8 adding that incentive language, which this draft
9 legislation does do, and making that the competitive
10 portion of it, that PEMA would set the standard for what is
11 a true regionalization would do a good job of increasing
12 that. So w e ’re hearing of other projects that are starting
13 in the Commonwealth and we hope that some type of language
14 can assist us in doing that.
15 Just a couple things about next generation 911,
16 all those historical milestones that I went through, there
17 was always like a carrot at the end of the stick. We were
18 trying to get 911. We were trying to be able to locate
19 wireless callers. And we see that this is also something
20 where we will have some operational skin in the game to
21 ensure next generation 911 because, as some have mentioned,
22 we need to get it right this time. So that will be a good
23 way to do that.
24 In our case, the only way to get next-gen-capable
25 CPE in Region 13 wasn’t for us to do it individually; it 69
1 was to do it as a shared approach and that's quite frankly
2 how we did it. And I think that that same problem exists
3 in the other counties. In fact, you may hear from some
4 other counties that -- we'll go over -- another part that
5 we all overlook is we talk about the projects that we're
6 trying to do or that the county has to foot the bill for
7 more than we maybe have in the past, but what about the
8 projects we can't do to bring that service on? So I hope
9 to hear that as well.
10 A little discussion about the ESInet because all
11 of these shared regionalized projects or even
12 consolidations are impossible to do without a good network
13 backbone to make it happen. Our organizations support the
14 concept that PEMA introduced a few years ago, which is a
15 "Network of Networks." And we do acknowledge that there
16 has to be some sort of a State oversight of the
17 interconnection of those networks and there has to be
18 standards in order for those networks to be considered in
19 ESInet. There is a standard. NENA has an i3 standard that
20 is pretty much known nationwide for those type of networks.
21 So we do support that being a standards-based
22 system and the State handling the interconnect of the
23 regional networks that are being built up. And that's one
24 of the reasons we support it that way is there are networks
25 that have already been built up that those regions are 70
1 going to have some consternation without a lot of studying
2 as to whether they would turn that network over to an
3 entity. So the "network of networks” approach gives PEMA
4 the authority to oversee the standards in the network but
5 it still allows the regions to do what works for them as
6 well. It’s not down to the county level, as may have been
7 mentioned.
8 So we support that, and once again, by
9 incentivizing it, number one, that will allow us to get the
10 next-generation data into our 911 systems. There’s other
11 technologies out there that counties are just starting to
12 scratch the surface of, sharing recording systems, radio
13 systems, CAD systems, GIS personnel. Some counties are
14 starting to talk about sharing GIS personnel instead of
15 everybody having their own.
16 So there’s another example that we mentioned,
17 PSP. They pay for a connection for CLEAN and NCIC into
18 every county and probably more in some cases. I ’m sure
19 that by looking at that network of networks, there could be
20 some good cost savings even to the Commonwealth by going
21 down to a regional level, one in Region 13, one in the
22 northwest. So we would welcome those discussions. And we
23 agree that PEMA at the State level would be the best one to
24 kind of broker those discussions because that’s what
25 emergency management is all about, collaboration. 71
1 Another area that we support and we would like to
2 see the opportunity to work some language in, if you look
3 on the last page of our testimony, one area that we would
4 like to see included is operationally the multi-line
5 telephone and PBX systems. Back in December 2013 there’s a
6 pretty well-known case, a woman named Kari Hunt was stabbed
7 to death in a Texas hotel room. When her young daughter
8 who was trained assumedly by either a fire Department, a
9 police department, or a telecommunicator went to dial 911,
10 there was a delay and she wasn’t able to get to 911 because
11 it required them to dial an extra 9 to get out into the
12 system before they dialed 911.
13 In November of 2014 there was an incident in
14 California where a U.S. postal worker had an injury and
15 ultimately perished from it, and he wasn’t able to dial 911
16 directly because they had an internal policy that it has to
17 go to their postal police. And there was a significant
18 delay in getting them there.
19 We would like to see some language included in
20 this legislation that would support three concepts when it
21 comes to -- it’s happening in other States. There’s a
22 Kari’s Law. Several other States have done it and they’re
23 looking at it, to require the PBX systems to only dial 911,
24 not an external line, and that those PBX systems, it should
25 come right to the 911 center, not to a front desk or an 72
1 office. And it should also tell the premise, the PBX owner
2 that a 911 call has been placed and it would give us the
3 location of the actual emergency, not just a general
4 location.
5 We feel that with some working as a group as we
6 have in the past that that could be done for little or no
7 cost to the PBX owners by looking at possibly a grandfather
8 of existing systems so that there’s not an undue burden but
9 at least we get it in there so that we can make that
10 improvement to the system.
11 And the last thing I ’d like to talk about is
12 what’s really the heartbeat of our system, and that’s the
13 telecommunicators. And a lot of these testimonies that
14 I’ve been privy to go to -- we don’t always talk about
15 that. Number one, we do support strong quality assurance
16 standards. There’s nobody that gets more embarrassed when
17 911 is on the news than 911 directors and
18 telecommunicators. So we want to continue to improve them
19 collaboratively with PEMA and the advisory board.
20 But we have to remember that the role of what
21 some may have called a dispatcher in the years and might
22 have been somebody that was put on desk duty because either
23 screwed up in the field or they were injured, it’s not that
24 anymore. They have to be professionals, they have to
25 understand the technology, and they have to be trained to 73
1 be able to deal with all of the emergencies that we see in
2 the Commonwealth.
3 And it needs to be a career, and we all know that
4 a big part of our operating budget is personnel, but we
5 needed to be able to compensate those telecommunicators for
6 the professionals that they are, not based off of those
7 standards where they were somebody that was just plucked
8 off the street or somebody’s sister or somebody’s brother
9 that needed a job and we just throw them into a 911 center.
10 That’s not what it is.
11 So like a firefighter, police officer, paramedic,
12 it costs us a lot of money to outfit a 911 dispatcher.
13 They don’t have turnout gear, they don’t have a gun and a
14 bulletproof vest, but their training is expensive. It
15 takes a long time to do on-the-job training and then over
16 the years to build up that experience. And a lot of our
17 members are reporting high turnover rates, number one,
18 because of the stress; and number two, because we can’t
19 compensate them like the professionals that we feel that
20 they are. So that’s something that we would also like to
21 have the opportunity to do.
22 So two other issues, just to finish up, the issue
23 of the board and the makeup of the board, I think I address
24 what we feel that PEMA’s role should be and I think w e ’re
25 acknowledging that PEMA -- I personally can’t imagine a 74
1 world where PEMA doesn’t have some oversight over the 911
2 system, so that’s not the approach w e ’re taking. We like
3 the concept of a technical advisory board, and that’s what
4 is in the proposed legislation.
5 We are not opposed to the inclusion of police,
6 fire, and EMS on it but we see the statewide board to be
7 more of a technical one. We feel that the police, fire,
8 and EMS should be represented on advisory boards at the
9 local level where those decisions happen that really
10 pertain to their actual dispatch procedures.
11 And as we drafted this legislation jointly, there
12 was some consideration being taken not to make an unwieldy
13 board that didn’t serve any purpose at all. So that was
14 the reason why you might wonder why they’re not on there,
15 but we do support that they should have input. We feel
16 that the State one is more of a technological and
17 technology board.
18 And then lastly, and I would have to verify this,
19 but we fully support the calendar year format. I can tell
20 you as a 911 director that has different milestones each
21 year, I ’ve got to put on my calendar when come State report
22 is due, it would be nice -- and then my budget is due at a
23 totally different time. I know that we would support that,
24 and I was under the impression that that was in the draft
25 legislation. 75
1 So with that, I hope I addressed your questions,
2 and we have a lot more time here if you have other
3 questions for us.
4 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Great. Any of the
5 other members want to -
6 MR. KRATER: Just quickly talk about the
7 consolidation and the regionalization. We do believe that
8 regionalization of technology will lead to voluntary
9 consolidation as you can prove that you can use the back
10 room equipment and share that equipment that w e ’ll need
11 there.
12 Also, I think counties do need to have some skin
13 in the game. And let’s just say that we do have that 85
14 percent of the money that goes back to the PSAPs. Then you
15 have the 15 percent. So by incentivizing that 15 percent,
16 if you want to go out and buy your own 911 switch, that’s
17 fine. You’re only getting 50 percent of the money. But if
18 you go in with two or three other counties, it can be
19 funded at the 100 percent. And I think that’ll do two
20 things. One is it will ensure that continuation of your
21 operations because then someone else can take your calls in
22 the event of a failure, but more importantly, when the
23 County Commissioners know they can pay $250,000 or they can
24 pay $100,000, I think we know that they’ll pick the choice
25 that’s $100,000. So that’s a good way to incentivize 76
1 counties to reduce costs and overall bring the cost of 911
2 down across the Commonwealth.
3 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Representative Hackett
4 for questions.
5 REPRESENTATIVE HACKETT: Thank you, Chairman.
6 And thank you to all the NENA reps here today
7 that came to testify.
8 Just two side notes, one that back in 1983 I was
9 one of those dispatchers and those call-takers. We were
10 called a couple other names, too, but -
11 MR. MELCER: Yes, they still get called those
12 sometimes.
13 REPRESENTATIVE HACKETT: But more importantly, I
14 was in law enforcement for 26 years thereafter, and I'd
15 like to call them lifesavers. They saved my life on a
16 number of times, so thank you -
17 MR. MELCER: Thank you.
18 REPRESENTATIVE HACKETT: — for their service.
19 Another side note was that you discussed about
20 when some companies can call 911 and all, and I think the
21 Members should know this. Through some of my research that
22 we did with the Safe Schools Committee is that we found out
23 that some teachers in our own schools can't call 911, and
24 so that ought to be pretty scary to those people in
25 Pennsylvania that have kids in schools that the teacher 77
1 will be reprimanded or disciplined if they call 911 direct
2 for an emergency. So let’s keep that in mind as we move
3 forward.
4 So w e ’re continuing to draft this legislation,
5 and I ’d like to get NENA’s opinion on would it be possible
6 for the 911 centers to dispatch the Pennsylvania State
7 Police throughout the Commonwealth, and if so, would it be
8 cost-prohibitive and if that’s something you can shed some
9 light on, I ’d appreciate it. Thank you.
10 MR. MELCER: Technologically, yes, it would be
11 possible. I think there’s like a consolidation that I
12 mentioned earlier. There would be a lot of questions that
13 would need to be answered and it would take a collaboration
14 between the Pennsylvania State Police and the 911 centers,
15 and there are several models around the country where that
16 does happen, either a State dispatcher that’s co-located in
17 a 911 center or a 911 center directly dispatches them. We
18 all have access to the State radio system currently, so I
19 think that, yes, it could be possible.
20 Let me just -- a little history. I ’ve been
21 involved in consolidations in the ’90s when cities would
22 close down their police desks and there’s a lot of services
23 that perhaps the PCOs provide for the State Police that
24 would need to be addressed, and that would be something
25 that PSP would have to address that may not be necessarily 78
1 dispatch-related or that presence at a barracks, and that’s
2 where we would have to work together and I think we would
3 have to answer a lot of questions. But technologically,
4 yes.
5 REPRESENTATIVE HACKETT: Follow-up?
6 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Yes, please.
7 REPRESENTATIVE HACKETT: Thank you, sir. And,
8 Chairman, just a follow-up question to that. I think the
9 Members and probably the citizens should know of
10 Pennsylvania, too. Like presently right now if you live in
11 an area that’s Pennsylvania State Police patrolled and
12 protected, you call 911, that call goes into that 911
13 center. That center then has to relay that call or through
14 a direct connect button or something. That call then goes
15 over to someone, an employee at that barracks and they then
16 dispatch it. I know there’s been incidents across the
17 Commonwealth where that delay has caused injury to those
18 calling 911. So it’s something that I’m pretty hot on. I
19 know the Chairman’s pretty hot on this and I ’d like to see
20 us address that.
21 I just keep getting some pushback where they say
22 it would be totally cost-prohibitive for the State to do
23 that when it comes to, I guess, machinery and the radios.
24 I just kind of wanted to hear NENA’s opinion on that, and
25 is it so far out of reach or is it something as simple as 79
1 switching a switch?
2 MR. MELCER: I ’m sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead,
3 Tim.
4 MR. BALDWIN: I just wanted to touch on that
5 because you made me think of something. In our case when
6 the CDC closed in south-central PA and Lancaster County got
7 the barracks -- communications came back to the barracks,
8 we made it clear to the State Police that we would not
9 transfer wireless 911 calls to them because we need the
10 ability to control those calls. We have to re-bid callers
11 for location information, et cetera, and if those wireless
12 911 calls would be transferred to them completely, that
13 ability is not readily there. And if somebody is stuck in
14 a trunk going down the interstate and they’re fortunate
15 enough to have their wireless phone, we need the ability to
16 ping those phones. There’s a procedure that all the 911
17 centers follow to do that. So that’s an important thing.
18 So in that case -- I didn’t mean to interrupt, Brian,
19 but -
20 MR. MELCER: That’s okay, Tim. That’s a good
21 point.
22 MR. BALDWIN: -- the call would be conferenced in
23 as a third party but we wouldn’t relinquish control.
24 MR. MELCER: And I fully agree with what Tim said
25 because there is some data that is lost when we make that 80
1 transfer, whether it’s a landline or a cellular call and we
2 get into texting and next gen, that’s going to be a
3 different story.
4 So to answer your question, simply I ’m going to
5 take the middle of the road. It’s not a just "flipping the
6 switch” thing but it’s not out of the realm of possibility.
7 It would take a collaborative effort but it could be done.
8 REPRESENTATIVE HACKETT: Thank you.
9 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: And would it be cost-
10 prohibitive?
11 MR. MELCER: I don’t know anything -
12 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Okay.
13 MR. MELCER: -- about the Commonwealth’s budget
14 for that operation. Technologically, from what we see it
15 would not be cost-prohibitive. Obviously the counties
16 would have an additional call volume so that would have to
17 be addressed somehow with additional personnel, and that’s
18 where I said there’s different models that would have to be
19 studied.
20 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: But I think these —
21 you’re already getting the call.
22 MR. BALDWIN: Well, the difference would be -
23 MR. MELCER: The radio traffic.
24 MR. BALDWIN: -- dispatch. It’d be -- yes.
25 MR. MELCER: Yes. Not call volume, you’re 81
1 correct. I don’t know how many direct calls they get or
2 anything. That’s why it would have to be looked at. I
3 apologize. I misspoke there.
4 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Representative
5 Hackett, what would the savings amount to for the State
6 Police?
7 REPRESENTATIVE HACKETT: I’m at the wrong
8 committee meeting for that one. I just left
9 Appropriations.
10 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: I don’t know if that
11 was discussed. Okay.
12 REPRESENTATIVE HACKETT: I don’t have those
13 numbers but -
14 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: I just thought maybe
15 you had a number.
16 REPRESENTATIVE HACKETT: Yes. We’ve been working
17 on those numbers to see what the savings would be, and the
18 State Police wouldn't lose that personnel person. They
19 still have to run their barracks -
20 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Right.
21 REPRESENTATIVE HACKETT: — and there are
22 computer entry things that they still have to do. It’s
23 just I ’m more concerned about the safety aspect of
24 dispatching and transferring that call when even local
25 police are driving by the State Police incident. And w e ’ve 82
1 had that happen I think somewhere out in Pittsburgh where a
2 trooper was fatally killed. So I just want to keep an eye
3 on it. Thank you.
4 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Thank you.
5 MR. MELCER: I would welcome the chance to sit
6 down and talk about that, so I think it’s a good discussion
7 to have. Thank you.
8 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Representative Barbin.
9 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: Thank you. Thank you,
10 Mr. Chairman, and thank you, gentlemen, for your testimony
11 today.
