Georgia needs new 911 rules and a new 911 authority...
Georgia needs new 911 rules and a new 911 authority geared toward next-generation 911, Georgia Senate Bill 144 proposes. It was introduced last month and a substitute text was passed favorably out of committee this week. It’s designed to change…
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Georgia rules “so as to create the Georgia Emergency 9-1-1 Support Authority as a body corporate and politic, an instrumentality of the state, and a public corporation; to require the authority to establish an Emergency Information Program for emergency first responders; to provide for the purposes of the authority, which purposes shall include, but not be limited to, ensuring that effective 9-1-1 service is provided to all Georgians,” according to the latest 17-page text (http://1.usa.gov/Yur1u0). The bill proposes to streamline and better coordinate many elements of a changing 911 system which is facing new concerns of funding and technology. It endeavors to help in “assisting the implementation of updated technological resources and enhanced 9-1-1 services throughout the State of Georgia, facilitating the adoption of information services for the provision of lifesaving information to first responders, auditing the payment of certain 9-1-1 fees by prepaid wireless telephone service providers to increase compliance in collection of revenues and provide fairness to those service providers already paying such fees, supporting the public interest in providing cost-efficient collection of revenues, and disbursing funds to local governments for the operation and improvement of emergency telephone 9-1-1 services; to provide for duties of the authority; to make available on a state-wide basis services and resources to local governments for improvement in emergency 9-1-1 systems,” it said. The 911 support authority would have 13 members, including one director, it said. Six of the members “shall be a mayor, a chief of police, a fire chief, a county commissioner, a sheriff, and an emergency medical services director and who shall be appointed by the Governor” and another six “experienced in and currently involved in public safety, local government, or management of emergency services, three of whom shall be appointed by the President of the Senate, and three of whom shall be appointed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives,” it said. The law, if passed, would take effect Jan. 1.