Madison — A new bill to improve emergency assistance to cellular phone users is a cash cow for giant telecommunications firms, but leaves property taxpayers saddled with much of the cost of local 911 improvements, a spokesman for Wisconsin’s major cities said today.

Edward J. Huck, executive director of the Wisconsin Alliance of Cities, said the bill has a clear double standard.

It would make local governments second-class partners in the business of getting emergency help to 911 callers by limiting the number of 911 and emergency dispatch centers that could receive money for needed equipment to one per county. In any case local governments could not receive money for "training, equipment, software, records management, radio communications and mobile data network systems" for emergency dispatchers.

Yet phone companies would be eligible to receive all their costs incurred "to purchase, lease, program, install, test, operate, or maintain all data, hardware and software necessary to comply with the FCC orders" to the phone companies, according to the Legislative Reference Bureau.

Local governments are limited to one grant per county — and grants are limited to covering only some of the costs of getting information to local dispatchers.But every phone company subject to FCC orders is eligible to charge its costs to its customers in the form of a surcharge.

The bill is AB 61. It’s chief sponsor is Rep. Phil Montgomery, R-Green Bay. It is co-sponsored by Reps. Scott Jensen, R-Waukesha; Michael Lehman, R-Hartford; Mark Pettis, R-Hertel; Karl Van Roy, R-Green Bay; Becky Weber, R-Green Bay; Bob Turner, D-Racine; Jeff Fitzgerald, R-Beaver Dam; Daniel Vrakas, R-Hartland; and Ann Nischke, R-Waukesha; and Sens. Joe Leibham, R-Sheboygan; Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau; and Roger Breske, D-Eland. 

Huck said the bill is an especially keen disappointment at a time that local governments across the state are struggling to avoid property tax increases to cope with Gov. Jim Doyle’s proposed $110 million cut in state shared revenue to municipalities and counties next year.

"This is the worst possible time for the Legislature to try to impose new costs on property taxpayers to provide favors for the phone companies," Huck said.

The bill is to receive executive action by the Assembly Energy & Utilities Committee at 1 p.m. Tuesday, March 4 in Room 415 Northwest of the Capitol.

AB 61 also absolves phone companies from liability due to their mishandling of 911 calls from cellular customers.

Incredibly, some phone companies are not waiting for the bill to impose a 911 surcharge on their cellular customers. There’s a federal 911 cost-recovery charge that some phone companies are already passing along. Cellular phone bills also commonly include a property tax surcharge — a somewhat misleading label because the phone companies pay no property taxes to local governments.

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