12 You pointed out something to me in your testimony
13 that I just wanted to follow up on, and when I looked at
14 your -- w e ’re looking at right now the idea of being
15 prepared for the next generation, as well as making up some
16 of the difference that counties have been paying for for
17 their own systems. When I looked in this chart that you
18 provided on page 2 of your testimony, it shows that
19 Maryland leads the chart in how many people they can
20 effectively handle per PSAP.
21 So what I ’m wondering is have you looked at that?
22 Since w e ’re talking about like coming up with a plan for
23 funding that will allow for next generation and w e ’ve got
24 to be good stewards of the money, have you looked at how
25 they’re doing it and whether or not they’re as effective as 83
1 we are in the process that we're using?
2 MR. MELCER: I can answer that, no, I personally
3 have not. I don't know if anybody on NENA has done that
4 but we would be willing to do that for you.
5 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: Well, why I'm saying that
6 is we're doing a lot better than Ohio on a per-citizen,
7 per-PSAP basis but we're not doing better than Maryland.
8 MR. MELCER: Right.
9 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: And we should know why.
10 And we should know if there are weaknesses in Maryland, we
11 should know what those weaknesses are.
12 MR. MELCER: I would say that it could be
13 twofold. And without studying it further, I'm just -
14 admittedly there probably is a population factor.
15 Obviously you get around the beltway and the population
16 numbers are tremendous as opposed to West Virginia, which
17 is on the other end of the scale which has less population.
18 So I'm sure that that plays a part into it. And as you
19 mentioned, how are they doing? Are they happy with the
20 number of PSAPs they have?
21 And I did admit in our testimony that there is
22 still work to be done on that approach at a minimum at the
23 technology level but possibly on the consolidation level.
24 But we feel that it's something that the counties should
25 have an incentive to do. 84
1 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: Balance is always going
2 to be the hard part -
3 MR. MELCER: Yes.
4 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: — just like figuring out
5 the fee. But what I would notice about this is that
6 Maryland isn’t geographically much different than
7 Pennsylvania. They’ve got a large metropolitan area
8 between Baltimore and Washington, and then they have the
9 west, which is basically the same as -- our Appalachian
10 chain is pretty much the same as theirs that goes through
11 Cumberland and points to the west of that. So whatever
12 they’re doing we ought to take a look at because what’s
13 being proposed, at least from the County Commissioner
14 level, is a $2 fee increase.
15 And all of us want the best possible system for
16 our first responders. I do. But I think that if at the
17 same time we can say, all right, w e ’ve got to do this new
18 backbone, it requires us to at least look at Maryland and
19 see why they have fewer PSAPs per 250,000 people. So if
20 you could provide that to the -
21 MR. MELCER: W e ’ll get more data on that.
22 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: — Committee, that would
23 help I think.
24 MR. MELCER: Very good. Thank you.
25 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: And the other thing I 85
1 think that we should -- I think it came out in your
2 testimony, especially with Representative Hackett’s
3 question, if this is about the next generation, not just
4 about the fact that the counties have carried a fair amount
5 of skin in the game up to this point and they want to have
6 that change because it’s maybe too much for the county to
7 absorb, why aren’t we looking at having a State Policeman
8 on this board since they have a potential use of this
9 system? So if w e ’re building it for the counties, why
10 aren’t we also building it for the State Police and why
11 aren’t we also including the emergency management in it?
12 MR. MELCER: Well, I would say -- and going back
13 to the discussion about the technology side, that we
14 envision that as more of a technical board. However, I
15 think and in previous testimony with the PSP on the board
16 doesn’t accurately represent most counties as far as the
17 coverage of law enforcement, so you would ultimately have
18 to open it up to those four sectors, the PSP, law
19 enforcement, EMS, and then fire, and we were trying to keep
20 that board as more of a technical board and not make it an
21 unwieldy-size board.
22 But if you were going to include PSP on the
23 board, I think that local law enforcement somehow would
24 also need to sit on that board, because in my county they
25 cover the more rural areas but certainly the call volume is 86
1 more around the urban area. And they have more of a say -
2 the urban area has -
3 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: Even on the technical
4 level, this is one of the reasons w e ’re having so much
5 discussion about consolidation. The guys that are on the
6 local level, our volunteer firemen or our local policemen,
7 they know what the problems were when we just handed over
8 all the money with Homeland Security grants because their
9 phone wasn’t working. They couldn't get through to the
10 emergency management center at the county because we had
11 bought competing sort of systems.
12 And that’s kind of why I think you have to have
13 those local providers on the board because they give you a
14 technical that’s practical. This piece of equipment didn’t
15 work or this piece of equipment has problems when it’s
16 snowing out or this piece of equipment -- those people have
17 to be on the board for technical reasons, at least that’s
18 what they tell me in my firefighter class.
19 MR. MELCER: If that board truly is not just a
20 technology board, then I would agree, and if that’s the
21 route that the Legislature wants to go with it, like I
22 said, it would make sense to have the local law enforcement
23 on there as well.
24 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: I have it here. The
25 State Police is on the board. They’re a nonvoting member. 87
1 But if you go to the draft that we have in front of us,
2 it’s page 16, line 22 and 23. But there isn’t -
3 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: But there’s no reason —
4 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: — an advisor —
5 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: — to be on the board if
6 you can’t vote, because if you can’t -
7 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Sure.
8 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: You can make an argument,
9 just like this Committee, but if I can’t vote, I can’t
10 change what those regulations are.
11 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Well, but that’s why
12 the four chairmen are on there and the Governor has
13 appointees on there, and if he wants to appoint a head of
14 the State Police, he can appoint him.
15 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: I just think it should be
16 more inclusive.
17 MR. BALDWIN: I think it would be important to
18 add on what Brian said as far as the board being technical,
19 which is where we came from. Just a little bit of a
20 history lesson, when we did the wireless legislation 10 or
21 so years ago, there was a large advisory board put
22 together, and it met twice I think. And one of the reasons
23 that brought it down was the amount of time spent at the
24 meetings trying to educate folks on the technology that the
25 911 folks use in the backroom and on and on it went. And 88
1 it just fell apart from there.
2 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Who else has
3 questions?
4 Representative Tallman, be quick. Be quick.
5 We ’re cutting into your lunchtime so be quick.
6 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: All right. Never mind.
7 Kind of going to follow up with what
8 Representative Hackett had to say and it’s kind of been a
9 burr under my saddle. The State Police pushed back
10 significantly in some other hearings. I ’m also a former
11 911 person. There’s probably 15, 20 seconds lost in
12 transferring the call and probably 20 to 30 seconds lost of
13 that dispatcher’s time in transferring the call, so there’s
14 a significant life safety issue involved. The kickback
15 that I keep getting from the State Police, I ’ve dispatched
16 my local police, no problems. They say you aren’t properly
17 trained. You don’t have the proper training to dispatch a
18 State Police to a car accident, to a shooting.
19 MR. MELCER: Well, I would debate that.
20 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: Okay. Thank you. You
21 answered my question.
22 MR. MELCER: I mean there’s clear quality
23 assurance standards and I ’d be happy to show you at least
24 in Lawrence County our training program.
25 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Okay. Great. 89
1 Gentlemen, thank you for your testimony.
2 Were there any other questions? I didn’t check
3 to see. Okay.
4 Thank you for your testimony today. We
5 appreciate you -
6 MR. MELCER: Thank you.
7 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: — taking the time to
8 be here.
9 We are going to break for a half-an-hour, come
10 back here at one o ’clock if you want to break for lunch,
11 and w e ’ll see you at one o ’clock. And you’re all required
12 to come back. Don’t disappear.
13
14 (A break was taken.)
15
16 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Okay. This public
17 hearing will come to order.
18 And our next panelists are Mr. Frank Buzydlowski,
19 Director, State Government Relations with Verizon; Steve
20 Samara, President, Pennsylvania Telephone Association;
21 Mr. David Kerr, Regional Vice President of External Affairs
22 for AT&T.
23 Welcome, gentlemen, and you can begin your
24 testimony when you’re ready.
25 MR. BUZYDLOWSKI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 90
1 If you were following with my written testimony,
2 in the interest of time I'm going to start on page 2 and
3 I'll paraphrase a lot of it to move us through quickly.
4 As you know, Chairman Barrar and Chairman
5 Sainato, we have been working with Members and staff of
6 this Committee for several years now, as well as public
7 safety representatives and the rest of the
8 telecommunications industry to help craft the replacement
9 legislation that is appropriate for today's world, and I
10 believe that the draft has been disseminated to your
11 Members and others.
12 That legislative draft contains provisions that
13 are designed to promote efficiency in the administration of
14 PSAPs, positioning them to take full advantage of emerging
15 technologies such as next-generation 911 by encouraging the
16 regionalization of technology. It also replaces -- and
17 this is important to Verizon and other members of the
18 industry -- the current hodgepodge of different landline,
19 wireless, and VoIP fees with a competitively neutral 911
20 fee that is applied uniformly across all technologies that
21 consumers use to reach 911.
22 When addressing the fee, although we at Verizon
23 believe that 911 is an essential government service that
24 should be funded with appropriations from county general
25 fund revenues, for the present we continue to support the 91
1 funding system through the continued imposition of a 911
2 fee on our bills. But that fee must be completely and
3 technologically neutral and fairly imposed on all
4 telecommunication’s end users that have the capability to
5 make an emergency call to 911 PSAP. The current landline-
6 centric funding model no longer makes sense and should be
7 replaced with the uniform, statewide feet on the services
8 customers are using today to call 911.
9 How much should that fee be? We strongly
10 encourage you to set a fee that is sufficient to fund the
11 costs to connect a telecommunications user with a PSAP but
12 to keep at the lowest possible so as to avoid overburdening
13 our customers and your constituents, the taxpayers. To
14 that point it is important to recognize that the decrease
15 in landline 911 fees has not diminished the revenue
16 collected to support 911 systems across this Commonwealth.
17 More than twice as many lines pay the fee today than paid
18 it in 2000 when only landlines were assessed a fee. As you
19 can see from the bar graph -- it should be in the testimony
20 before you -- there were an estimated 9 million landlines
21 in 2000 and over 18 million wireline, wireless, and
22 voiceover internet protocol lines at the end of 2013.
23 So while there has been a cumulative loss of
24 switched landmines of approximately 4.2 million since 2000,
25 that loss has been more than replaced by 911 fees from 92
1 contract and prepaid wireless services, in other words,
2 postpaid where you have a contract or prepaid services, as
3 well as voiceover IP. Total 911 revenues in the
4 Commonwealth increased by more than $65 million between
5 2004 and 2013. And you’ll see that demonstrated
6 graphically on the pie charts.
7 According to data in the two most recent FCC
8 reports to Congress, Pennsylvania’s 911 revenues increased
9 by more than 8-1/2 million between 2012 and 2013 loan. As
10 Pennsylvania and all of the United States has moved from a
11 marketplace with one or two wireline phones per household
12 paying the wireline fee to the respective counties, we now
13 have household with two, three, four, five wireless phones
14 paying the fee. And there has been a significant net
15 increase in 911 revenue because of that.
16 So if you look at the 2004 pie chart, total
17 revenue, 100 percent landline, was 126.6 million, but if
18 you look at the 2013 pie chart, total revenue was 191.8
19 million, a $65.2 million increase; 141,494,000 of that was
20 not landline. In other words, it’s the technologies that
21 were, 10 years ago, newly added to the 911 fee collection
22 regime.
23 So w e ’ve analyzed these numbers and we calculate
24 that a uniform $1.04 fee, and you note it’s actually gone
25 down 2 cents since my last testimony because of the 93
1 increase in wireless and IP services, $1.04 would collect
2 approximately -- it’s actually a little bit more than the
3 same amount of revenue being collected today by the current
4 system. That’s adding landline going to the counties, IP
5 and wireless going to the Commonwealth.
6 So while we agree that some increase in overall
7 revenue would be reasonable to provide additional funds to
8 support efficiency and modernization projects such as
9 regionalization of technology, voluntary PSAP
10 regionalization, and the adoption of next-generation 911,
11 that should not require a large increase in fee. Given the
12 huge number of lines now being assessed, we believe that an
13 increase of 15 to 20 percent over the revenue-neutral
14 amount of $1.04 would provide necessary funding. But as I
15 have indicated to all of you, it’s certainly something that
16 we are flexible on and we certainly want to balance the
17 interest of our customers, your constituents, with the
18 needs of the emergency services community.
19 But when one looks at the amount of revenue that
20 higher fees would drive, we took some hypotheticals and
21 calculated the following: The $1.25 fee across all
22 technologies -- landline, wireless, prepaid, postpaid,
23 internet protocol -- would be a $30 million tax increase on
24 wireless customers; $1.50 would be a $60 million tax
25 increase on wireless customers; a $2 rate would be a 100 94
1 percent tax increase on a subscriber and $120 million of
2 additional taxes paid by wireless customers. And as you
3 can see from the bar graph, at $1 Pennsylvania already has
4 one of the highest monthly wireless fees in the United
5 States. Only West Virginia is at $3 and then it drops down
6 to $1.75 and $1.50 and so forth. But the graph speaks for
7 itself.
8 Also, I should note that telecommunications
9 services in our State are burdened with additional taxes
10 and fees, and I know everybody who ever looks at his or her
11 phone bill sees those annoying fees and taxes at the end of
12 it, and that includes a 5 percent gross receipts tax, which
13 is not imposed in most other States. So you have to look
14 at the cumulative effect with all due respect.
15 In conclusion, Verizon believes that ensuring
16 that all counties, including rural counties, are receiving
17 adequate funding with the uniform fee can and should be
18 accomplished with a fair and reasonable formula that
19 distributes revenues to the PSAPs, ensuring that total
20 funds are used in the most cost-efficient manner possible
21 while providing incentives to move towards next-generation
22 technology across the Commonwealth.
23 I believe my colleague David Kerr wants to
24 address some additional issues.
25 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Okay. 95
1 MR. KERR: Thank you very much, Chairman Barrar,
2 Chairman Sainato. I appreciate the opportunity to be back
3 before you.
4 I also am not going to restate all of my
5 testimony previously submitted over the last year or two,
6 and I will summarize my page-and-a-half worth of testimony.
7 Certainly while w e ’re open to discussing other
8 approaches that are out there, AT&T can support the vast
9 majority of the components of the draft legislation that’s
10 been developed. W e ’ll continue to monitor a few of the
11 outstanding issues, the fee level, the distribution
12 formula, which we continue to work on.
13 To restate a couple things that Frank has
14 mentioned, our principles were outlined early on in the
15 process and w e ’re pleased that they’ve been included in the
16 legislation. A single point of collection at the State
17 level for the same fee, for the same technology being
18 disbursed directly to the counties is in the legislation.
19 Important to note that the fee is on the service, not on
20 the device. That’s an important note in the legislation.
21 Also, the definition of 911 communication service is
22 defined as a two-way communication or transmission. We
23 also think that’s very important.
24 And I also just want to underscore something that
25 was mentioned previous to lunch that the industry is moving 96
1 very aggressively to new technology, to IP services. Our
2 company is very much involved in that, looking at a couple
3 trials at the FCC. And I know I can speak for Verizon and
4 Steve’s member companies. We all are moving to the new IP
5 technology, as was discussed this morning.
6 To turn your attention to the chart before you
7 titled "Summary of Revenue Estimates -- FY15 Uniform Rate,”
8 this is a chart that was put together by Scott Mackey.
9 Scott’s with KSE Partners. He’s a consultant that does a
10 great deal of tax analysis for the wireless industry. And
11 the industry through TIA commissioned him to do a study of
12 911 fees. He does a lot of work on taxes and fees for us
13 across the country.
