Wireless 911 calls: emergency telephone user surcharge.

Existing law establishes the Public Safety Communications Division within the Office of Emergency Services, under the supervision of a chief, to carry out specific duties relating to state needs and plans for public safety communications systems and equipment. This bill would require the division to require its California 911 Emergency Communications Branch to work with the Department of the California Highway Patrol to continue the work of the Routing on Empirical Data (RED) Project by using the technology and procedures employed in that project to assist in determining whether wireless 911 calls should be routed to a local public safety answering point or a California Highway Patrol call center. The bill would require that the project use historical empirical call data to determine the most efficient routing for wireless 911 calls. The Emergency Telephone Users Surcharge Act generally imposes a surcharge on amounts paid by every person in the state for intrastate telephone service to provide revenues sufficient to fund "911" emergency telephone system costs, and requires the Office of Emergency Services to annually determine the surcharge rate, subject to a specified formula, that it estimates will produce sufficient revenue to fund the current fiscal year's 911 costs, as specified. This bill would instead impose the surcharge at a flat monthly rate of between $0.15 and $0.75, determined annually by the office. This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.