On the surface, it appears to be bureaucracy run amok, an example of inflexible rules at the expense of taxpayers.
Last year, Clark County declined to increase its 911 excise tax from 50 cents to 70 cents per phone. The Legislature had determined that counties could impose such an increase on users of landline phones and cellphones, in support of local 911 services.
Clark County opted not to hand down such an increase, although the county did extend its 50-cent monthly tax to residents who use voice-over-Internet services so they would pay the same amount as phone customers.
And that’s where the bureaucracy comes in. After Clark County declined to impose the increase, the state responded by withholding $500,000 from the state 911 fund. According to a story in The Columbian, “The law says only counties that are taxing at the maximum rate can benefit from the state fund.”
At first glance, this seems like an episode of bullying on the part of the state. It is essentially forcing counties to impose a tax that the Legislature deemed to be optional. The do-as-we-say strategy would seem to be excessively stringent, failing to allow for a county to impose a portion of the tax and receive a portion of the state funds.
On the other hand, the design of the taxation system makes perfect sense. By allowing only counties that impose the full tax to benefit from the state fund, the rules actually protect taxpayers. They prevent some counties from charging a lesser amount — or nothing — and paying for the service entirely with state funding.
If the system had some built-in flexibility, there would be counties that impose little or no tax and have their 911 system subsidized by people in other parts of the state.
According to Tom Griffith, director of the Clark Regional Emergency Service Agency, his agency’s bottom line took an $800,000 hit last year. That is because of the $500,000 withheld by the state, in addition to $300,000 in new annual maintenance costs for the county’s recently installed computer-aided dispatch system.
The tax increase will raise $1.1 million, with part of the new revenue going into a fund earmarked for the conversion of an outdated analog system to a digital radio system.
On a side note, such a conversion will require diligence from watchdogs in the community. Oregon’s plan to develop a statewide emergency radio system has soared more than $100 million over budget and is years behind schedule, The Oregonian reported last fall.
Clark County, meanwhile, has a 911 system that is reliable, even if it is stretched a little thin. CRESA, which takes in both emergency and nonemergency calls, handles 378,000 a year, and the number is increasing. According to Anna Pendergrass, dispatch operations manager, the average officer-dispatcher ratio is 68 to 1, while in other counties there are 30 or 40 officers for each dispatcher. Local dispatchers, officials said, often are juggling multiple calls at the same time.
As Griffith told Columbian reporter Stephanie Rice, “My biggest fear is, they are going to make a mistake.”
The benefits of a reliable 911 system, which directly helps to save lives, cannot be overstated. The 911 number for emergencies initially was adopted in the late 1960s, and it attained widespread use over the following decade. It wasn’t that long ago that a user needed to remember a full telephone number in order to reach emergency personnel, often when under great distress.
The universal 911 number has proved to be something that government does well. And upon examination, it makes sense for local residents to pay for their own share of the system.
