LANSING – A little-known provision in the emergency 911 law would have a financial, structural and possible legal impact on every college campus, business, hospital, school district, governmental unit, nonprofit organization and any other entity in the state with a hard-wired telephone system if its implementation isn’t delayed beyond the December 31 deadline.
Testimony given before the Michigan House Energy and Technology Committee on Tuesday overwhelmingly supported HB 4683, which would put certain Public Service Commission rules on hold.
As passed in 2007, the Emergency 911 Service Enabling Act requires owners and operators of multiple-line telephone systems to upgrade their phones so emergency-services dispatchers will be able to pinpoint the exact location of a caller dialing 911 starting next year.
More time is needed to determine what technology is suitable, how to pay for the upgrades and in some cases, become acquainted the law for the first time, said bill supporters. Central to the debate are costs involved and public-safety concerns versus whether such upgrades would soon become obsolete and unnecessary as cell phone usage continues to escalate and the reliance on landlines diminishes even more.
Entities possessing newer phone systems with E-911 location technology already built in, but not activated, would have one year to comply with the rules. Those needing new equipment would have five years.
Some committee members were caught unaware by the PSC requirements and the looming deadline.
“I’m just kind of like shocked thinking about all this today,” said Rep. Roy Schmidt (D-Grand Rapids). “It’s amazing what the ramifications could be, from my perspective. It’s just crazy.”
Michigan State University, which has more than 30,000 phones on its East Lansing campus, brought the deadline issue to the attention of Rep. Paul Opsommer (R-Dewitt), who is sponsoring the legislation.
Although changes in the law were passed five years ago, the PSC didn’t begin the official rule-making process until February 25.
Location information technology would allow first-responders to find a 911 caller anywhere in a building even if he or she becomes incapacitated, according to Jeff Carpenter, manager of planning and engineering for telecom systems at MSU.
“We at Michigan State certainly support the public-safety provisions of the current legislation as passed,” Mr. Carpenter said. “(But) we’re five and a half months away from a deadline and the actual rules for all the people across the state and thousands of organizations have not been published, so most people do not know about this. Unfortunately, here we are at the 11th hour and what happens is, it puts us at a legal liability. On January 1, if something happens (on campus), and somebody sues the university and says, `You knew about this,’ that’s our real big concern.”
Michigan State started work on conforming with E-911 three years before the law passed, but only half of MSU’s main-campus buildings are compliant. So far, the upgrades have cost MSU in excess of $5 million and it will take another $3 to $5 million to complete the job in five years, said Mr. Carpenter, who supervises a team of four engineers who are replacing otherwise good telephone equipment – including some installed in the 1970s – lacking E-911 location technology.
“Just in a single building, for say a couple hundred people, that’s about a three-to-four-month process,” Carpenter said. “(The engineers) have been doing nothing but this since 2004.”
With so many students using cell phones, landline handsets have been removed from all dormitory rooms and emergency phones have been placed in strategic locations throughout each dorm, Carpenter said.
However, cell phones are not included in the E-911 legislation. And although cell phones can be used to generally locate emergency callers, they triangulate only on a horizontal plane and not on a vertical plane, Rep. Ray Franz (R-Onekama) pointed out. Dispatchers currently can’t hone in on the location of a caller on the upper floors of a tall building, for example.
“It seems to me that by the time this all shakes out, (E-911) could be a very redundant system, and you spend a lot of time and money on trying to implement it, and then cell-technology will do just the same,” said Rep. Hugh Crawford (R-Novi). “That would be a concern I’d have, so I hope people address that.”
Advocates of the delay do not support scrapping the E-911 requirements, however.
“I know that residential landline usage seems to be dropping, but businesses rely on landlines more than ever for clear communication,” said Robert Roach, of Strategic Products and Services. “They’re not getting rid of their landlines. There’s a real need to have that location service in place, but technology is changing very fast.
“The only time my customers or any business I talk to gets notified of this (law) is when I bring it to their attention. There needs to be delay so businesses can get up to speed and figure out what this (law) is, what it’s going to cost them and how they’re going to implement it in the timeframe of five years.”
Mike Byrne, the PSC legislative liaison, said the model legislation “talks about exempting facilities smaller than 7,000 square feet. We’ll do what we can to address that in the rule-making process or suggest that’s something that goes in this legislation if it goes forward.”
Tim von Hoff, the chief operating officer of the Michigan Collegiate Telecommunications Association, said many of his organization’s members would have difficulty complying with the rules by the end of the year. Members that aren’t even aware of the legislation obviously don’t have money budgeted to convert their phone systems.
“Michigan State is on one end of the spectrum,” von Hoff said. “A lot of our members are not quite as fortunate to have staff or the expertise (like Mr. Carpenter). From a practical point of view, it’s not possible to do.”
Rep. Mike Shirkey (R-Clark Lake) said he supported the delay “but not from the standpoint of just providing additional time. I think this requirement represents a rather huge, unfunded mandate and I’m not sure it’s going to accomplish (its) intentions. So I hope we can continue to have a conversation about how we’re going to evaluate the sensibilities of this requirement going forward.”
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