Both bills passed with bipartisan votes, although most Republicans voted against, with several expressing concern that the bills tie the surcharges to inflation.
A change in the phone surcharge structure along the same lines was part of Gov. Josh Shapiro’s budget request earlier this year. Wednesday’s vote also comes after Tuesday’s passage of a bill eliminating sales and gross receipts taxes on cell phone service, which would offset the new 911 and 988 fees.
House Bill 1304 would take the monthly 911 surcharge from the current $1.65 per phone line to $1.97 as of Jan. 1, 2024, and increase the charge to inflation in subsequent years until it sunsets at the end of 2029.
That increase would generate an extra $30.4 million for the six months it would be in effect during the 2023-24 fiscal year, according to a House appropriations note, bringing total 911 surcharge revenue to $365 million.
The hike is necessary to assist county 911 dispatch systems that are often struggling to upgrade and adapt to new technology, with many 911 networks still “operating off 1970s and 1980s technology,” said the bill’s prime sponsor, Rep. Jared Solomon, D-Philadelphia.
Established in 1990 and last updated in 2015, the surcharges collected by the state are distributed to counties to support their 911 systems – but these revenues are “woefully inadequate and do not even come close to the cost of operating a modern 911 call center,” said Rep. Paul Takac, D-Centre County.
County governments have said that – despite guarantees that surcharge revenues and other state and federal grants would shoulder the lion’s share of 911 costs – insufficient funding has meant that the counties’ share of 911 costs have crept up.
Locally, Cumberland County – in a resolution issued last week – said the current funding structure covers only 59% of the county’s nearly $10 million in annual 911 costs, with the rests borne by county property tax revenues.
The County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania (CCAP) has pushed for the re-authorization and increase of the surcharge - although CCAP has asked for the surcharge to be taken even further, to $2.30.
Several Republicans objected Wednesday to the idea of automatically increasing the surcharge with inflation by pegging it to the Consumer Price Index.
“I would gladly support this bill if it eliminated the automatic increases,” said Rep. Seth Grove, R-York, the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee.
“Benchmarking taxes to inflation is a dangerous precedent which should be outright rejected by this body,” Grove said. The legislature should have direct oversight over raising fees and “should not turn that power over to the CPI,” Grove continued.
Along the same lines, House Bill 1305 would establish beginning next year a surcharge of 6 cents per mobile phone line to support the state’s 988 hotline for crisis intervention and suicide prevention.
This surcharge would also increase with CPI and does not have a sunset date; it would bring in around $5.5 million during the six months it would be in effect for the 2023-24 budget cycle, according to a House appropriations note.
In 2020, the FCC adopted rules for a standardized national 988 network, and last year Congress mandated that states begin implementing the new standards for mental health crisis call systems.
“If folks here in this august body believe that six cents per month is too much to save a life, then I think that you need to go back to the folks who sent you here and let them know that their lives are not worth six cents per month,” said Rep. Stephen Kinsey, D-Philadelphia, HB 1305′s prime sponsor.
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