Missouri has the proud status of being the only state in the union which does not have some sort of funding mechanism to help pay for (and thus establish) a system to find 911 calls from a cell phone.

With today’s technology, we could use either GPS technology or triangulation to find cell phone 911 calls and thus aid the calling party - if we had the money.

While being blind to cell phone 911 calls brings Missouri notoriety, it is a good source of  motivation to help bring the emergency services community and the telecommunications companies to the table to move the issue forward.

A long time ago (1998 I believe) the Missouri General Assembly passed and the governor signed a law which would allow for a statewide vote to create a tax on cell phones in order to generate the money needed to buy the technology to locate a cell phone making a 911 call. 

Following the passage of that legislation there were two statewide ballots on the issue – both failed.  During the second ballot issue many of us in the emergency services community opposed it due to concerns about how the funds were to be divided up and accounted for.

Not only do we have a problem in that roughly two thirds of the state’s residents cannot be found when using their cell phone to make a 911 call, the 911 system in much of the state is financially broke.  Cell phone owners do not pay taxes to support the 911 system and the number of hardwire phone lines keeps decreasing.

Now add the fact that 18 of 114 counties in Missouri still do not have hardwired 911 and we discover we have a very broken 911 system in Missouri.

Governor Matt Blunt has requested and the Missouri House of Representatives has appointed an Interim Committee to study the problem.  They have begun their meetings around the state and we expect that they will draft some legislation to propose this coming legislative session.

The members of the committee are Rep. Mark Bruns (Chair, R- Jefferson City), Rep. Kenny Jones (R-California), Rep. Therese Sander (R-Moberly), Rep. David Pearce (R-Warrensburg), Rep. Gina Walsh, (D-St. Louis), Rep. Jeff Roorda (D-Jefferson County) and Rep. Ed Wildberger (D-St. Joseph).

This is a critical issue and one we will keep our eye on as it evolves over the next few months.

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