first responders – Missouri House of Representatives Newsroom

Families no longer have to pay for highway memorials for fallen first responders and service people

Memorials for fallen veterans, police officers, and firefighters, and for those missing in action, will no longer be paid for by the families of those individuals, under legislation that became law this year.

*LCPL Jared Schmitz (Photo courtesy of Mark Schmitz)*

It’s called the “FA Paul Akers, Junior, and LCPL Jared Schmitz Memorial Sign Funding Act,” and it stemmed from the efforts to memorialize those two men, both of whom died while serving their country. When legislators learned that their families were billed for the signs honoring them, they proposed the language that would have those costs paid for by the Department of Transportation.

“Most people in Missouri didn’t like the idea, just like I didn’t … that once we honor a fallen hero, we didn’t realize the paper trail behind the scenes was to send these invoices to their family members,” said Representative Tricia Byrnes (R-Wentzville).

Representative Don Mayhew (R-Crocker) said what was happening was “a shock to, in fact, everyone who’s ever gotten a memorial sign done. A lot of times what they have to do is they go around and they get donations from the VFW and other places in order to pay for the sign because, many of them, they don’t have $3,000 laying around for a memorial sign for the highway.”

Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz, of St. Charles, was among 13 U.S. Service Members and more than 100 others killed in a suicide bombing at a Kabul airport during the American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. His family wanted to honor him with signs to designate an overpass on I-70 in Wentzville as a memorial bridge bearing his name.

His father, Mark Schmitz, said the family got a bill for those signs.

“That’s when I started pushing back. How the hell can you charge any grieving parent or person who lost a loved one who died in the line of duty, whether it be police or fire or paramedic or military? I said that just doesn’t seem right. So I reached out to some of the [parents of the other 12 U.S. service members who died in that same bombing] and three of them in California never had to pay for their signs either, so I’m like, this is kind of disgusting.”

Schmitz, who lives in Byrnes’ district, said he supported her legislation not so much due to his family’s experience (donations covered their $3,200 cost in a matter of hours after an online fundraising effort was launched).

*Representative Tricia Byrnes (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)*

“I was thinking about the wife of a fallen police officer or the widow of a soldier or marine that’s killed, and maybe [the family doesn’t] embrace trying to honor them so quickly. Maybe they take three, four, five years to finally get past that grieving point where they want to do something like that, and then the state’s going to bill them for $3,200. They would have a very difficult time trying to raise that kind of money. Certainly I think it’s really gross or disgusting for them to have to pay the bill themselves,” said Schmitz.

Schmitz said the passage of this legislation is, for him, in honor of his son.

“There will be no first responder who is killed in the line of duty whose family or loved one will have to pay that bill again moving forward, which is a total victory. I think that’s the right thing to do. It’s the least that they can do when somebody has literally given everything they have for this country, in the case of the military; or for their town, if they’re a police officer, fireman, paramedic.”

Mayhew’s experience with the issue began with an effort to honor Fireman Apprentice Paul Akers, Junior, who was killed in the January, 1969 explosion and fire on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, CVAN-65, off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii. Akers was also from Crocker.

“I was nine years old at the time and they had the funeral in the high school, and I remember it like it was yesterday. The entire gym was full, completely full, and that might not sound like much but pretty much everybody in town was at that funeral and the memories are very vivid,” said Mayhew. “I’ve known the family my entire life and so I’m very proud to not only be a part of getting the [memorial sign with his name] put up but also a part of making sure that families in the future don’t have to go through this ever again.”

Mayhew is just glad the proposal finally became law.

“I also want to apologize to those families who have lost loved ones in service to our nation and our state who had to pay for these signs over the years. I hope that they can take solace in the fact that no other family will have to suffer from the cost of these signs ever again,” said Mayhew. “These Gold Star families have already given all in service to the country. The least we could do is pay for a memorial sign.”

*Representative Don Mayhew (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)*

Byrnes said the legislation was the subject of very little opposition, and for good reason.

“There was a moment on the House floor where somebody said that MODOT’s budget is already pretty tight enough. Do we really want to force MODOT, and I was like, yes because I’m really not going to support selling signs to family members so that we can charge them for grass cutting along the highway.”

The family of LCPL Schmitz isn’t finished honoring him. His father said they are now working to raise money for a series of 100-acre recreational retreat camps, one in each state, for veterans and their families to use for free. Each will have 13 available houses, one for each of the U.S. service people killed in the attack in which his son died.

