COUNTY'S 911 RESERVE HAS HEALTHY SURPLUS

Just like any business, government entities must be careful about any bills they receive. The Cape Girardeau County Commission took a prudent stance when it received Southwestern Bell's announcement that the phone company is increasing its monthly charges for 911 services. The commission was taken aback that the monthly charges were suddenly going up nearly $1,200 a month due to an increase in the number of phone lines.

Upon questioning the billing increase, the commission learned that Southwestern Bell's rates for providing 911 services are based on the number of phone lines in use in the county in multiples of 1,000. Clearly, phone lines in the county didn't increase to 44,000 lines from 30,000 lines in one month. As a matter of fact, Southwestern Bell could have imposed regular increases as the number of lines went up. Instead, the phone company chose to wait until the monthly charges would take a good-sized jump.

Now that the county knows the basis for the monthly increase requested by Southwestern Bell, there shouldn't be any problem in paying the bill. The county gets the money to pay for 911 expenses from an 8 percent surcharge on all phone bills in Cape Girardeau County. This surcharge was approved by voters when they adopted the 911 emergency phone system eight years ago.

Over those eight years, the county has paid all of its 911 expenses -- equipment, personnel, computer upgrades and monthly telephone charges -- from that surcharge revenue and has built up a reserve of about $1 million.

So the issue isn't whether the county can afford to pay the higher 911 bill. But the commission might want to consider a couple of other issues.

One is whether or not all telephone-service providers that are collecting the 8 percent surcharge are actually turning the money over to the county. This issue came up a few weeks ago when Scott County officials learned there were several providers that hadn't remitted the funds to that county.

And another consideration is whether the 8 percent surcharge is really needed, now that the county has its sizable surplus and has completed a major upgrade in the system to handle Y2K concerns. Perhaps telephone customers could be given a reduction, however slight, in the taxes they pay on their phone bills.