14 But what you’re looking at before you is meant to
15 be informative to you as Committee Members. If you go to
16 the bottom of the first page, it says, "Current Law
17 Actuals." These are pulled directly from FY ’13 PEMA
18 report. And what this shows you is how much was generated
19 for each segment of the industry, wireless postpaid, as
20 Frank mentioned as we traditionally think of as contract
21 wireless service; wireless prepaid at about 13-1/2 million;
22 and then the wireline revenue that was generated, a little
23 north of 50 million; and then the VoIP revenue at about
24 25.1 million for a total generated in fiscal year ’13 of
25 191.8 million. 97
1 The current law forecast estimate for fiscal year
2 ’15 is at the top of that page, and that shows you that
3 it’s anticipated -- and I ’m going to talk about the
4 assumptions here in a minute -- about $193.3 million will
5 be generated, as Frank mentioned, about 1.5 million more
6 than the current year. And you can see the breakdown there
7 by postpaid wireless, prepaid wireless, wireline, and VoIP.
8 And what w e ’ve done here in the middle of the
9 chart using some assumptions that are on the second page is
10 to look at -- and I think it’s important to note you can
11 plug any fee there. You see a yellow box that has a fee of
12 $1.04. As Frank mentioned, that is if the decision is made
13 to generate the same amount of revenue now under a new rate
14 versus what’s collected currently. It would be a fee of
15 about $1.04 assessed across all technologies. And you can
16 see there the net change wireless customers in the State,
17 postpaid wireless customers would pay about 4.2 million
18 more. Wireline customers, because obviously the decrease
19 in wirelines, would pay about 5.8 million less.
20 I think it’s important to note you can put any
21 figure you want in that box. You could put $1.50, you
22 could put $2, you could put $10 in there and we can make
23 this spreadsheet available to the Committee and to the
24 staff, but it can show you exactly how much burden would be
25 placed on the different segments of the industry. 98
1 If you turn to page 2, just some of the
2 assumptions here. And again, w e ’re certainly open to other
3 assumptions. And what do they say about assumptions, the
4 first three letters of the word assumption? But certainly
5 what w e ’re using here is FCC wireless lines December
6 2012/2013 with a growth rate of 3 percent to generate that
7 revenue. When you look at the wireline, it estimates the
8 decline of 8 percent. Again, you can plug any figure you
9 want in there if you believe it’s going to be more
10 aggressive or less aggressive. And then the VoIP
11 assumption there is a forecast growth rate of 10 percent.
12 And that’s a little down. Scott anticipates the VoIP
13 growth rate will lessen a little bit. Brian Barno may have
14 some comments on that.
15 So again, you can plug in any numbers you want
16 here. These are assumptions pulled directly from PEMA and
17 FCC reports, and it’s really meant to show you what is
18 currently generated to inform you as policymakers.
19 So I ’ll turn it over to Steve Samara if he has
20 anything to add.
21 MR. SAMARA: I don’t really, not formally anyway.
22 Dave said he had a page-and-a-half of testimony. I have
23 exactly a page-and-a-half less than that.
24 But I ’m here to just to support these guys. The
25 dynamics that they’ve explained about the industry apply to 99
1 the rural telcos in Pennsylvania, just like they do to
2 Verizon and to AT&T. Our concern obviously is where we're
3 headed with the fees and that's not a stop-the-presses
4 statement. You folks all know that. But we've been
5 working in conjunction with these folks and others to try
6 and find a happy medium there.
7 But I'm here on behalf of the rural telcos to
8 answer any questions that Committee Members might have.
9 Thanks.
10 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Representative
11 Tallman, question?
12 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: [inaudible].
13 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Oh, no. Oh, I
14 thought -
15 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: I have one.
16 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Okay. Go ahead.
17 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: We knew it. We knew it.
18 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Just keep it to one.
19 Or you can do two.
20 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: The Chairman is very
21 perceptive. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
22 I've got to get to the correct charts here.
23 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Yes.
24 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: This chart here, which
25 is the Verizon chart -- I'm going to go to Mr. Hill's 100
1 chart. If I understand this chart correctly, this line
2 here is the revenue current under the three things that we
3 charge for and then the upward line is if we had the county
4 tax into that. So if we take these two charts, revenue
5 doesn’t seem to follow the increase. Can you answer that?
6 Because I think both of you said that revenue is increasing
7 whereas it’s kind of leveled off if not actually decreased.
8 MR. BUZYDLOWSKI: Revenue has increased
9 dramatically. I mean the entire pie is much bigger than it
10 ever was. I think that the fundamental change and the
11 thing that -- I ’ll speak for myself -- I had the hardest
12 time grappling with in the very beginning when we were
13 talking about this legislation is if you go back to the
14 last time that this Committee and this General Assembly
15 revised the law, before that, it was only wireline services
16 whose subscribers paid the 911 fee and all that money went
17 to the 67 counties, to the 69 PSAPs directly.
18 When this Committee and then the Legislature
19 adopted the change to recognize that wireless and then
20 internet telephony was a viable and growing product and
21 service, it was obvious I think to everybody that there was
22 really no good way to take those services, whether it’s a
23 cell phone or internet, and have that money flow directly
24 to the counties.
25 So therefore, the decision was made to have that 101
1 money go to the Commonwealth and then be distributed by
2 PEMA. At the time, if the wireline was way up here and
3 wireless and IP services were just not their infancy but
4 they were still a long way from what they are today, that
5 was looked at in at least some quarters as found money,
6 additional money, and PEMA would utilize it for grants.
7 Nobody anticipated that the system would be turned on its
8 head and that the overwhelming majority of revenues would
9 be coming from wireless and internet. And certainly we
10 didn’t anticipate it, at least not going back 10 years,
11 that people would drop their landlines altogether.
12 So our landlines are down over 50 percent. And I
13 know Brian Barno would testify after us, even when you add
14 in cable telephony, if you just take all the landlines,
15 there’s still half or less than half of what there used to
16 be. Ergo, the counties are getting less than half of the
17 revenues they used to. But when I say the pie is bigger,
18 all that additional money, the additional money which is
19 coming from wireless and internet IP services, is going to
20 PEMA, not to counties, and then it’s of course going
21 through grants to the counties. So that is really the crux
22 of the dilemma that’s before this Committee and how to
23 address that, and I think you are addressing it properly by
24 throwing out the old template and doing a technology-
25 neutral approach so that every technology pays the same and 102
1 it all goes to the Commonwealth.
2 And then of course the issue, which is not a
3 Verizon or an industry is how you then distribute the
4 money, the fundamental point being, though, there is much
5 more money. I ’m not saying that it’s enough money. I
6 think that point’s been made very well by the PSAPs and the
7 counties, but our point is that the distribution of the
8 money has fundamentally changed over the last 10 years.
9 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: Thank you.
10 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Representative Kortz.
11 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
12 Thank you, gentlemen, for your testimony.
13 Mr. Buzydlowski, on page 2 of your testimony the
14 one sentence here jumps out at me. It says "but the fee
15 must be competitively and technologically neutral and
16 fairly imposed on all telecommunication end users that have
17 the capability to make an emergency 911 call to the PSAP."
18 Earlier today, we heard testimony from Mr. Hill and I had
19 asked him the question, can we consider adding broadband,
20 the internet in that equation and broaden the base? And
21 your comments on that, sir? What do you think of that
22 idea?
23 MR. BUZYDLOWSKI: We at Verizon oppose taxing the
24 internet. First of all, understand what that means. It
25 means you’re really taxing internet access. But I should 103
1 say, though, up front that we're not opposed to applying
2 the 911 fee to services that use the internet to call 911.
3 Any service that is using -- if you're using IP technology,
4 you can call 911, make a call to the PSAP, it should be
5 subject to the fee. So just be clear about that.
6 And your draft bill was written so that whatever
7 the FCC designates as a service or device that is capable
8 of having interactive two-way communications with a PSAP,
9 which is necessary for 911 call or communication of any
10 sort, once FCC says that that's valid, then they should be
11 subject to the 911 fee. So I want to be clear about that.
12 But the proposal that has been made and I figured
13 what has been dormant for a while; I'm not sure if it's
14 really being proposed again, but just for the record, it's
15 an onerous tax and it's a real tax increase to middle-class
16 families and to small business. And the reason I say that
17 is because you're going to have some people who are paying,
18 say, $1.50 in one of the rural counties today for a
19 landline. If you take away the fee and you tax internet
20 access, you have people who are paying zero. You will have
21 people paying nothing.
22 But then if you look at a family of five, and
23 I'll just use my friend and colleague Dave Kerr as an
24 example. He and his wife and all of his kids have, I'm
25 sure, AT&T smartphones and maybe even has FiOS, but if not, 104
1 he certainly has one of Brian Barno’s companies’ services.
2 So my point is is that if you have a family that has
3 smartphones, they have data plans. That’s what you’re
4 talking about taxing if you tax internet access.
5 And I ’ll just use FiOS as an example but it could
6 be Comcast. If somebody has high-speed internet service
7 and I ’ll use real -- my cousin has high-speed internet
8 service. He watches TV over Netflix and Hulu. That’s a
9 lot of data. That’s a lot of usage. So I don’t know what
10 speed. He might be at 75 megabits but you’re taxing that.
11 So the more that the family has in the way of smartphones,
12 watching movies, watching the Disney movie over Netflix or
13 what have you, the higher their tax bill is going to go.
14 And so we think it’s fundamentally not good public policy
15 and also would be unfair to the taxpayers.
16 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: If I can have one follow-
17 up, Mr. Chairman, Frank, question for you. Where does
18 Verizon stand? I mean the bill was talking about a $2
19 increase. Where are you at on this? $1.25, $1.50, $1.75?
20 Where would you like to see this end up?
21 MR. BUZYDLOWSKI: I have testified several times
22 supporting $1.25 but I will say that we recognize that you
23 set policy. We believe you’ll find the number that is
24 appropriate. We think that certainly we could be flexible
25 in the amount. I ’m not going to give you a maximum. But I 105
1 think one of the ideas that’s been vetted and I think the
2 Chairman mentioned it earlier is maybe a combination of
3 raising the fee but also empowering the counties to impose
4 an emergency services tax so that they would have the
5 ability if they do have shortfalls to get additional money
6 to supplement it so it’s not all hitting on the phone bill
7 of the consumer.
8 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: I appreciate that and I
9 agree. I think that’s an excellent idea that the Chairman
10 proposed, giving the county some skin in the game by
11 allowing them to put a tax on it. As we heard earlier from
12 Director Flinn, he mentioned that 46 percent of all of the
13 calls come from Allegheny County and Philadelphia, yet they
14 receive I believe 26 percent of the funding. Giving them
15 that ability would help to close that gap.
16 I think that’s an excellent idea, Mr. Chairman.
17 Thank you.
18 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: I can count on you to
19 do that amendment? I was just kidding. Hey, w e ’re working
20 on it. If you got ideas how we can do it, we are kicking
21 it around, but again, we have to come up with a way for the
22 counties to do it that doesn’t cost them a lot in
23 administrative cost.
24 So anyone else have questions for -- Chairman
25 Sainato. 106
1 MINORITY CHAIRMAN SAINATO: Thank you, Chairman
2 Barrar.
3 Frank, just following up a little bit on what
4 Representative Kortz said, and I just want to get this
5 straight. When we look at the internet to call 911, okay,
6 and I ’m looking at Steve’s iPad here, now some iPads I can
7 hook up -- I have one that does not have cell service. I
8 have Wi-Fi. If I ’m at a Wi-Fi place, I can use it. Now, I
9 think Steve’s is hooked up to a carrier. Are you saying
10 that his hooked up to a carrier, he would pay his dollar,
11 but if you’re not and you just tap into any Wi-Fi, you
12 would not pay the dollar? Is that the way I ’m
13 understanding this?
14 MR. BUZYDLOWSKI: Essentially that’s correct but
15 let me try to restate [inaudible]. My wife has an iPad and
16 it’s not connected to any carrier, she just uses that, and
17 then she goes into a Starbucks or a McDonald’s and goes on
18 Wi-Fi, I would say that’s neither here nor there meaning
19 that that device is not taxed. There’s no phone number
20 associated with it. There’s really no way to apply the 911
21 fee to the device because, remember, the whole regime here
22 that the way the fee is applied is based upon phone number.
23 So if there’s no carrier, no transmission, you’re using Wi
24 Fi, there’s no way to get at it and I think it’s really a
25 rabbit hole to try to go down that path. 107
1 If on the other hand you have a telephone number
2 associated with it and I go back to what I said about FCC
3 regulations because you’d need a national standard. So if
4 and when the device is able and capable to make a 911 two
5 way communication with the PSAP, then it should be subject
6 to the tax, but if it’s not, then it isn’t and shouldn’t be
7 subject to the 911 fee.
8 I can maybe use another example like magicJack is
9 essentially an IP service. You’re using the internet. A
10 friend of mine lived in Montgomery County, moved to
11 Florida. The first thing he did, plugged in his magicJack,
12 and called the company to change his address so that they
13 had the proper ALI -- they have ANI -- but ALI, Automatic
14 Location Identification, so the address if he called 911 it
15 wouldn’t go to Norristown; it would go to wherever the
16 county seat was in Florida. That’s subject to the fee and
17 should be subject to fee because he’s using it as -- and
18 it’s a device that can be used to make a two-way
19 communication with 911.
20 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: Because I think that was
21 brought up earlier today and that’s why I wanted to follow
22 up with you because -
23 MR. BUZYDLOWSKI: It’s not —
24 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: I mean it’s not something
25 you just wrap around. We don’t know a year from now what 108
1 type of communication device is going to be able to call
2 911. It may be something w e ’re not even thinking about
3 right now and all of a sudden it’s the new hot item and
4 you’re going to be using it. But I was thinking about the
5 iPad thing is because one is connected using cell service
6 and one is not, just tapping into Wi-Fi. And I agree with
7 you. I mean I don’t know how you can tax Wi-Fi and that’s
8 a path I wouldn’t want to go down.
9 MR. BUZYDLOWSKI: Yes, I don’t know how you’d
10 begin to tax Wi-Fi, and I don’t think you want to go down
11 the road of taxing devices per se because then how about
12 Xbox.
13 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: Right.
14 MR. BUZYDLOWSKI: And here’s a real dilemma I
15 think is if something can call 911 but is not two-way
16 communication, I think that’s actually dangerous but
17 certainly shouldn’t be taxed. In other words, my point
18 being is that you’re making communication but they can’t
19 communicate back with you like whatever device you want to
20 talk about, smart TVs or what have you. It’s got to be
21 interactive. And I would defer to people much more
22 knowledgeable than I, the last panel I think it was with
23 the PSAP community. They know better. But they have to be
24 able to identify the caller, the location, where are you,
25 what’s the problem. If they can’t, if all they’re getting 109
1 is a one-way transmission, I think it’s dangerous to public
2 safety but it’s also not something that should be
3 appropriately subject to the fee.
4 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: All right. Thank you.
5 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Yes, I just did the
6 calculation on my own home and with four cell phones and
7 one landline, if we go to $1.50, that tax per year for my
8 household comes out to $90. And that’s an incredible tax
9 for one household to pay for 911 service, which started out
10 at $12 a year. Now w e ’re at 90 for the same household. So
11 that’s why I know w e ’re all wrestling with the fee and it’s
12 a heck of a lot of money to have to pay if you look at it
13 as a per-household tax.
14 MR. KERR: W e ’re glad you still have a landline,
15 Mr. Chairman. There’s one in there anyway, right? We hope
16 you don’t cut back on your purchasing.
17 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Yes. But I do have
18 the cell service on my iPad but I don’t have it connected
19 to a contract. I just use it for the GPS because it’s
20 actually my navigation GPS for my boat. It works great
21 that way.
22 Any other questions from the Members? Anyone?
23 No.
24 Gentlemen, thank you for your testimony. I
25 appreciate it. I ’m sure w e ’re going to have further 110
1 discussions on this and we will keep you involved in that.