“[We want to get a] lot of bonding going on, that’s kind of our mission here, is to get a bunch of veterans together that served in different times, different conflicts, different branches, just get them comingling again and have them be around guys like themselves,” said Schmitz.

Advocates who deal with veteran suicide and mental health issues say one of the best outlets for veterans, especially those who have experienced combat, is other veterans.

Byrnes and Mayhew sponsored identical bills. When Byrnes’ version, House Bill 882, came to a House vote, it passed 153-0. The language later became law as part of Senate Bills 139 and 127.

911 Dispatchers get ‘First Responder’ status, more mental health help options

Missouri 911 dispatchers will now be considered “first responders” in state statute under legislation that becomes effective next month. That will bring a lot of changes, including increased access to mental health resources.

*Representative Robert Sauls (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)*

Language in two bills signed into law by Governor Mike Parson (R) will add emergency telecommunicators to the definition of “first responders,” which previously included people like firefighters, police, and emergency medical personnel. The change in designation will mean, among other things, that dispatchers will have access to the same mental health supports as those in those other jobs.

Sarah Newell, Polk County 911 Director, says that’s something from which she and others in her field can definitely benefit.

“I hear it every day. I hear it happen. I hear overdoses, I hear suicides, I hear fatality accidents in children. It happens all the time,” Newell told House Communications.

She said a dispatcher’s emotions can be constantly in transition. “We don’t stay consistent. We drop to a one, and then we’re at a nine, and then okay we’re back to a two, and here we are, ten, ten, ten, and so it’s hard for your body to adjust to those heightened adrenaline changes so often throughout the day.”

“Sometimes it’s minute-by-minute,” said Jamie Taylor, President of the Missouri Chapter of the National Emergency Numbers Association (MO NENA). “[A dispatcher] could be on a really serious call with somebody that’s wanting to harm themselves and they’re having to try to talk them down, talk them through it … they could get right off of that call and deliver a baby on the next call.”

Taylor said the proposed re-designation has been considered for years while legislators and state agencies worked to consider what changings it would bring, and how to best implement it, but he said legislators always seemed to favor the change.

Representative Robert Sauls (D-Independence) has proposed such language for several years. In his time as a Jackson County Prosecutor and later as a public defender he listened to a lot of 911 calls.

“Having seen many of the videos and listened to many of these 911 calls, I know they’re stressful, and this is something that should have always been the case. Opening that door for mental health is so important,” said Sauls. “These people are the absolute first point of contact in most instances involving a crime and what could potentially be someone’s worst day of their life. The stress that they undergo, the amount of pressure that’s placed on them at that time, these people absolutely should be treated as first responders.”

Joplin Representative Lane Roberts (R) worked in public service for more than 40 years, including as Joplin’s Police Chief and the state’s Director of Public Safety. He said he even did some dispatching early in his career.

*Representative Lane Roberts (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)*

“Those people, in my mind at least, are the most underappreciated element of public safety there is,” said Roberts. “Everybody sort of takes them for granted. They’re in this windowless environment. Nobody sees them, they don’t get to see anybody, they deal with all the emotion, they deal with all the psychological trauma, but they don’t get to do anything except move on to the next calls. But, when you’re the guy in the field and you get yourself in trouble, that dispatcher’s your lifeline and suddenly they become the single most important person on the planet. There is just no way to express your appreciation for a good dispatcher.”

Taylor said like anyone who has done the job, he has experienced calls that he’ll never forget – the kinds of calls that take a toll.

“The one that really hits me most is during a Christmastime several years ago I took a call on a non-breather who ended up being a newborn … and the outcome wasn’t the outcome that we wanted. The infant didn’t make it. During the holidays, and whenever you have kids of your own, that stuff really starts to set in, and you don’t have an avenue to get rid of those emotions or be able to talk about it or seek help.”

He hopes this change will help to slow what has been a notably high turnover rate in his field.

“Our pool of people that want to do this job is getting smaller and smaller, so we really have to take care of those people that are here doing that job today and to be able to provide for those new people coming in,” said Taylor.

He added that as much as anything, though, it will feel good for dispatchers simply to have this acknowledgement.

