Senate lawmakers blasted Bush administration policy-makers over the implementation of a $43.5 million matching grant program to upgrade emergency dispatch centers so they can receive and process enhanced 911 location data from mobile phones.
The Enhanced 911 Act, signed into law in December 2004, directed the heads of the National Telecommunications and Infor-mation Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to jointly issue regulations within six months spelling out selection criteria for grants.
Five Democrats, including Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) are furious over delays and lack of action since the E-911 Act became law two years ago.
“Unfortunately, since that time, there appears to have been little or no effort to establish grant criteria and to issue regulations for this program,” said Sens. Inouye, Snowe, Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) in letter to NTIA director John Kneuer and NHTSA chief Nicole Nason. “Instead, your agencies have relied upon the administration’s failure to request funds for the E-911 grants and the lack of specific appropriations to justify agency inaction in the face of this explicit congressional direction. The decision is doubly disappointing in light of recent reports this month from the National Emergency Number Association that, despite some recent progress by PSAPs (public safety answering points), ‘nearly half of the counties in this country lack a PSAP that can locate 911 calls made from wireless phones.”
Broader requirements
The E-911 law authorized up to $250 million annually between fiscal years 2005 and 2009 for grants.
The $43.5 million earmarked for the E-911 grant program at issue is funded by anticipated receipts from the 700 MHz auction later this year.
The law also called on the NTIA and the NHTSA to create an E-911 Implementation Co-ordination Office to execute the grant program. It is unclear what progress the two agencies have made creating the oversight office.
“We recently received the letter and are working on responding to Congress in an appropriate and timely manner,” said Todd Sedmak, an NTIA spokesman.
NHTSA declined to comment on the letter.
“Respectfully, we ask that you reconsider your agency’s present position and move quickly under your existing operation budget to develop grant guidelines as required under the Enhanced 911 Act of 2004,” lawmakers told Kneuer and Nason. “Such action will help to ensure that we will not face further delays once funds are made available by Congress for this purpose. Toward that end, we intend to redouble our efforts to secure sufficient funding for this program to make sure that our PSAPs can make needed upgrades and to advance the cause of extending the benefits of E-911 services to all Americans, wherever they may live.”
Kneuer, whose agency advises the White House on telecom policy and manages federal government spectrum, also has been hit with congressional criticism over two other programs under NTIA involving grants for public-safety communications interoperability and vouchers for digital-to-analog TV converter boxes.