2 Our next testifier is Ray Hayling, Deputy Chief
3 Information Officer with the City of Philadelphia.
4 Good afternoon. Thank you for being here.
5 MR. HAYLING: Good afternoon. Thank you.
6 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: You can begin your
7 testimony when ready.
8 MR. HAYLING: Okay. I'm going to try to stick to
9 this as best as I can so that I don't go off on a tangent,
10 while keeping in mind the time.
11 So good afternoon, Chairman Barrar, Minority
12 Chairman Sainato, and Members of the Committee. My name is
13 Raymond Hayling and I'm the Deputy CIO for the City of
14 Philadelphia.
15 As the largest city in the Commonwealth, as well
16 as the fifth-largest city in the Nation, the Philadelphia
17 PSAP sees call volume increase from approximately 7,000
18 calls per day in the colder months to over 10,000 per day
19 in the warmer months, which is in line with the top 10
20 largest cities in the Nation when adjusted for population.
21 As you know, the Philadelphia 911 system must
22 support the ability to deliver emergency services through
23 various industrial sites, major institutions, commercial
24 oil refineries, public water treatment facilities, and
25 regional transportation networks. As with any large 111
1 metropolitan or urban area, the city’s daily population
2 grows larger with people commuting into these areas for
3 their jobs, sporting, recreational events, leisure
4 activities, school, and celebrations such as the 4th of
5 July. Likewise, our call volume increases during these
6 times, which has a direct impact on personnel and
7 technology required to deliver services.
8 Since I last appeared before this Committee on
9 this issue a little over a year-and-a-half ago, the number
10 of reported access lines in my jurisdiction has dropped to
11 about 31 percent. In contrast, our overall combined call
12 volume from wireline and wireless 911 callers stayed flat
13 at approximately 2.9 million calls.
14 Based on the data issued by the Commonwealth,
15 Philadelphia is the most efficient PSAP in almost every
16 nationally recognized metric for measuring PSAP
17 performance. Some of these metrics are:
18 • Call volume: 2.9 million calls
19 • Cost per call: $13
20 • PSAP staff per 10,000 calls to 911: 1.2
21 • 911 calls per population: 1.89
22 • 911 calls per square mile: 20,137
23 • Access lines: 638,811
24 • Percentage of wireless 911 calls: 77 percent 112
1 • Population: 1.5 million
2
3 We believe that the legislation should award
4 efficiency and not jeopardize it. The current revenue
5 generated by wireline and wireless fund only covers 60
6 percent of our total expenses. Looked at from another
7 angle, the wireless fund is providing the Philadelphia 911
8 system with approximately 12.5 percent of the wireless
9 funds collected by PEMA for handling 32.5 percent of the
10 911 calls in the Commonwealth. And as a point of
11 reference, it is also worth noting that over 77 percent of
12 all of our calls originate from wireless devices. So
13 wireless calls to 911 in Philadelphia taken by themselves
14 represent 24.8 percent of all 911 calls in the
15 Commonwealth, whether wireline or wireless.
16 We believe that 911 funding in the Commonwealth
17 should be formula-driven and written into the legislation.
18 As an emergency call center, our performance is based on
19 the call volume and the corresponding dispatch of
20 assistance to the caller. As a result, we believe that
21 basing fund distribution on call volume provides the most
22 accurate method of identifying and disbursing funds to all
23 PSAPs since PSAPs’ operations and systems are and should be
24 engineered by these metrics as well. This approach
25 accounts for our users migrating from a fixed 113
1 communications user base to one that is mobile as well.
2 The PSAPs answering citizen 911 calls and getting
3 them assistance need to be able to handle the call volume.
4 Over the history of 911 in the Commonwealth, we haven’t
5 always gotten the mix of technologies right but the calls
6 have been predictable. We believe that all funds remitted
7 to the State Treasurer should be directed back to the
8 counties and cities based on a usage or call volume
9 formula, which ensures a dedicated and consistent funding
10 amount that counties are able to anticipate and budget for
11 in their fiscal year planning. Any other disbursement of
12 these such as population, a hybrid of call volume and
13 population, et cetera, only directs funds away from the
14 PSAPs that are answering calls and creates inequitable
15 funding gaps.
16 We agree that the 911 fee should be single and
17 uniform across all consumers. This eliminates the silo
18 effect created over the many years of technological change.
19 The definition of a 911-eligible fee service should be
20 technology-neutral and cover new 911 capable services that
21 materialize through technological advances. This approach
22 will provide the funding necessary to implement, operate,
23 manage, and maintain a 911 system. A county or city should
24 not be subjected to annual changes in the eligibility of
25 fundable expenses. 114
1 In addition, the current proposed legislation
2 also conflicts with laws applicable to Philadelphia,
3 including the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation
4 Authority Act, which requires a five-year plan by providing
5 for a four-year sunset provision instead of at least a
6 five-year sunset provision. This would require
7 Philadelphia to absorb one full year of costs should the
8 funding actually sunset.
9 The current draft legislation is vague as to the
10 exact interaction between the 911 Board and the State
11 agency with regards to planning, training, and technology
12 guidance. This vagueness makes it difficult to go into a
13 detailed analysis. However, as the most efficient and
14 cost-effective PSAP in the Commonwealth, the City of
15 Philadelphia believes that it should be guaranteed a voting
16 seat on the 911 Board. We do recommend that the new
17 legislation require an audit of the 911 fund similar to the
18 requirements for 911 funding recipients so that it is clear
19 how funds not directed to the counties and cities are being
20 utilized to support 911 in the Commonwealth.
21 And just to be specific because it’s not in this
22 testimony, when we talk about an audit, w e ’re also
23 including the fact that we have to collect funds from
24 carriers with access line counts, let’s say, or users,
25 let’s say, that we don’t necessarily know the exact number. 115
1 I mentioned my access lines earlier on. The reason that’s
2 important is if you just do a quick analysis of the number
3 of access lines, multiply that by the amount of money w e ’re
4 collecting or should be collecting and the actual amount of
5 money w e ’re getting, there is a Delta.
6 We can’t explain that today because we don’t have
7 the authority or the ability to look inside and actually
8 see who’s paying, who’s not paying, if they’re not paying,
9 why. And there are legitimate reasons not to pay because
10 there are some exceptions in the current legislation, but
11 again, it’s a black hole for us.
12 The current draft proposes that a formula
13 approach be drafted at a later date and implemented with
14 three specific areas, which will be used for programmatic
15 support to the counties in the Commonwealth and
16 administration of the fund: Specifically, fair share funds
17 for each county and/or city, regional incentives, and
18 statewide interconnectivity.
19 Obviously, the City of Philadelphia supports the
20 concept of fair share. I believe the challenge will be in
21 the definition and implementation of a fair share
22 initiative. Once again, I turned to performance
23 indicators, in this case call volume, population, and
24 resulting calls for service. Call volume addresses the
25 actual work that the call center does and the population 116
1 takes into account the standing universe of potential
2 callers. While other indicators could be used, these two
3 directly reflect the work that a call center is doing.
4 Next, I ’d like to address the regional incentives
5 concept from our perspective. Regionalizing backroom
6 equipment and networks may work for the majority of
7 counties and PSAPs. Philadelphia’s situation is unique.
8 Since we handle a large volume of the Commonwealth’s 911
9 calls, engaging our neighboring PSAPs and discussions on
10 how we can provide backup support or share resources with
11 each other is difficult. In these discussions, we have
12 identified two factors that we believe impact our ability
13 to regionalize or back up each other. These factors are
14 the size of each of the adjacent PSAPs and the volume of
15 calls that each one is configured to handle and
16 Philadelphia’s call volume.
17 Each agency’s current configuration, along with
18 its staffing, is based on its own call volume, operational
19 needs, and requirements. Even during our identified slow
20 periods, we average 7,500 calls per day or 312 calls per
21 hour. Compare this to the largest adjacent PSAP which
22 averages 1,460 calls per day or 61 calls per hour, and one
23 can understand how regionalizing with Philadelphia would
24 potentially overwhelm their systems and their staff,
25 jeopardizing both counties’ citizens. 117
1 It is important that, should regional incentives
2 remain as a funding mechanism, backup facilities be made
3 eligible based on a standard commensurate with that of a
4 region. It should be added that if the Philadelphia PSAP
5 were compared on the same metrics mentioned earlier in my
6 testimony to the current or proposed regions, we would
7 still rank number one or number two in all of the
8 categories. The City of Philadelphia already is the
9 Commonwealth's largest region for 911 purposes.
10 In closing, I'd like to thank you for this
11 opportunity to testify before the Committee on this
12 important matter. As you continue to debate this issue, I
13 wanted to summarize areas of importance to the City of
14 Philadelphia:
15 1. We support the creation of a 911 fee,
16 eliminating silos, and providing for a five-
17 year sunset provision.
18 2. We believe a funding formula should be
19 included in the legislation that provides a
20 dedicated, predictable funding distributed
21 based on call volume. Eligible expenses being
22 similar to the original Act 78 guidance, which
23 is ”911 funds should be used only for those
24 costs that are reasonably necessary to
25 enhance, operate, or maintain a 911 system.” 118
1 This would provide the counties with the
2 ability to administer the program locally
3 without constraints.
4 3. The legislation should provide clarification
5 for the State agency and the 911 Board
6 programmatic oversight related to planning,
7 training, technology, and the audits that I
8 mentioned earlier.
9
10 I ’d be happy to take any questions that you may
11 have.
12 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Representative Barbin.
13 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
14 And thank you, Mr. Hayling, for your testimony.
15 And I just want to see if I understand this. Do
16 you believe that the State should have oversight ability
17 over what Philadelphia County or the City of Philadelphia
18 decides to purchase as a relates to your ongoing traffic
19 for -- w e ’re looking at this 4G network that’s going to
20 have to be built out. Do you believe that the State has a
21 role in determining whether the type of purchase that
22 Philadelphia makes should be overseen by someone at the
23 State level?
24 MR. HAYLING: What I ’d say is based on my past
25 experience -- I worked at both the municipal, county, and 119
1 State levels -- technological guidance needs to be
2 provided, a standard for interconnectivity needs to be
3 provided, but at the end of the day, the actual person
4 providing the service needs to decide what their end user
5 equipment is. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t
6 opportunities to work together with other agencies but
7 everyone’s day-to-day operations are going to be different.
8 But at the end of the day we do have to answer a call, I do
9 have to make some documentation or a record that I took the
10 call, and I do have to dispatch service. Those are three
11 areas where I don’t think anyone else should muddle but the
12 person taking the call.
13 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: Are you participating in
14 the State’s STARNet program, the infrastructure? Fifteen
15 years ago the State joined into a backbone -
16 MR. HAYLING: We had —
17 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: — such as Alcatel or —
18 MR. HAYLING: We do have direct connectivity into
19 the State Police radio system.
20 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: But to STARNet, are you
21 using STARNet as part of your backbone?
22 MR. HAYLING: No, we are not.
23 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: Okay. And this is what I
24 want to get to. If we have to make a backbone, I mean we
25 did. Fifteen years ago we decided we were going to use 120
1 STARNet and we built it out. You’re not using it. And now
2 w e ’re asked to provide a $2 increase or a 100 percent
3 increase from $1 to $2 to build out whatever the next
4 generation is going to be, but if you’re not going to use
5 it, how are we going to be able to save money? That’s my
6 question.
7 MR. HAYLING: And I guess what I do is go back to
8 the metrics that I gave you because even with us not
9 participating with STARNet and many others are
10 participating, most of my numbers in terms of the number of
11 calls I take, how much it costs me to actually take a call,
12 et cetera, are significantly lower than anyone in the
13 Commonwealth. So I ’m not sure -
14 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: But you don't know that
15 it would be lower if you participated in the STARNet
16 network. You’re not right now -
17 MR. HAYLING: Correct.
18 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: — and we don’t know what
19 the network’s going to be four years from now for 4G. But
20 if we allow every county not to participate in whatever
21 that backbone is, it seems to me that w e ’re going to have
22 problems with connectivity and w e ’re going to have problems
23 in not being able to have economies of scale. We get a
24 lower price at the State level if we can say there’s one
25 standard and you guys all have to buy into it. And right 121
1 now, that’s not happening.
2 MR. HAYLING: Correct. I just don’t know if that
3 savings would be significant in comparison to the other
4 costs -
5 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: Well —
6 MR. HAYLING: — based on the —
7 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: — if you have any
8 information that would say we will have a lower cost for
9 our share that we have to pass on to Philadelphia, then we
10 should be able to see that now. But right now, w e ’re being
11 asked to make a new infrastructure for 4G, and the way
12 we ’re working at it now, it sounds like a lot of people
13 don’t participate in the backbone structure we have now and
14 we want more money. W e ’re being asked to give more money
15 for another system, and if we keep it the same way it is
16 now, no one’s going to have to participate. They won’t be
17 mandated to participate in what our largest expense is
18 going to be, which is going to be the backbone.
19 MR. HAYLING: I ’ll just add, and I ’m not
20 disagreeing, I ’m talking about what we do today. When we
21 go to next-generation 911, there is no way that you can
22 have next-generation 911 without the backbone. Today, I ’ll
23 just use -- if Philadelphia wants to transfer a call to
24 Bucks County, I can’t take and transfer all of my data.
25 It’s a completely different paradigm. So what we have 122
1 today and what we can do today, I don’t know what being a
2 part of STARNet would add, because even if I was a part of
3 it, I ’m going to do the exact same transfer that I do
4 today. I ’m going to send over the exact same information
5 that I do today. Going forward -
6 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: If you have any
7 information -
8 MR. HAYLING: Right.
9 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: — that tells us why it’s
10 better for you to buy it yourself, then we should see that
11 before we make these decisions on whether or not there
12 should be some kind of mandatory review by the State.
13 MR. HAYLING: Right. And I ’m not disagreeing
14 there should be. In fact, I ’ve actually recommended in the
15 past that it might be a good idea for us to actually, since
16 we want to build out this regional network, theoretically
17 we already have it because most of us are all using 911
18 lines from almost the same provider. If I did one big
19 purchase leaving the lines as they are, you would save
20 money by the economies of scale you mentioned.
21 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: Thank you.
22 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Thank you,
23 Representative.
24 Representative Kortz.
25 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 123
1 Thank you, sir, for your testimony, very
2 compelling testimony. I see here where you’ve mentioned
3 that the funds only cover 60 percent of your total
4 expenses. Separate question coming off to the side. We
5 anticipate the Pope coming here in September. Are you
6 going to have to add additional people and additional maybe
7 some regionalized PSAPs to help you out with what you
8 anticipate? I ’m sure w e ’re going to have hundreds of
9 thousands of extra people come flooding into Philadelphia.
10 Have you talked about that at all and what’s going to be
11 necessary there from 911?
12 MR. HAYLING: Yes, and basically what we do, as
13 any other 911 center, we do highs and lows based on
14 different events, based on times of year, et cetera. So
15 what our plan is basically is to staff up at a higher level
16 during that time.
17 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: You’ll be completely
18 staffed 100 percent?
19 MR. HAYLING: Yes.
20 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: Okay. Thank you, Chair.
21 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Thank you.
22 Representative Tallman.
23 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
24 Thank you for being here.
25 Something you had mentioned, do you have CAD 124
1 system for -
2 MR. HAYLING: Yes, we do.
3 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: Okay. So documentation
4 should be automatic.
5 MR. HAYLING: It's not 100 percent automatic.
6 Someone still has to enter the information in. And what I
7 was referring -
8 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: Yes, but once that's
9 in -
10 MR. HAYLING: Right.
11 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: — I mean at least
12 that's the way it was done in my county.
13 MR. HAYLING: Right. And I think if I remember
14 correctly the question I was referring to if I needed to
15 take that information now and transfer it to someone else,
16 that wouldn't transfer.