“It’s going to be huge for the folks that sit in a dark room or sit behind the scenes and deal with the public off and on, and handling those phone calls, and sometimes those dispatchers don’t get the recognition that they need. I know departments try to recognize them within the department but being recognized by the state, now, as a first responder, it just brings smiles to my face. Finally we get that ‘job well done’ piece that we’ve needed for a long time.”

The change could also create access to grant dollars that could see local agencies expand the latest forms of 911 access in areas of Missouri that don’t have it. Newell and Taylor expressed their thanks to the legislators who worked for so many years on this issue.

That change in designation will take effect August 28.

Dispatchers ask for help dealing with PTSD, seek ‘first responder’ designation

The state’s 911 dispatchers are urging lawmakers to add them to the state’s legal definition of “first responders,” before the legislative session ends. Some of them visited the Capitol to share personal stories illustrating why they need the help in dealing with post-traumatic stress that comes with that designation.

*Representative Chad Perkins (R-Bowling Green) is among the legislators who has carried legislation aimed at extending mental health services to dispatchers.* *(Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)*

First responders – which state statute currently defines as firefighters, law enforcement personnel, and emergency medical personnel – are afforded mental health resources, and several legislators say those should also be available to dispatchers.

Representative Lane Roberts (R-Joplin) has been Joplin’s Police Chief and the state’s Director of Public Safety, among other things in his career of more than 40 years. Throughout all of that time he worked with dispatchers and even worked as one at times.

“We have always underappreciated these folks. They’re kind of out of sight, out of mind. They work in a windowless environment, but they are the first of the first responders. They’re the gateway to public safety,” said Roberts. “Every time they get an emergency call they get an adrenaline dump just like people who work in the field do. The difference is, the people in the field get to go somewhere, take action, use those chemicals, while the dispatcher will simply move on to the next call, take those chemicals home at night and go to sleep with them and suffer the health consequences.”

Independence representative Robert Sauls (D) was a prosecutor in Jackson County and a public defender.

“As a former prosecutor I would regularly listen to 911 calls and what happens in those circumstances and … often times people are contacting 911 operators on their worst day. Something’s happening, they’re scared, it’s a very stressful situation, and all of these 911 operators are under these stressful environments and the thing of it is, you’ve got to go on to the next one. You’ve gotten your one situation settled, you hang up the phone, and you’ve got another one. I think it’s very important to recognize these people as first responders.”

Polk County 911 Director Sarah Newell said what she and her colleagues do is often dismissed as just answering phones or clerical work.

“It’s not. We are the first point, so how that call goes is dependent on that dispatcher. How fast that call gets put out, what information gets put out, resource allocation and knowing and forward thinking to say, ‘they’re probably going to need an ambulance on standby so let’s go ahead and roll one of those,’ so all things that they have to think about out of the box at any given time.”

J.R. Webb, the Assistant Director of Springfield/Green County 911, said dispatchers, “have to be able to do a lot of things at once. They have to be able to take that phone call, at the same time they’re typing that information into a computer, at the same time that they may be dealing with first responders on the radio. The multitasking is incredible in a busy situation, and it takes a special kind of person to be able to do that. It takes a kind of type ‘A,’ take charge personality to succeed at our job and it’s not meant for everybody.”

The Chair of the State 911 Board of Governance, Alan Wells, said “Post-traumatic stress is a big, big thing for our 911 telecommunicators, and as of right now they do not have a lot of resources there to help with that.”

“Turnover is a big problem, burnout is a big problem that affects this industry, so we hope to be able to give them all the benefits necessary to sustain a good, long-lasting career,” said Wells.

*Representative Robert Sauls also carries legislation intended to include dispatchers in the state’s legal definition of “first responders.” (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)*

He said it’s not uncommon for dispatchers, especially in the smaller communities throughout Missouri, to know personally the people involved in the incidents they are handling.

“Sometimes it can be very horrifying for those operators,” said Wells. “It may be a loved one, a family member, an immediate family member, or in our case it was one of our own 911 call takers who had just left his shift, headed home on his motorcycle and hit a deer and it was a fatality. The same operators that were just working with him had to take that call and work that incident.”

Hailey Brunner is in her fourth year as a dispatcher at the Cass Co Sheriff’s Office. She remembered one week in which her rotation, “worked seven fatalities, whether it be between an accident, people harming themselves, anything of that nature, natural deaths, anything, and it’s just a wide variety, whether it’s young kids to old kids. My most recent one was a two year-old who died in a fatality car accident.”

