COUNTY AND BELL BOTH MAKE POINTS ON AUDITING E-911

Questions have arisen over Cape Girardeau County's funding for the Enhanced 911 emergency telephone service.

Cape Girardeau County commissioners want to audit the account to ensure all collections are being made. Southwestern Bell, the telephone company that is collecting 911 fees, says it can't release telephone numbers to the county's auditors because of the National Electronic Information Privacy Act.

Both sides seem to have legitimate concerns. Now, lawyers are trying to decide the next move.

A compromise seems in order to resolve this matter. The county just wants to make sure that the money is being properly collected. The phone company wants to protect its customers' privacy.

Since the amount collected is a flat amount from each phone number, it appears that figures can be provided by Southwestern Bell to confirm total collections without resorting to individual customer numbers.

Cape Girardeau County residential and commercial phone customers pay 8 percent of their base phone rate for E-911. That charge is taken out before the addition of extra fees, taxes, long distance and so forth.

The basic charge comes to $3.02 for commercial customers and 73 cents for residential customers in Jackson or Cape Girardeau. Customers in a different county exchange, say Delta or Oak Ridge, pay a different amount. Southwestern Bell gets 2 percent of the 8 percent for being the collecting agency.

Southwestern Bell could provide the total number of customers by town and the total each pays. Add it all up, take out Bell's cut, and that should verify total collections.

Prior to 1994, the county collected 14.97 percent of local phone bills to pay for equipment and startup. That amount dropped to 8 percent in January 1994. The tax has been in place since Jan. 1, 1992.

County and Bell officials hope to have the matter resolved in a short time. Commissioners want Bell to provide 300 numbers -- without names -- to check how much 911 money the phone company collected from each.

But there is something to be said about privacy as well. Business and government are constantly at a loggerhead about how far red tape extends into private business. This, of course, is a very public matter, but business must protect its customers as well. And it is no secret that the telephone industry is heavily regulated, resulting in rules for just about everything.

The county should return the list of telephone numbers mistakenly sent by Southwestern Bell until the matter is resolved. Hopefully, the telephone company can provide the overall figures that will verify collections to the county's satisfaction.