17 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: Just if you can, if you
18 have access to the data since it is on CAD, just curiosity,
19 if you could just send a breakdown of what kind of calls to
20 the Committee because Adams County we get calls to 911 that
21 should not be made. So just how does Philadelphia County
22 classify those and then how does that work?
23 MR. HAYLING: Okay. One thing I can tell you is
24 that we do have -- and what we've tried to do to remove the
25 number of nonemergency calls to 911 is we actually have a 125
1 311 system that does another million, million-and-a-half
2 worth of interactions with the citizens. So we know that
3 we’re already off-laying about a million to a million-and-
4 a-half interactions, and on the 311 side, that’s not only
5 voice but that would also be social media, text, et cetera.
6 So we do acknowledge that sometimes you get the wrong
7 calls. We actually will funnel that traffic out to 311.
8 And if you ever take a look at our annual
9 reports, we actually usually have a breakout of our call
10 volume that says "other." That means we can’t really
11 identify -- we don’t think it was necessarily a 911 call so
12 we don’t put it in there.
13 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Is your 311 system,
14 how are they funded?
15 MR. HAYLING: One hundred percent by the city.
16 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Okay. No funds from
17 911 are used then -
18 MR. HAYLING: No.
19 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: — to fund any of
20 that? Okay. Different building, totally separate
21 operation?
22 MR. HAYLING: Yes, one’s in City Hall, one’s at
23 the police headquarters.
24 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Okay. You mentioned
25 down here, you throw a lot of percentages out here. What’s 126
1 your total budget for 911?
2 MR. HAYLING: We have a total budget of somewhere
3 in the neighborhood of $45 million.
4 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Forty-five. And 60
5 percent of that comes from the State?
6 MR. HAYLING: Right. And budgets are odd because
7 of course you have capital expenses versus operating
8 expenses. I ’m focusing on the operating so I don’t have
9 the bricks-and-mortar; I don’t have all the other things we
10 have to do to run the organization.
11 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Now, you’re saying
12 you’re handling 32.5 percent of all the 911 calls in the
13 Commonwealth. Is that how you assume that the funding
14 should be driven out, based on the percentage of calls? Is
15 that what you’re saying in your testimony? I ’m not sure.
16 MR. HAYLING: Yes, what w e ’re saying is that we
17 need to use metrics and call volume is a direct metric that
18 will determine what you have to do on your side. So if we
19 were going to start a PSAP today, the first thing I would
20 ask is not necessarily what’s the population. What’s the
21 anticipated number of phone calls that we think w e ’re going
22 to get at the center? What’s going to be our baseline for
23 how quickly w e ’re going to answer it and how quickly am I
24 going to get the assistance out to the person who called?
25 So everything drives me back to I need to know what the 127
1 call volume is so I can actually staff up to actually
2 handle the calls. So if it’s going to be w e ’re answering
3 80 percent of our calls within 3 seconds, w e ’re going to be
4 able to get that dispatch and assistance out within 5
5 minutes, all that goes back to what’s my call volume coming
6 in.
7 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Okay. How many people
8 employed with your 911 system?
9 MR. HAYLING: I believe the total number is about
10 350 to 400.
11 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Okay.
12 MR. HAYLING: It fluctuates because we have
13 turnover like everyone else.
14 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Right. Right. Okay.
15 MR. HAYLING: And also something to note is that
16 we don’t have any dedicated IT staff. The central IT
17 organization from the city actually does all of the IT for
18 911.
19 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: The county tax, have
20 you thought at all, have you kicked that around with your
21 leadership at all about the possibility of putting on your
22 own -- if we do a $1.50 increase, which is seriously that’s
23 the way w e ’re leaning, if that’s the way we go but also
24 then to give the county an opportunity then to put on some
25 type of an emergency management tax or 911 fee on a per 128
1 capital or household, I guess the way to do it would
2 actually be living quarter type of arrangement that would
3 get every living unit where somebody lives, apartment
4 complexes, duplexes, things like that. Have you discussed
5 that at all with the leadership there?
6 MR. HAYLING: There have been some discussions.
7 I don’t know what the final decision is of the
8 administration but I can ask that question and get back to
9 you in writing.
10 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Okay. Okay. If you
11 would, thank you.
12 Any other questions from Members? Anyone? No.
13 Thank you for your testimony.
14 MR. HAYLING: Thank you very much.
15 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Appreciate it.
16 Our next testifier is Mr. Richard Fitzgerald,
17 County Executive, Allegheny County.
18 Good afternoon. You can begin your testimony
19 when ready. Thank you for being here.
20 MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you, Chairman Barrar and
21 Chairman Sainato and Members of the House Veterans Affairs
22 and Emergency Preparedness Committee. My name is Rich
23 Fitzgerald. I ’m the County Executive. I also have with me
24 today Gary Thomas, who’s our Assistant Chief of our
25 Emergency 911 Center. 129
1 I want to thank you for the invitation to address
2 you today regarding the proposed Title 35 legislation that
3 will provide much-needed changes to the 911 Emergency
4 Telephone Act.
5 From Allegheny County’s perspective, we have
6 three requests as to what we hope to see in the final
7 version of this bill. First, there must be an equitable
8 formula that provides a minimum level of funding that is
9 sustainable and known each year; second, there should be
10 one funding mechanism for all devices that can contact 911
11 for response; and third, we must eliminate the barriers on
12 how the funds are utilized.
13 While the draft legislation leaves the creation
14 of the formula to the EPA Emergency Management Agency, in
15 consultation with the 911 Board, the bill specifically
16 spells out what should be considered in establishing the
17 distribution formula. Two of those criteria, population
18 and call volume, are extremely important to Allegheny
19 County.
20 Our 911 centers in Allegheny County serve 130
21 municipalities, 197 fire departments, 111 police
22 departments, and 51 EMS agencies. We do so with about 300
23 full- and part-time employees, 233 of which are
24 telecommunication officers. Our center receives
25 approximately 1.3 million calls a year and serves a 130
1 population of just over 1.2 million people. That number
2 increases dramatically each workday as Pittsburgh is the
3 hub and center for employment in our region, and every time
4 we host a major event, whether it be a sporting event,
5 concert, or other special event that occurs in downtown
6 Pittsburgh.
7 We do realize that Allegheny County’s system and
8 its network is not the norm for the rest of the State. We
9 fully believe that the formula should be fair for all
10 counties. We also think that we need to get away from
11 competing for funds with other counties. Each center
12 provides an invaluable service and should receive funding
13 based on the service that it provides, and that way we can
14 be assured of the funding that will be received each year
15 and we can plan accordingly. That change can assist us in
16 providing reliability and sustainability for the 911
17 system.
18 The draft legislation provides for a uniform 911
19 surcharge of $2. Providing for one funding mechanism is
20 something for which we have advocated, as well as a
21 surcharge assessed against all devices that can contact 911
22 for response. That’s all devices. And we are now seeing
23 new devices that can call 911 and we also probably can’t
24 foresee some of the ones in the future that will have that
25 capability. The language appears to be written broadly 131
1 enough to encapsulate those future technologies. There
2 should, however, be some escalator or other automatic
3 adjustment to ensure that the $2 surcharge will continue to
4 grow with inflation as the devices that can call 911 will
5 certainly grow as well.
6 This bill also eliminates the barriers that exist
7 in the current law in regards to how the funds are to be
8 utilized. Our 911 centers must be able to fund the
9 infrastructure that allows us to work and provide those
10 needed services. Each county is different and we should
11 have the ability to make decisions about what is best for
12 our community. We need to have adequate and sufficient
13 funding to meet our citizens' expectations for 911 service.
14 We have only ever wanted to use the funds to enhance,
15 operate, and maintain 911 system, and this revised language
16 will allow us to do so.
17 The draft bill provides for a biennial
18 performance audit of the use of the disbursements. Rather
19 than requiring duplicative auditive processes, which are
20 costly, I would suggest that each county's Comprehensive
21 Annual Financial Report, the CAFR, which is done annually,
22 be the process that's used. The reconciliation process
23 could also be made less bureaucratic by simple updates.
24 While that may not be a consideration for this legislation,
25 it could certainly be a power and duty of the agency or a 132
1 reference under the establishment of uniform standards.
2 Those are our requests and, as noted, the
3 majority of these appear to have been contemplated and
4 worked into the draft legislation. More generally, allow
5 me to comment on a few other provisions included in the
6 bill.
7 Based on the language, it is clear that this
8 Committee wants to promote regionalization. We have seen
9 the same focus from PEMA in the past few years and we agree
10 with that approach wholeheartedly. And we are a strong
11 example of benefits to such changes. In the past two
12 decades, the Allegheny County Center has moved from 96
13 dispatch centers to seven regional dispatch centers, to the
14 one 911 call center that we have today. We continue to
15 accept municipalities which have closed their individual
16 dispatch centers and have incorporated them into our
17 facility. Most recently, w e ’ve picked up two other
18 communities, Munhall and North Versailles in Allegheny
19 County, their fire and their EMS, and w e ’ve done a great
20 job of saving not only these but all municipalities money,
21 have made the system more effective and efficient for those
22 who have the need of the 911 call center.
23 Regionalization also plays a part in our
24 procurement. The Allegheny County 911 Center participates
25 in WestCORE, a regional procurement effort between 13 133
1 counties that allows us to share costs for switches and
2 technology while also sharing the switches. We also
3 participate in ESInet, an Emergency Services Information
4 Network that is allowing us to move toward the next
5 generation of 911.
6 Although we have taken significant steps to
7 centralize our systems and regionalize our purchasing, the
8 cost to the taxpayers of Allegheny County continues to grow
9 and the funds that w e ’re expected from 911 have not covered
10 the costs of the service for many years. In 2009, the
11 deficit was 2.2 million. In 2010, it grew to 4 million.
12 Through the efforts on our part, we reduced the deficit in
13 2011 and ’12 to around 3.1 million and in 2013 to 2.7
14 million.
15 For 2014, when we officially close the books for
16 the year, we are projecting that the county taxpayers will
17 have had to provide a $7.7 million subsidy. That is after
18 the expenditure of the 15.5 million the county received in
19 combined landline, VoIP, and wireless revenues. That means
20 that the money from property tax dollars that were intended
21 to fund our roads and provide services and run the
22 government will instead have to be used for 911.
23 Four Allegheny County taxpayers, it is imperative
24 that we make these changes now. The $7.7 million subsidy
25 this year is an increase of 185 percent over last year’s 134
1 subsidy. Should we continue down this road, we will have
2 very few options available to us, but those include turning
3 the responsibilities of call-taking and dispatching back
4 over to the municipalities or billing the municipalities
5 for the services provided. What do we tell our citizens?
6 Last but not least, even if legislation were to
7 be changed tomorrow, it will take quite some time for the
8 funding to be seen in the counties. We respectfully
9 requested that there be real dollar figures associated with
10 the interim distribution formula so that we can plan
11 accordingly and provide real feedback on that proposal. It
12 will also allow us to determine what amount county
13 taxpayers will have to shoulder to ensure that our system
14 remains the strong asset that it is for our communities.
15 Without such information, it’s impossible to speak with any
16 confidence as to what Allegheny County will do during this
17 transition, assuming legislation is passed by the General
18 Assembly.
19 Thank you for allowing me to present this
20 testimony to you today. We appreciate the opportunity to
21 continue moving this conversation forward and offer
22 Allegheny County’s resources to you as to other questions
23 or issues that might arise. I ’m also happy to answer any
24 questions that you might have for me today.
25 And again, I thank you for allowing me to 135
1 testify.
2 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Thank you.
3 You talked in your testimony about your efforts
4 to reduce the deficit. Can you tell us some of the cost-
5 saving measures that you implemented?
6 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, it really came down to
7 consolidating some of the purchases that we did just to try
8 to reduce some overtime and some other things, kind of best
9 management practices, but w e ’ve kind of reached kind of the
10 end of the limit I think on those kind of savings, and you
11 can see that the deficit is now heading up in the other
12 direction.
13 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Okay.
14 Questions from the Representatives?
15 Representative Kortz.
16 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
17 Thank you, County Executive, for being here
18 today, Deputy Chief. Thank you very much.
19 Rich, could you tell us a total cost of what it
20 costs per year to run the 911 center?
21 MR. FITZGERALD: It costs us about $26 million a
22 year to run the 911 system.
23 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: And the deficit —
24 MR. FITZGERALD: About 19 million of that is in
25 personnel. 136
1 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: Okay. And the deficit
2 just keeps going up and up and up and w e ’re taking more
3 money from the coffers of Allegheny County property tax to
4 pay and make up the difference?
5 MR. FITZGERALD: That’s exactly right, yes. And,
6 yes, you hit it exactly right, Representative. W e ’re
7 receiving only landline fees at this point that obviously
8 continues to go down as people, particularly young people
9 -- and that’s who’s moving into Allegheny County right now
10 -- are getting away from that and we don’t receive the
11 cellular and other device fees.
12 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: And the trend, which w e ’ve
13 been hearing today, the trend is that the landlines are
14 going down so that cell phones are going up and there’s all
15 kind of new devices coming online where we can’t tax at
16 this point in time. We don’t know how to do it, like the
17 Wi-Fi that we were talking about earlier. My concern and
18 I’m sure the whole Committee has a concern that as
19 technology continues, the amount of money that we generate
20 to pay for 911 is going to keep going down and down and
21 down.
22 And I guess, Mr. Chairman, what I ’m saying is
23 even if we put this $2 fee on, are we going to be back here
24 next year, hey, we lost a lot more money? We need to get
25 this right is where I ’m going and how do we tax the 137
1 internet? I don’t know how we do that. And it just seems
2 like w e ’ve got a very complex situation here and how do we
3 capture all the different devices and services that are
4 able to get to the 911 centers? How do we tax that and
5 make sure the counties get what they’re due?
6 Earlier today, sir, I mean there was a mention of
7 possibly giving the county some skin in the game by
8 allowing them to initiate their own tax, maybe a per capita
9 tax or something like that. Would you be agreeable to
10 enabling legislation that may do something like that to
11 help offset this?
12 MR. FITZGERALD: We would. I mean I heard the
13 Chairman ask that question to Philadelphia and some of the
14 other folks. We absolutely would. W e ’d like to see some
15 of those details. Right now, w e ’re laying it all on
16 property tax and w e ’d like to see something that doesn’t
17 use property tax so some other mechanism we would certainly
18 be open to. My sense is I would like to see it on the
19 devices that are used for that. I mean if you want to
20 enable us locally, us meaning the county council and county
21 executive and/or commissioners in other counties, I think
22 that’s something we would certainly be open to up to some
23 sort of limit that the General Assembly would set.
24 REPRESENTATIVE KORTZ: Okay. Thank you, sir.
25 Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 138
1 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Thank you,
2 Representative.
3 So when you're saying device tax, now, again,
4 taking my house, I have four cell phones, a landline, I
5 have four iPads in that home all have cellular capability.
6 So every one of those devices -- and I know I have at least
7 another three, four laptops in the house -- I hope no
8 burglars are watching -- so your assumption then is that
9 every one of those devices that can connect to the internet
10 or to cell service should pay a fee?
11 MR. FITZGERALD: The mechanism would be -
12 whether you do it like if the household is paying a common
13 fee for all devices, you know, now some bills are including
14 everything that you use is under one, whatever that
15 mechanism is, I think what I'm saying is we'd just like it
16 to be kind of revenue-neutral to cover the cost of what the
17 911 center needs to be so that we don't run these deficits
18 that in essence get then placed on the backs of property
19 tax payers.
20 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: My concern, I know
21 there was discussions earlier -- it might have been the
22 county's testimony that we should tax broadband. I'm not
23 sure who brought that up but just a tax on the overall
24 broadband bill would be one way to do that. And I'm
25 concerned that that would impact businesses more so than 139
1 would impact homeowners. So, again, w e ’re all searching
2 for the fairest fee possible, and of course once we collect
3 the money, the fairest way possible to drive those dollars
4 back out to the PSAPs. And I don’t think there’s a magic
5 formula but w e ’ve probably heard as many suggestions as
6 there are different PSAPs around the State.