Blake Johnson has been dispatching for five years in Green County. He said there is one call he’ll always remember.

“I had taken a call from a family who had lost a child and I can still hear the mom screaming for her kid. It’s absolutely horrible and it makes it worse when you actually know who those people are.”

Newell said, “I have a dispatcher who actually worked a motor vehicle accident. It was a rollover with ejection. There were four juveniles in the vehicle. She took the call and … right before she was ready to dispatch, she realized it was her son in the vehicle.”

Brunner said dispatchers can’t help but imagine the scenes that they are hearing play out over the phone, and that can result in very vivid and very upsetting imagery.

“You’re hearing all of this stuff that’s going on, on the phone. You’re hearing the screams and … they’re painting a picture for you, so you have this picture in your mind of what it looks like and it could be completely the opposite of what they actually see on the scene. It could be better, it could be worse. We never quite know.”

Webb said worse still, dispatchers often get no closure at the end of a call.

“You’re sending folks to help these people that are yelling and screaming at you and in their worst day, then you don’t really know for sure when the other first responders go there, and how this call turned out,” said Webb.

He said an increasing number of suicides in Missouri also directly impacts dispatchers.

“It could be someone, honestly, wanting an audience while they commit suicide. That happens way too much.”

Some call centers, like that at Springfield, have mental health resources that are made available to dispatchers there and in surrounding communities. Such resources aren’t available to all dispatchers in Missouri, though, especially in many smaller communities.

Several bills would address PTSD and mental health resources for dispatchers and other first responders. These dispatchers and lawmakers are among those who hope at least one of those bills is passed before the session’s end on May 12.

Bills would have MODOT, not families, cover cost for highway memorial signs

The families of fallen veterans, police officers, and firefighters, and of those missing in action, would no longer have to foot the bill for highway or bridge memorial signs honoring those loved ones under a bill approved by a House committee.

Legislation sponsored by Representatives Tricia Byrnes (R-Wentzville) and Don Mayhew (R-Crocker) would require the Department of Transportation to cover those costs.

“Keep in mind, folks, these are the folks who gave all to represent our country … if we’re going to have honorary signs, the very least that we can do is pay for it,” said Mayhew when presenting the legislation to the House Committee on Transportation Accountability, which he chairs.

Byrnes joined Mayhew in proposing this change in response to the effort to honor Marine Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz, a Wentzville native, who was one of 13 U.S. military members who died in a 2021 bombing at an airport in Kabul, in Afghanistan. She learned that when Corporal Schmitz’s family wanted to have a section of highway named for him they received an invoice from the Department of Transportation for more than $3,000.

“If we have people that are dying for our country and dying for our communities the least that we can do is not hand them an invoice, because in my opinion that’s just selling signs to people who sacrificed their life for us,” said Byrnes.

Corporal Schmitz’ father, Mark, told the committee, “Being a Gold Star father, everyone knows, you die twice. The last thing I want is for my son to be forgotten. To be on I-70, to be visible to so many people every day would be tremendous. So, we went through the state … I think it was $3,200 to be exact … they sent us an invoice that once we raised this money they’ll go ahead and proceed with it. You can imagine, after the sacrifice that he made, to then have to figure out how you’re going to pay for it. I think it was ludicrous and shameful.”

Schmitz said he talked to the families of the other 12 personnel who died at the same time as his son. None of them had to pay the cost of having a memorial sign placed in honor of their loved on, on a highway in their respective states.

“I don’t want to see any fallen [police officer’s, fireman’s, or other veteran’s] family have to go through that. Luckily we have tremendous support from our community … we were able to raise the money in about 24-hours, thank God, but I don’t think people [should] have to go through that,” Schmitz told the Committee.

The Department of Transportation did not oppose the legislation but offered information on how the system currently operates. Chief Safety and Operations Manager Becky Allmeroth said the Department has to consider other signage.

“This new signage would not aid drivers in navigating the highways. Placing new signs necessary for safe travel would also become more difficult with fewer locations available. This is especially true in our St. Louis and our Kansas City regions of the state right now. It’s a very awkward situation when you’re designing a new interchange and you have to make decisions on those signs that actually guide motorists up through an exit versus a memorial signs that’s already in place and where we can fit all those signs to make sure that we’re keeping our motorists safe.”