7 MR. FITZGERALD: I don’t disagree. And again, as
8 a large urban center, we provide a lot of services for some
9 of our suburban and rural counties who utilize what goes on
10 in Pittsburgh, which I ’m sure they do in Philadelphia and
11 other large urban centers, so w e ’re just trying to make
12 sure we can provide the service but also capture the
13 dollars in some mechanism that pays for that service. And
14 obviously regionalization is a big area that we agree in
15 and want to participate in working with our other counties
16 surrounding us and w e ’ll kind of rely on you guys to come
17 up with that. We’ll certainly work with you. But whether
18 it’s that mechanism on the business side or on the
19 homeowner side, I think some sort of balance that allows
20 economic growth but provides a fairness to pay for the
21 system.
22 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Okay. Representative.
23 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: Thank you. And we were
24 out to visit you -- was that a year-and-a-half ago?
25 MR. FITZGERALD: I recall, yes, it was, and we 140
1 appreciate you making the trip and checking out our system.
2 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: And I appreciate that.
3 I ’m not going to use the correct terminology, but
4 you guys had the summit out there, which was a huge
5 security -
6 MR. FITZGERALD: The G20.
7 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: G2 0.
8 MR. FITZGERALD: The G20, correct.
9 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: I was going to call it
10 G17. Don’t ask me why but -
11 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.
12 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: I knew that wasn’t the
13 right number. So you had G2 0 -
14 MR. FITZGERALD: Correct.
15 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: And that was a huge
16 security -- you drafted -- people come from all over the
17 State to help out.
18 MR. FITZGERALD: We had thousands of law
19 enforcement and the G20, for those who don’t know, is the
20 largest 20 industrial countries in the world, so we have
21 every President, every Prime Minister, every Foreign
22 Minister. It was literally a lockdown state, our whole
23 city and whole region during those three or four days in
24 which President Obama brought literally the world to
25 Pittsburgh. 141
1 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: And I think we discussed
2 this when we were there, and this is somewhat for the
3 benefit for the gentleman from Philadelphia also because we
4 have the Pope coming -
5 MR. FITZGERALD: It’s very similar, yes.
6 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: And we just had our
7 150th anniversary at Gettysburg two years in Adams County,
8 and so basically we activated our EOC, staffed up. So kind
9 of describe what you guys did for the G20.
10 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, a lot of what occurred -
11 and we had a lot of State Police, National Guard; I mean it
12 was an incredible amount of police presence that was there
13 -- much of the city was cordoned off where they just fenced
14 off literally entire city blocks and entire city
15 neighborhoods. It went well but there was a lot of -- and
16 I ’ll maybe ask Gary to talk about some of the details on
17 how we did the 911 call center.
18 MR. THOMAS: Okay. And that’s a good question.
19 So, yes, we did staff up our EOC. We actually built a
20 temporary EOC in the basement as well for the Federal
21 folks. But the 911 center was fully staffed, as well as we
22 have a backup overflow center, which is the City of
23 Pittsburgh’s old 911 center, and we staffed that as well to
24 take care of all the 911 overflow calls. So we were able
25 to handle our call volume due to the amount of activity 142
1 that was going on in Pittsburgh at that time.
2 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Great. Any other
3 questions from Members? Anyone? No.
4 Thank you for your testimony today and being here
5 with us, sir.
6 MR. THOMAS: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
7 MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
8 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Okay. Our next panel
9 is everyone from Westmoreland County. We have quite a
10 panel from Westmoreland. Mr. Bud Mertz, Director,
11 Westmoreland County Department of Public Safety; Mr. Nick
12 Caesar, Deputy 911 Director, Westmoreland County;
13 Mr. Gerald Lucia -- did I say that right?
14 MR. LUCIA: Yes.
15 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Mt. Pleasant Borough
16 Mayor and Fire Chief, President of Westmoreland County Fire
17 Chief’s Association; and Mr. Donald Thoma, Adamsburg
18 Borough Chief and Director of Adamsburg Ambulance Service.
19 Gentlemen, thank you for being here today and you
20 can begin your testimony when you’re ready.
21 MR. MERTZ: Thank you, Chairman Barrar, Chairman
22 Sainato. It’s a great privilege to sit here with the first
23 responders from our county to give this testimony.
24 As a lot of the discussion has gone through about
25 governance of a 911 center, I can truly say that my 143
1 governance is sitting here at this table. If my system
2 fails, I get a phone call from these chiefs. But more
3 importantly what you have to realize, if my system fails,
4 they are dealing with the victims or the victim’s family
5 directly that warrants that call to me, so it’s a great
6 honor to be here.
7 If it’s all right, I ’m going to go through a
8 couple highlights of my testimony but I ’d really like for
9 you to hear what the first responder community has to say
10 about 911. Thank you.
11 First of all, Westmoreland County, population
12 about 363,000 people. We have 65 municipalities, 135 fire
13 companies, 21 emergency medical districts, and 33 police
14 departments. W e ’re a large county. We pride ourselves in
15 saying that w e ’re the second-largest county in the western
16 half of Pennsylvania.
17 And of course there is one public safety
18 answering point, which is our 911 center. Our 911 center
19 employees 62 TCOs, telecommunications operators, six
20 supervisors. Of course we have the support staff with
21 quality assurance supervisor, IT specialists, and the CAD
22 addressing and so on and so forth. And we average probably
23 around 412,000 calls a year, emergency and emergency-
24 related calls a year, so we do a high number of calls,
25 which makes it necessary for us to keep on about an average 144
1 of 12 employees per shift around the clock.
2 So over the year w e ’ve seen a lot of testimonies
3 about what it cost to run a 911 center. One of the things
4 that’s missing is somebody was also mentioning the Delta.
5 One of the things that’s missing in a lot of these facts
6 and figures is what we can’t buy, and what we can’t buy is
7 very important for us because these are critical pieces
8 that we just can’t afford.
9 First of all, I really want to say that
10 Westmoreland County has done everything that we possibly
11 could do to regionalize our equipment. You’ve heard talk
12 about the WestCORE project. Yes, w e ’re a part of that
13 WestCORE project where we share a phone system with the
14 other counties. There’s an ICORRS system where we share
15 our radio system. Westmoreland County has the core radio
16 system and we share that core with five other counties
17 right now on a regional basis. And we all do this through
18 the ESInet that’s been talked about as well, the Emergency
19 Service Internet protocol network that’s out there. So
20 w e ’ve been part of this sharing process for a long time.
21 There are a few issues, though, that when you
22 look at it and examine it, it’s not cost-effective to
23 share. W e ’ve been trying to buy a CAD system, which is
24 part of my testimony here, but when you look at the numbers
25 of the CAD system, the first thing we tried to do is go 145
1 into a computer-aided dispatch sharing system similar to
2 what we did with the phones and radios, which just couldn't
3 be possibly done. When you talk about the individual
4 databases that you have with all your information, your
5 street, your aliases, your points of interest that your CAD
6 system uses, the technology just isn't there yet. Maybe
7 two, three years from now it would be there but it wasn't.
8 So as much as we wanted to go with the shared CAD system,
9 we couldn't, but we tried.
10 And that's really where I want to get at is the
11 point that we are very contentious about trying not to
12 build independent silos. We communicate very well with our
13 neighboring counties. We talk about projects. We talk
14 about how we can help one another with these projects,
15 which led to that WestCORE project and the ICORRS project,
16 all part of the ESInet system.
17 Right now I gave you some figures for 2013 as far
18 as running the 911 center. We're at roughly $8.7 million.
19 Thirty-five percent of that came from the county's general
20 fund while 65 percent of that came from the wireless
21 funding for our 911 center. So that $8.7 million that
22 you're looking at, though, for 2013 includes projects that
23 we couldn't do.
24 And we just mentioned the CAD system. And our
25 CAD system is the heart and soul of a 911 center. It 146
1 integrates all the information into one before the screen
2 so that that dispatcher can perform their miracles that
3 they have to properly dispatch the call. And w e ’re looking
4 at a price tag of $185,000 for a CAD system and that’s a
5 lot of money. That CAD system has needed upgrade. Its
6 last upgrade was 2008. It’s sitting on hardware system
7 that doesn’t talk to other systems now because other
8 systems have been upgraded and it’s very unreliable right
9 now.
10 Today, as I talk about my governance, I heard
11 from Chief Thoma, he said when are we going to get that
12 paging system fixed that comes out of the CAD system
13 because it’s not working properly all the time and w e ’re
14 missing some calls? And that’s my governance system and
15 that’s exactly what he told me.
16 So as we go through there, and again, I ’ll
17 highlight them, but we have a dispatcher protocol system,
18 Priority Dispatch it’s called. That’s close to half-a-
19 million dollars. Priority Dispatch is what gives the
20 dispatchers the unique questions that they need to ask a
21 caller to interrogate them to find exactly what’s going on.
22 It gives you a standard set of questions for every call
23 that comes in so that you dispatch a standard way. Right
24 now, we have it with our EMD or emergency medical dispatch,
25 but we don’t have it for our police and our fire. The full 147
1 set of accredited, certified question-and-answer is half-a-
2 million, can’t afford it.
3 And I think I made my point. I could go into the
4 radio systems, I can go into some of the other points but I
5 really don’t want to take away from what we want to hear
6 from the chiefs and their involvement with 911 because I
7 think it’s unique that we do have the first responders here
8 and what they realize. So with that, I ’ll start with Chief
9 or Mayor Lucia.
10 MR. LUCIA: Thank you. Thank you for letting us
11 have the opportunity to speak.
12 I ’ve been the mayor for 29 years in the community
13 of Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania, and through that time we
14 also watched our population decrease, which hurts our tax
15 structure within the municipality. We depend on 911. We
16 had a radio system of our own back in the ’70s and the
17 early part of the ’80s, and we then switched over to the
18 county 911 system, which many other communities did
19 likewise. We depend on them. As a first responder, I
20 carry a monitor, I carry a telephone, I carry a radio.
21 There’s not a call that I want to miss in any way, shape,
22 or form.
23 And believe me, speaking on behalf of the Fire
24 Chief’s Association of Westmoreland County, we need to
25 upgrade our system. We understand that the county is at 148
1 the plateau that they cannot go too much higher as far as
2 raising taxes and passing it on to the homeowners. What we
3 would like to see and we would encourage to see is the
4 devices that are out on the market today that weren’t there
5 20 years ago to go on and have the fee adjusted over to
6 them because a lot of the landlines don’t exist today, and
7 everyone has a cell phone or some type of device to use
8 other than the landline phone. And we can’t afford to be
9 without the 911 having the raising costs.
10 And we don’t talk about the equipment, too. The
11 equipment costs today versus what they were 10 years ago
12 have skyrocketed. We support it 100 percent. I speak for
13 the county fire chiefs, I speak for the municipalities
14 likewise. And so we really want you to take a strong look
15 at passing that fee along and don’t let it go down where it
16 has to trickle back down to the property owners again
17 because the property owners are taxed way out of proportion
18 right now.
19 MR. MERTZ: Mr. Thoma.
20 MR. THOMA: Good afternoon. I want to thank
21 Director Mertz for allowing me to come today and the
22 Committee for allowing me to speak.
23 And again, my name is Don Thoma. I ’ve been Fire
24 Chief at Adamsburg Fire Department as a volunteer for the
25 last 35 years, and I ’ve been involved in EMS for the last 149
1 40 years, 37 of that as a paramedic. The only thing it
2 means is I ’m old.
3 What I want to tell you is when I started, our
4 fire department was dispatched by no less than three
5 different dispatch centers. We had to figure out who sent
6 us, where to go. In our municipality, which is Hempfield
7 Township, by the way, we had 152 streets that were the same
8 or similar. And through those last few years through the
9 911 center and our local municipality, we were able to take
10 some of those things away. It was scary and it was
11 dangerous for the residents.
12 But without reliving those past 39 years, suffice
13 it to say we went literally, literally from paper, pencil,
14 and push buttons to what we have today, and the only way we
15 can keep up with these modern times obviously is the county
16 support and the support from the 911 wireline and wireless
17 funding. And we trust you’re going to do the right thing.
18 The funny thing was I have three boys, two of
19 them in the fire service with me, one which is not, and the
20 two older ones are IT people. And I was talking to them
21 about this and they said, Dad, you got to remember a couple
22 things. Number one -- because every time I ask about an
23 iPhone or an iPad, which w e ’re talking about -- Dad, that
24 costs money. I said, well, I know but -- no, you don’t
25 understand. It costs money. It’s going to be expensive to 150
1 do what you want to do. Well, what do you mean? Everybody
2 does that, don’t they? Dad, it costs money whether you do
3 it yourself or everybody in this room wants to do it. It
4 costs money.
5 And that’s the same thing I talked to Buddy
6 about. You can’t just do it for one person. It’s going to
7 cost money to do it in Westmoreland County so everybody is
8 treated equally. I urge you to continue this funding so we
9 can get the modern technology but also to catch up with
10 some of the technology w e ’ve been lacking at least in our
11 county because we just can’t do it.
12 I can honestly tell you, and you probably know
13 this as citizens and families, when you dial 911, do you
14 really care what they have, how it gets to them, how the
15 switches and things like that? They want to know a couple
16 things: Somebody answers their phone, somebody knows who
17 they need, who to send, and to make sure they get there in
18 a timely fashion. It’s our job at 911 and the first
19 responders to fill in those blanks and we know those blanks
20 cost money.
21 As a volunteer service, we certainly can’t foot a
22 lot of the bill. We just spent $12,000 on new pagers to do
23 better things here or $75,000 on 800 megahertz portables to
24 make sure it’s better. So in our case we had to put skin
25 in the game to make sure we can keep up with the 151
1 technology. We just want our 911 center to advance to the
2 point where it makes our job that much easier. But we know
3 the dispatchers, the call-takers, the responders, and that
4 ultimately the callers’ lives saved is worth every penny.
5 This is one of the most important things in our
6 Commonwealth that’s used every minute of every day for the
7 protection of our citizens, us, our travelers, and visitors
8 that come to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I have no
9 doubt in my mind -- because I talked to Senator Ward and
10 Representative Harhai almost as much as I talk to Buddy
11 here. They’ll do the right thing. After all, we know our
12 families want us and depend on us, all of us in this room,
13 to do the right thing.
14 Thank you for your time.
15 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Thank you. Are you
16 going to give testimony?
17 MR. CAESAR: My name is Nick Caesar. I ’m the
18 Deputy Director of Public Safety. This is a new position
19 for me. It’s been about nine months since I ’ve been in it.
20 But to give you a little history, I was the police officer
21 on the street for 22 years. I ’ve collected the ranks of
22 law enforcement to patrolman to shift supervisor to chief
23 of police the last five years.
24 And as the Director just mentioned, the CAD
25 system, many months ago I had no interest in what a CAD 152
1 system really does, but the guy on the street, you realize
2 that that information has to be there. You take it for
3 granted that your TCOs and your system supports you when
4 you're out there making the critical decisions and trying
5 to extract information.
6 Quickly after coming to Westmoreland 911, we
7 realized for many years that the CAD system needed
8 upgraded, a huge capital expense, hardware, software,
9 almost $900,000. Looking to get the funding we received
10 through the grants and through PEMA, we quickly realized
11 that we don't have enough. It falls on the county's
12 general fund.
13 When that decision was made to go ahead and move
14 forward with a new CAD system, services somewhere else will
15 suffer within the county, whether it be a capital project,
16 a social service. Somebody somewhere in that general fund
17 just lost $800,000. We're fortunate that our commissioners
18 saw the importance. Our first responders, there was an
19 outcry, we need a better system, and we owe it to our
20 people that are on the phone that call 911 to have the best
21 they could possibly have. So we were fortunate to be able
22 to pull together and come up with those resources.
23 But hearing all the talk today, it's apparent and
24 evident that this is a problem that's being addressed. I
25 commend everybody for all the questions. We start going 153
1 all over the structure here, we kind of get off the subject
2 sometimes, but it’s all important. It all needs to be said
3 because at the end of the day the funding’s not there. We
4 can’t do what we need to do. We get by. We have dedicated
5 employees. The telecommunication officers are first
6 responders so they find a way to get things done, but quite
7 frankly, as a group here we need to fix it and move forward
8 and time is of the essence because this has been going on
9 way too long from what I understand now.
10 So thank you.
11 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Questions from the
12 Members? Anyone?
13 Gentlemen, thank you for your testimony today. I
14 appreciate it.
15 Our next testifier is Mr. Michael Pries, County
16 Commission, Dauphin County. Did I say your last name
17 right?
18 MR. PRIES: Pries.
19 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Pries, okay. I was
20 wrestling with it. I figured it was either way.
21 MR. PRIES: Pries, Pries, Price -
22 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: It figures I said —
23 MR. PRIES: — it works.
24 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Well, you’re a prize
25 to have here with us today. 154
1 MR. PRIES: Thank you very much.
2 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Go ahead and begin
3 your testimony when you want.
4 MR. PRIES: Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman,
5 Honorable Members and staff of the Committee. My name is
6 Mike Pries. I ’m Dauphin County Commissioner and I have
7 oversight of the Dauphin County Emergency Management Agency
8 and 911. And joining me today is Stephen Libhart, our
9 Director of our Emergency Management Agency. Thank you for
10 having us here today to speak with you about funding for
11 911, a vital public service.
12 The rising 911 costs are creating a real
13 emergency for our local taxpayers in Dauphin County and
14 throughout the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Emerging
15 technology requires upgraded equipment for dispatchers to
16 quickly gather accurate information and share it with the
17 first responders. As the complexity of communications
18 technology has increased and become more expensive for 911
19 to handle, Pennsylvania’s method of reimbursing counties
20 for this critical service is currently failing. Counties
21 are forced to rely on property taxes rather than using fees
22 levied on communication devices, as the State had
23 originally intended.
24 This year, for example, Dauphin County taxpayers
25 will spend $2.3 million to subsidize 911, an almost 400,000 155
1 percent increase from the $600 the county spent back in
2 2007. When the State made counties responsible for 911
3 back in 1990, the law required phone companies to pay
4 counties between $1 and $1.50 per month per landline, money
5 that went directly to the counties and at that time was
6 sufficient to cover costs.
7 As the use of mobile devices grew, lawmakers in
8 2003 added a $1-per-month charge on cellular and internet
9 calling devices but the fee never came close to covering
10 the large number of prepaid cell phones sold without
11 contracts. As the State reimbursement has decreased,
12 emergency calls have increased significantly, 17 percent
13 since 2008. Meanwhile, with 82 percent of our calls coming
14 from cell phones, Dauphin County has seen a 45 percent
15 decrease in our landline revenue over the same period of
16 time.
17 We applaud our lawmakers for being willing to
18 delve into the 911 funding problem, but any proposal must
19 ensure counties receive enough money to cover the costs of
20 providing emergency dispatching now and into the future.
21 Our Dauphin County Board of Commissioners has succeeded in
22 holding the line on property taxes for an unprecedented 10
23 consecutive years. We’ve worked hard to stretch our
24 limited resources to deliver the resources our residents
25 depend upon. 156
1 However, the increasing cost of 911 dispatching
2 represents one of the biggest challenges to our annual
3 budget. Without meaningful action by our State
4 Legislature, this burden will increasingly shift to
5 property taxes, the main source of revenue for our
6 counties. Pennsylvania needs to return to a system in
7 which revenue covers the true cost of providing this
8 crucial service.
9 I want to thank each and every one of you for
10 your time today and thank you for your service to the
11 residents of this great Commonwealth. Now, I ’d like to
12 turn it over to Dauphin County’s Director of Emergency
13 Management and 911, Steve Libhart, to make comments and
14 then we are here to answer any and all questions that you
15 present us.
16 Thank you.
17 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Steve, I apologize for
18 not introducing you. I misplaced you on the list here so I
19 apologize.
20 MR. LIBHART: Well, generally in 911 if nobody
21 knows you’re at work or working, that means things are
22 good, so that’s what w e ’ve become accustomed to.
23 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Yes.
24 MR. LIBHART: Thank you for having me,
25 Mr. Chairman and Mr. Minority Chairman and the rest of the 157
1 Committee.
2 I submitted my testimony before in writing so I
3 won’t read a verbatim, but I think it’s been pretty well
4 established by everyone else already today and in previous
5 sessions you’ve heard the three revenue streams that in one
6 way or another flow to a county or a public safety
7 answering point. And obviously I think what everyone is
8 essentially pointing out is even if the amounts were the
9 same between landline and wireless revenues, because
10 they’re not paid directly to the counties and administered
11 through the grant process as it currently stands, it’s not
12 an equal match. So even if $1 from Dauphin County is
13 collected monthly off of a wireless bill, we never see the
14 entirety of that dollar. We don’t even probably see 20
15 cents of it. So that’s one of the systemic deficiencies
16 that exist and which is impacting our county and every
17 other county, whether they’ve testified or not, because
18 landlines are going down throughout the Commonwealth.
19 And new technologies, as they develop, landline
20 is not being implemented where it doesn’t already exist,
21 and where it does exist, it’s being dropped in favor of
22 other things, be it Verizon FiOS, Comcast, XFINITY, your
23 voiceover IP solutions and wireless solutions. There’s a
24 great many people I know that no longer have a home phone.
25 They do all of their phone calls and carry it with them on 158
1 their cellular device. The exception to that might be my
2 mother but she’s a few months away from 75.
3 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I have a landline at home
4 yet, just so you know.
5 MR. LIBHART: Just make sure you continue to live
6 in the county.
7 So w e ’ve been advocating for quite a while, as
8 you well know, to go to a formulaic solution, and one
9 reason is it is exceptionally difficult for the
10 Commissioners of any county to listen to the director of
11 their PSAP or whoever does that agency’s budget annually,
12 when w e ’re on a calendar year, say I can tell you what our
13 revenue is for the next six months. I cannot, aside from
14 best guess tell you what the other six months’ revenue is
15 going to be.
16 And a few years ago, after some action was taken
17 here to do away with what was called approved-but-unfunded
18 expenses which were carried over to the next year, we
19 realized what we anticipated to be a $3 million revenue for
20 the year was down to 1.2, and we realize that when we got
21 the award letter for the grant. I ’m sure Dauphin County
22 was not the only person to receive such a letter.
23 Did we anticipate after that legislation was
24 passed to do away with that practice? Yes, I did
25 anticipate some kind of a decline but certainly not 159
1 essentially more than half of what the anticipated revenue
2 was. I think that that would at least give us the ability
3 county by county, PSAP by PSAP, to strategically plan. How
4 do we maintain the components we have and how do we
5 leverage what we can at least best guess know we're going
6 to bring in for future expenditures?
7 So that's why we've advocated a formulaic
8 approach, and frankly, the draft legislation as it is now,
9 the only thing that's a known is essentially 25 percent is
10 going to go to a State agency and the actual formula of
11 distribution is not stipulated in the legislation, so
12 frankly, I can't advocate for or against it since it's not
13 specified.
14 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Do either one of you
15 know -- I know you have a lot of county, State buildings in
16 your county. There is no language even in the current bill
17 that gives them exemption from 911 fees. Do they currently
18 pay any 911 fees?
19 MR. LIBHART: I believe each caucus, at least in
20 the Capitol complex has -
21 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: We get our own phone
22 bill.
23 MR. LIBHART: -- transitioned to voiceover IP -
24 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Right.
25 MR. LIBHART: -- so we see that under that 160
1 payment. As far as independent State agencies, I don’t
2 know that I could account for them. I believe it’s just
3 sent in as the State’s contribution to us on a quarterly
4 basis, but how it’s broken down I don’t necessarily have an
5 accounting of. I just get the final amount.
6 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: We had talked quite
7 extensively and w e ’re still searching for a mechanism to
8 give the counties the right to do their own tax like a
9 municipal service tax or the emergency service tax that we
10 allowed a few years ago, had $52. I think we took it up
11 from $10 to $52, but that’s the other thing we wrestle
12 with.
13 Believe me, in the two years w e ’ve been
14 researching this, w e ’ve had every type of proposal you can
15 imagine to tax everything possible. But w e ’ve gone from
16 percentages to dedicated funding and I mean it’s really
17 been tough because we understand the cost and we know just
18 about every county we talk to has implemented some type of
19 cost-cutting measures and cost-saving.
20 But again, w e ’re looking at a household with four
21 people possibly paying a $90-a-year tax with this current
22 fee increase of $1.50, which is still substantial. And so
23 if you can think of a way we could implement a county tax
24 which would give you your dedicated funding because we all
25 know that probably within 10, 15 years, the copper 161
1 wirelines will be gone. There won’t even be enough to
2 probably even make it worth your time to collect the dollar
3 from. It’s dying. So w e ’re looking for a way to replace
4 that and give the county that dedicated funding they’re
5 looking for. So if you have any ideas, more than glad to
6 hear from you.
7 Any of the Representatives have questions?
8 No? No one? Chairman?
9 Okay. Gentlemen, thank you for your testimony
10 today.
11 Oh, I ’m sorry. I didn’t see you there.
12 REPRESENTATIVE: So thank you, Mr. Chairman, and
13 thank you, Commissioner Pries and Stephen. I appreciate
14 you guys being here.
15 Your organization answers all the 911 calls in
16 Dauphin County?
17 MR. LIBHART: That’s correct.
18 REPRESENTATIVE: Nobody else does it. And you
19 know a lot about your revenue and expense, and you talk
20 about fluctuating revenue and your concerns, I mean
21 stability -- as our citizenry, w e ’re looking for stability
22 when we call you, that it gets dispatched properly and
23 quickly and effectively. But tell me about your expense.
24 Does it fluctuate drastically between one fiscal year and
25 another? 162
1 MR. LIBHART: The only time it does is if we have
2 to undertake a new capital purchase, which we have not done
3 in quite a while, the exception to that being in 2004 and
4 2005 we implemented a new public safety radio system
5 throughout the county. Since then, it’s been maintenance
6 of existing platforms, services, and employment. W e ’ve
7 actually decreased the amount of staff we have due to some
8 changes in our staffing models.
9 But essentially I know going in annually my
10 expenses are going to be between 6.8 and 7 million just for
11 the 911 operation, and that has actually been decreased
12 almost 8 percent since 2005 but that’s more of an outcome
13 from renegotiating some longer commitments to our existing
14 services rather than keeping them on shorter-term
15 maintenance agreements or leases.
16 REPRESENTATIVE: So your request that we
17 distribute the money through a formula is based on the fact
18 that your expenses are relatively flat or relatively
19 consistent I guess I might say.
20 MR. LIBHART: Right, but like anybody looking to
21 do an accurate accounting and budget, it’s one thing to
22 know your expenditures and your commitments going into next
23 year; it’s another thing when you’re going to have multiple
24 revenue sources, which revenue silos, for instance, are we
25 going to take from? And our concern over the years has 163
1 been up until 2007 we didn’t really ever have to contribute
2 any general fund county property tax dollars, and it has
3 escalated quickly since that time and despite not bringing
4 on any real new projects. Our tax dollars are being
5 committed to just maintain an existing level of service,
6 and conversely or at the same time, by doing that, w e ’re
7 taking available revenue from other county-funded programs
8 because you have to prioritize which one it is so -
9 MR. PRIES: Yes, even though it impacts my
10 operation, it can also have a cascading impact on other
11 county agencies and offices.
12 REPRESENTATIVE: I got it. So you have concerns
13 about allocating a large percentage of the funds through a
14 grant process because it doesn’t give you the stability
15 that you’re looking -
16 MR. LIBHART: You just don’t really have a
17 certain assurance of a minimum level of funding.
18 REPRESENTATIVE: Yes. Do you think that Dauphin
19 County is different than many other 911 centers throughout
20 the Commonwealth? Are you unique at all?
21 MR. LIBHART: In what regard?
22 REPRESENTATIVE: That your expenses are
23 relatively stable?
24 MR. LIBHART: No, I think it’s more a product of
25 what system somebody has implemented. I mean sometimes you 164
1 just get caught off guard where, due to a merger at the
2 corporate level, you find out with very short notice one of
3 your pieces of technology will no longer be supported and
4 that really puts you between a rock and a hard place.
5 W e ’ve been quite fortunate over the years that we haven’t
6 experienced that, but I know quite a few other counties
7 have at one point or the other experienced a scenario like
8 that, which has then created a situation where they needed
9 to fund a large project in relatively short order. I would
10 say the only thing unique about Dauphin County’s operation
11 is our client base includes almost every State agency and
12 State director. So if we mess up a response to one of
13 them, w e ’re going to become more infamous than famous.
14 REPRESENTATIVE: Okay. Yes, thank you so much
15 for your advocacy and your testimony and the hard work that
16 you put in this and being advocates for everyone throughout
17 the Commonwealth.
18 Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
19 MR. LIBHART: Thank you.
20 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Representative Barbin.
21 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman,
22 and thank you for your testimony. I came in late so this
23 might have been answered, but do you use the multiprotocol
24 label switching as part of your technology of your
25 countywide system? 165
1 MR. LIBHART: You mean the protocol-driving
2 questioning that was mentioned during previous testimony?
3 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: Yes.
4 MR. LIBHART: We actually use the exact same one.
5 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: Okay. And so that means
6 that you’re part of STARNet?
7 MR. LIBHART: We are not.
8 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: You’re not?
9 MR. LIBHART: I mean we have access to it but our
10 radio system is independent of STARNet.
11 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: All right. Well, then
12 I ’ll ask you the same question I asked the gentleman from
13 Philadelphia. If w e ’re planning to go forward with a 4G
14 network and you’re not using the existing network that we
15 have now, aren’t we going to be in the same position when
16 we build out whatever our next network is if we don’t
17 insist that all the counties use a network that we have?
18 Isn’t it going to be more costly?
19 MR. LIBHART: I mean we already had a network
20 that works and that’s why we -- we have access to it but
21 it’s not our sole means of communication.
22 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: Thank you.
23 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Okay. Anyone else?
24 Thank you, gentlemen.
25 MR. PRIES: Thank you. 166
1 MR. LIBHART: Thank you.
2 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Thank you for taking
3 time to be here. I appreciate it.
4 Our next testifier is Brian Barno with the
5 Broadband Cable Association of Pennsylvania.
6 Chairman Barrar, Chairman Sainato, good
7 afternoon. It's been a long day of the testimony and a lot
8 of volume of testimony, and I appreciate your patience and
9 I appreciate your still being around. Thank you.
10 I'm Brian Barno with Broadband Cable Association
11 of Pennsylvania. BCAP thanks the Committee for the
12 opportunity to testify on Title 35, the Public Safety
13 Emergency Telephone Act.
14 BCAP appreciates the work this Committee, PEMA,
15 the counties, emergency management professionals, and
16 telecom providers have put into this rewrite.
17 911 services, the ability to gain immediate
18 access to emergency dispatching of police protection or
19 life safety, is a benefit to each and every individual. It
20 is an important, valuable, and fundamental function of
21 government.