Allmeroth told legislators, “We have 830 memorial designations across the state highway system. The number is expected, with this bill, to increase exponentially if the current participation fee is removed.”

Most committee members voiced support for making the change in policy.

“Personally I don’t care about the costs. I just think we need to do this. I don’t think the family should pay,” said Republican Bob Bromley (Carl Junction). “If we’re making the Slim Pickens Highway or Mark Twain Highway at Hannibal I understand having a fee. If we’re doing it for fallen soldiers I think [having a fee is] ridiculous.”

The committee voted unanimously in favor of the bills, House Bill 882 (Byrnes) and 518 (Mayhew), advancing them to another committee for consideration.

House acts to recognize and support 911 dispatchers

The House has advanced multiple efforts this session to recognize the service of, and difficulties faced by, 911 dispatchers. Three House bills include language that would add dispatchers to state statute’s definition of “first responders,” which would give them access to more support and benefits. A bipartisan group of lawmakers thinks it’s about time.

*Representative Shane Roden (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)*

Legislators say dispatchers are vitally important and are the first link in the chain of emergency response.

“They’re the first contact when you call 911,” said Representative Robert Sauls (D-Kansas City), who offered one such amendment to a bill that was sent to the Senate (House Bill 1637). “Obviously you talk to an operator, and they have to go through a lot of stuff. They have to go through a lot of turmoil, subject to very high intensity, stressful situations.”

Because dispatchers aren’t considered “first responders,” they aren’t afforded benefits seen by EMTs, firefighters, police, and others. That includes health and retirement benefits, but also help to deal with the stress of their job. Lawmakers think that needs to change.

Representative Lane Roberts (R-Joplin), whose extensive law enforcement career included time as Joplin’s police chief and director of the state’s Department of Public Safety, said, “I was a police officer for 43 years, and in my wildest nightmare I can’t imagine doing what those people do.”

“The fact that we have failed to recognize them as an integral part of the first response community, I think, is a real disservice to them. They do their share and then some. They’re often underappreciated. They’re just a voice at the end of the radio frequency and people just forget how important they are. Without them a lot of people get hurt.”

Representative Chad Perkins (R-Bowling Green) worked for four years as a dispatcher. He filed one of the bills to make dispatchers “first responders” (House Bill 1676, approved by one House committee). He said this is the most stressful job in the field.

“The phone is ringing and its multiple phone calls, especially in one of those really high stressful situations. You’ve got the phone ringing off the hook, a dozen people calling you, someone screaming at you in their greatest moment of need, you can’t visualize what’s happening because you’re not actually there but you’ve got to get that information, you have to take it down well and effectively and then put that information back out clearly to someone else who’s going. It is an incredibly stressful job. I think it is the most high-stress job in all of emergency services. A person has to multitask at a very high level.”

Roberts agreed, “Any time as a police officer I got a call, particularly for something of an emergency, we got that adrenaline rush that anybody else gets. The dispatchers got the same adrenaline rush when they’re on the phone. The difference is that when I got to the scene of that emergency that adrenaline is something that helped me deal with the issue. The dispatchers, on the other hand, simply hang up and go on to the next emergency. At night they’ll take all that adrenaline, those chemicals that come with that rush, and take it home with them. They don’t get that same opportunity to use that.”

Roberts and Perkins agree that dispatching is more than answering the phone and relaying a call. Operators receive training for multiple contingencies and emergencies.

“I’ve heard them do CPR instructions over the phone. I’ve heard them talk about getting people out of fires over the phone, delivering babies over the phone,” said Roberts.

Because of the high stress they face, on top of regularly updated training and often low pay, advocates say people who work as dispatchers rarely do it for very long. Some areas of the state are having a hard time filling vacancies in call centers.

*Representative Chad Perkins (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)*

Perkins said by adding them to the definition of “first responders,” they would be afforded more state benefits. This could be part of a larger effort to recruit and retain operators.

“You have some health-related benefits to it but there’s also, for the most part in the State of Missouri, first responders can retire on the LAGERS system at 55, so that would be something that would also be an added benefit as opposed to having to retire at 60 or 62.”

Representative Shane Roden (R-Cedar Hill) is a firefighter and paramedic as well as a reserve sheriff’s deputy. His House Bill 2381 has received initial approval in the House and contains the “first responder” definition language.