22 BCAP members provide IP voice services in the
23 Commonwealth. While we could support a reasonable increase
24 in the 911 fee, the proposed $2 monthly fee would be a 100
25 percent increase, which we oppose. 167
1 The expiration of the wireless 911 fee has
2 engendered a wide-ranging debate. There’s been an ongoing
3 cry from counties and public safety officials that they are
4 not bringing in enough revenue. This is despite the fact
5 that Pennsylvania has the third-highest 911 collections in
6 the Nation and leads the Nation in revenue per capita
7 according to statistics compiled by PEMA.
8 There was initial discussion and proposals tossed
9 around on expanding the funding base to every device that
10 could possibly contact a public safety answering point, not
11 only wireline, IP voice, and wireless, but iPads, Kindles,
12 Nooks, smart watches, maybe even ham radios. I even heard
13 a conversation about needing to identify every restaurant,
14 pizzeria, coffee shop, and retail establishment with a Wi
15 Fi connection to make sure we got in front of that and
16 didn’t miss a potential revenue stream.
17 Under Armour is marketing a "wearable technology”
18 that, in addition to logging your pulse rate and how fast
19 you’re running per mile and your calories burned, could, if
20 a wearer was in distress, patch out a 911 message to a
21 PSAP. While it’s likely there may never be a "call" from a
22 piece of clothing, and the quest to get in front of
23 technology, do we draft language to collect 911 fees from
24 Under Armour or the retail shop that’s distributing the
25 product? These examples reinforce that it’s incredibly 168
1 difficult to impose legislation on the fast-changing world
2 of information technology.
3 We ’re told that next-gen 911 is a huge cost
4 driver. It will allow first responders the ability to see
5 digital photographs and full-motion video of accident
6 sites. This is really incredible. Let’s say there’s an
7 accident on the Turnpike or on I-84 and guaranteed you’re
8 going to have 5, 10, 15 calls coming from a cell phone.
9 Today, you’ll probably, if this was available, get two,
10 three, four, five people sending digital photographs in
11 addition. What if someone, like my kids do all the time,
12 sent a full-motion video using this? Do we have
13 dispatchers at 911 looking at photographs and video and
14 discerning what images are important? A computer scientist
15 friend of mine in State College said, yes, Brian, you could
16 pay for an algorithm that would pick each one of those
17 photos and get you a 360 angle if you wanted to do that.
18 But it comes down to what is truly necessary?
19 What do we need? What will it cost? When we have a next-
20 gen 911 technology conversation, we have to realize, and
21 this Committee has addressed it, that w e ’ve got some areas
22 in the State without reliable cell phone service.
23 In the cable/telecommunications industry, if we
24 took a trip down nostalgia lane, you’d find dozens of head-
25 ends and central offices in little communities around the 169
1 State. Now, all these areas are connected with fiber,
2 eliminating the need for dozens of individual offices. We
3 can now troubleshoot potential outages before they happen
4 and reroute traffic on redundant fiber paths.
5 Consolidating facilities is an efficient and
6 effective way to manage a complex telecommunications
7 system. It makes business sense. If anyone suggested we
8 go back to our infrastructure and system set up we had in
9 1985, they’d look at you like you had three heads. It
10 makes economic, managerial, and business sense to
11 consolidate facilities when you’re dealing with private
12 capital. Do taxpayers deserve anything less?
13 "If I were to build a PSAP system today from
14 scratch knowing what we know about network architecture and
15 emergency communications, there would likely be
16 considerably fewer PSAPs," said FCC Commissioner O ’Rielly
17 at a meeting of the Task Force on Optimal PSAP Architecture
18 in January. "By some estimate, the current structure would
19 be able to operate at optimal efficiency with as few as
20 three PSAPs nationwide. Others argue that there should be
21 no more than one PSAP per State," he said.
22 Pennsylvania’s Legislative Budget and Finance
23 Committee’s 911 study said the high cost per call in the
24 smallest counties suggest the need to further consolidate
25 some PSAPs. As we look at the software and hardware costs 170
1 of converting to next-generation 911 over the next five,
2 eight, ten years, we have to save money by consolidating
3 into regional PSAPs.
4 A regional or multicounty PSAP would apply the
5 principles of safety, efficiency, and access to best-
6 practice technology. Regional or multicounty PSAPs would
7 reduce capital expenditures for new equipment and repairs,
8 maintenance, and material costs could be reduced.
9 Consolidated operations would facilitate assessment of
10 overall call volume and staffing needs of the region as a
11 whole and create opportunities to eliminate excess
12 capacity.
13 "The historical concept of ’standalone’ PSAPs
14 contributes challenges such as duplication without
15 redundancy, excessive capacity, higher costs for
16 replacement, support and sustainability, multiple
17 maintenance and management arrangements, and the lack of
18 interoperability," PEMA has reported. The agency funded
19 the project, encouraging PSAPs to work with other regional
20 PSAPs in a shared regional assessment program, a critical
21 step in developing next-gen 911.
22 Any 911 funding formula the General Assembly
23 comes up with needs to seriously incent counties to
24 consolidate PSAPs on a regional basis. As Commissioner
25 O ’Rielly said at the public safety task force meeting, 171
1 "Part of your task is to help determine the number of PSAPs
2 that are necessary to operate an efficient network and do
3 so to the best of your ability, absent political
4 considerations. This function is to create a baseline upon
5 which to measure PSAP modernization as we convert to next-
6 gen 911."
7 My concern is that this language in the rewrite
8 will just mean more of the same. Unless counties have a
9 financial incentive to overcome political considerations,
10 Commissioner O ’Rielly, the ones he spoke of, the great
11 plans to upgrade to next-gen 911 technology is on a
12 regional basis, consolidate PSAPs, and maximize
13 efficiencies will just go up on the shelf.
14 Every several years, the counties come to the
15 General Assembly and tell them they need more money to fund
16 their 911 systems. In an attempt to allow the counties to
17 budget and spend what they think they need to fund the
18 systems, there is a proposal floating around that would
19 authorize counties to impose a next-generation 911 fee on
20 the residents and businesses in their jurisdiction. BCAP
21 and its member companies fully support that type of a plan.
22 It does not attempt to chase technology. It puts controls
23 on cost and funding for those controls in the hands of
24 County Commissioners and provides for more than adequate
25 funding. 172
1 When the original act was passed to help defray
2 the cost of 911 systems, almost every home and business had
3 a telephone line. The fee could have, and in retrospect
4 probably should have, been added to a different utility,
5 but no one at that time had the crystal ball to know where
6 w e ’d be today with technology.
7 BCAP believes that the only reason counties would
8 oppose such a stable funding opportunity is that it would
9 finally bring transparency to the use of tax dollars and
10 separate 911 from the rest of the budgets for police, fire,
11 and life safety.
12 Thank you for the opportunity to share our
13 perspective. I ’ll be happy to answer your questions.
14 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Brian, would it be
15 legal; can we put a tax on broadband or would we have to
16 get FCC approval to do that?
17 MR. BARNO: I don’t think you can do that legally
18 right now is my understanding. And I ’m not certain about
19 that.
20 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: I ’ve heard from both
21 sides that one side says we legally can do it; the other
22 side says that we can’t do it without a change in the
23 regulations at the FCC or FCC approval.
24 MR. BARNO: I think again the conversation w e ’ve
25 had here about different devices that w e ’ve looked at over 173
1 the last few months, I looked for the top products for
2 Christmas presents for nine-year-olds and they ranged -
3 number one was a cell phone, a high-quality cell phone.
4 Number two was a Kindle and number three was a Tony Hawk
5 skateboard. Okay? If we go number two, they've got a
6 Kindle, that individual is never going to be calling 911
7 through the Kindle but to download the book, I've got to go
8 out to the internet and bring that in.
9 So the question is do we keep chasing devices? I
10 would have never thought that Under Armour would have a
11 device with sensors in it with a plastic tab so when we're
12 watching a football game, that football player, the NFL
13 player, you'll be able to see his heart rate and pulse rate
14 and everything else up on the monitor up on the screen. So
15 obviously they're communicating using some device to get
16 out there, but is that something we need to look at? But
17 we've got to get in front of that because, God forbid,
18 there'll be another technology coming down the pike that
19 we've got to look at?
20 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: If we're sticking to
21 phones, to VoIP, to prepaid landlines and cell phones, why
22 would you oppose the $2 fee? It's not really affecting -
23 I know VoIP is -
24 MR. BARNO: If that's IP —
25 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: — over broadband 174
1 but -
2 MR. BARNO: Our customers that have IP voice
3 service will have a doubling of a fee from $1 a month to $2
4 a month, so that’s significant.
5 But the bigger picture kind of what I ’m talking
6 about is that the longer-term here, w e ’re looking at next-
7 generation 911, not just texts to 911 but video and full-
8 motion video and whatever else comes down the pike with the
9 emergency management professionals in the next few years.
10 We can’t do that and be efficient with our tax dollars if
11 we have 59 PSAPs.
12 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Yes, we would love to
13 see the number of PSAPs consolidated. I can guarantee if
14 we try to do that mandated in a bill, this bill isn’t going
15 to be done in June when we need it done because every
16 Representative that’s going to lose a PSAP center from his
17 county is going to block this bill and fight its passage.
18 So if we need this done by June 30th, any type of forced
19 consolidation -- we do incentivize. We take every effort,
20 we give PEMA -
21 MR. BARNO: Right.
22 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: — quite a bit of
23 money in this bill to promote consolidation, which is I
24 think the best way to do it because it takes the politics
25 off the table. 175
1 Representative Tallman.
2 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
3 I just kind of want to follow up with Chairman
4 Barrar, his first question because I didn’t hear -- and
5 unfortunately I don’t think any of our telephone companies
6 are here. But when we met over in 60 East Wing, whenever
7 that was, our telephone and [inaudible] hey, it is legal
8 and our telephone companies and you were saying it’s not
9 legal, Federal law.
10 MR. BARNO: I think there was an argument there.
11 I know that if I -
12 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: So that argument is
13 still ongoing because I didn’t hear it from anybody -
14 MR. BARNO: No.
15 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: — and we were talking
16 all kinds of stuff about IP.
17 MR. BARNO: Yes.
18 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: But you say that
19 argument is still there?
20 MR. BARNO: I don’t think that’s settled.
21 REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: Thank you.
22 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Representative Barbin.
23 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
24 Thank you, Mr. Barno, for your testimony today.
25 I agree with you 100 percent that if we charge $1 176
1 and w e ’re talking about charging $2, no matter who’s
2 included, I think it’s better to have as many people who
3 are really actually participating in the service that’s
4 being provided from 911. That’s a good idea. But from my
5 perspective, listening to some of the testimony, we had
6 written testimony today from Alcatel. They didn’t provide
7 it at the hearing but they did provide written testimony.
8 What I would like to know from your perspective is STARNet
9 is a process that is used as a backbone now. Do you
10 believe that we should be building on STARNet or that
11 STARNet should be part of our backbone as w e ’re
12 contemplating going to these additional costs?
13 MR. BARNO: I think first off w e ’ve got to take a
14 step back and look at -- even from a perspective of a cable
15 industry or the telephone industry, they’ve connected
16 central offices together with fiber. Is the PSAP in
17 Luzerne County connected to Lackawanna County, connected to
18 Wyoming County? I don’t know that. Maybe PEMA does or you
19 all do, but there are some real basics that have to be
20 defined first prior to going on to that.
21 I do know, take a half step in front of where you
22 were, the FirstNet, which is the Federal overall thing,
23 they had the initial meeting in Shippensburg two weeks ago.
24 We had some of our members that are there, so we are at
25 least in communication with them about that right now. 177
1 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: Well, here’s what I ’m
2 trying to get at: Their testimony is we started our
3 current existing backbone 15 years ago but lots of PSAPs -
4 and I agree with you; there should be consolidation because
5 we should be trying to provide the cost to all the people
6 you have to bill at the lowest possible price. But part of
7 the question to me isn’t just whether or not we should
8 consolidate the PSAPs. Part of the question to me is
9 should we have, if w e ’re going to build out a whole new
10 system, an agreement before we do that and then require all
11 the PSAPs that are now in the consolidated group -
12 MR. BARNO: Right.
13 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: — to use that network?
14 Because if we don’t, aren’t we exactly in the same position
15 we are now where for the last 10 years we went from 191
16 total cost to 291 million total cost, and during that same
17 period of time the counties’ percentage of that cost keeps
18 growing.
19 And this is if you can, what would be your take
20 on if we do consolidation, should we also do some general
21 agreement as to what the backbone should be for whatever
22 this 4G build-out is?
23 MR. BARNO: It seems to make sense. I ’m not a
24 technology guy but you don’t want to have disparate
25 technology systems county by county if you wanted them all 178
1 to communicate and get on that backbone, so it would make
2 sense to pursue that and take a look at that.
3 REPRESENTATIVE BARBIN: Thank you.
4 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Any other questions?
5 Anyone?
6 Brian, thank you for your testimony.
7 And this concludes our fifth hearing on this in
8 two years if everyone is aware of that, and that doesn’t
9 count the dozens, and I mean dozens and dozens of meetings
10 that w e ’ve had in my conference room with every stakeholder
11 imaginable, and even I ’ve had a couple conferences in some
12 of the restaurants here where some of the stakeholders have
13 seen me and grabbed me and talked to me about their needs
14 in this bill.
15 We are planning to introduce this legislation,
16 the final draft where we hope to have it introduced by the
17 very 1st of April, and it will be House Bill 911; w e ’ve
18 reserved that number. And we are hoping to move it when we
19 come back to session on the beginning of the third week.
20 We will move it out of our Committee hopefully the third
21 week of April to try to keep with the June 30th timeline.
22 But we have put a lot into this. No other piece
23 of legislation I’ve been involved in -- it’s probably the
24 most important piece of legislation this Committee will
25 deal with in this year, if not for the next couple years it 179
1 seems like. But we have not drafted a bill and held
2 hearings on it. We’ve held hearings on a proposed bill,
3 which is unusual for the way things operate around here,
4 and so we are hoping that we have taken the suggestions of
5 every stakeholder that has come before this Committee and
6 has contacted us and we are going to do the best we can to
7 incorporate it into the bill.
8 But we hope to have this bill moved out of
9 Committee by the beginning of the third week of April and
10 hopefully to the House Floor the following week after that.
11 So if you have any ideas, if there’s any comments you need
12 to make, please grab Rick and Sean and let us know your
13 thoughts on it, and hopefully w e ’ll have the final draft to
14 you within the next couple weeks.
15 Chairman Sainato.
16 MINORITY CHAIRMAN SAINATO: Thank you, Chairman
17 Barrar. And I ’ll just echo what Chairman Barrar said.
18 This has been a very long, tedious process. We went to
19 every section of the State and the hearings w e ’ve had down
20 here and, as you see today, it’s been, what, 5-1/2 hours
21 worth. And we thank everybody. I look in the audience and
22 I still see people are still here and I think that’s a
23 credit in how important this legislation is to everybody,
24 and we do want your input.
25 And at the end of the day, public safety is the 180
1 most important issue I think in the State when you think
2 about it, and we have a responsibility to do that. And our
3 responsibility ends on June the 30th, so we will do our
4 best and continue to work with all of us up here.
5 I mean you see the Members that were here. This
6 is an off week. I think everyone understands that. We are
7 not in session and you've seen the number of Members
8 between yesterday and today. We had probably about 16, 17
9 Members of our Committee here and some are in and out
10 because they serve on Appropriations as well.
11 So we want to thank the Members, especially the
12 diehards who stuck it out all day today. So we do thank
13 you and thank everyone for participating.
14 Chairman.
15 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN BARRAR: Thank everyone for
16 your participation. This public hearing stands adjourned.
17 Thank you.
18
19 (The hearing concluded at 3:13 p.m.) 181
1 I hereby certify that the foregoing proceedings
2 are a true and accurate transcription produced from audio
3 on the said proceedings and that this is a correct
4 transcript of the same.
5
6
7 Christy Snyder
8 Transcriptionist
9 Diaz Data Services, LLC