He told his colleagues, “For the dispatchers that have always been there for us this is a step in the right direction, to acknowledge that they are the first responders that they are.”

Anti-doxing bill would protect Missouri first responders

Missouri House members are being asked to protect law enforcement officers and other first responders and their families by protecting the personal information of those individuals.

House Bill 59 has been called the “First Responders Protection Act.” It would bar counties from disclosing the address or personal information of law enforcement officers and first responders, upon their request. This would be directed at county clerks, collectors, treasurers, auditors, and recorders of deeds.

Representative Adam Schnelting (photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications, 03-10-2020)

It would also make illegal the “doxing” of those individuals; that is, the posting of such information on the internet with the intent of causing harm to them.

The bill’s sponsor, St. Charles Republican Adam Schnelting, said such information has been used to target law enforcement officers and their loved ones.

“Our first responders and our law enforcement officers leave their families every day to protect our own, so I think the least that we can do is to back them up, protect them so that there’s one less avenue through which their families can become a victim,” said Schnelting.

Dale Roberts with the Columbia Police Officers Association said Columbia officers have been targeted by those they’ve arrested.

“They track our officers down. They called our officers after being arrested and said, ‘I know your daughter, Amanda, goes to Grand Elementary School. I know you live at 309 Pine Street,’ and threaten the officers and their families,” Roberts told the House Committee on Public Safety.

“We go to work every day and we understand the responsibilities, the duties, and the dangers of our job,” said Missouri Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police president Rick Inglima. “A bill like this would be paramount in helping our officers protect themselves, to keep their information undisclosed – either online or by going through the county records, to keep our officers and their families safe.”

Backers said the legislation could save local law enforcement agencies money that is expended to protect officers who have been targeted due to access to their personal information.

The Recorders Association of Missouri testified against the bill. Speaking for the Association, Jessica Petrie stressed that it supports the intent of the legislation but implementing it wouldn’t be practical.

“Under Missouri statute recorders do not redact records. We don’t have the processes, we don’t have the software, we don’t have the systems in place to redact,” said Petrie.

She said the bill’s prohibition on the release of any data related to an officer’s address could interfere with the sale of property.

“If you redact parcel numbers or legal descriptions you might interfere with title searches, which is a big function of our office, and if people can’t prove that they’re the only ones with claims to a title that makes the chain of property ownership very messy.”

Petrie said with the range of capabilities and technologies across Missouri’s 114 counties and the city of St. Louis it is hard to predict what it would take – especially in terms of cost – for all of them to get software or other items necessary to comply with the requirements of HB 59.

The Missouri NAACP also opposes the legislation, saying it would create crimes and penalties redundant to current Missouri law. Sharon Jones with the Association joined the Recorders Association in suggesting that many of the bill’s goals could be met by extending to law enforcement officers the Safe At Home Program, which allows survivors of domestic violence and other crimes hide their address.

The bill’s supporters note that Safe At Home’s protections are not retroactive, so records already available through county offices would stay that way.

The committee has not voted on HB 59.

Missouri legislature proposes statewide funding mechanism for 911 services

An issue that has faced lawmakers and the state’s counties for about two decades might finally have been addressed, as the Missouri House on Friday completed passage of a proposed statewide way to pay for 911 services. This makes the first time such a bill has been approved by the legislature and sent to a governor.

An emotional Representative Jeanie Lauer presents a proposal for statewide funding for 911 that became the first such bill sent to a governor, after nearly two decades that the issue has been debated in Missouri. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications – click for larger version)

The issue consumed much of Representative Jeanie Lauer’s (R-Blue Springs) eight years in the House. On Friday, as she is about to leave the chamber due to term limits, she got to see her work culminate in the passage of House Bill 1456.

The heart of the issue is that most 911 services in Missouri are paid for by charges on landline phones. As fewer and fewer people have landlines, the amount of money each county receives to support local 911 has diminished, but efforts to charge the ever increasing number of cell phone users often met with too much resistance to pass. Missouri has for years been the only state that doesn’t have a statewide 911 funding mechanism.

Lauer said that’s because there are so many players involved in deciding what such a mechanism should and should not include, it took years to come up with something they – and legislators – would all support.

“We have 114 counties and 163 representatives and 30-some senators, and everybody has something different that we’re trying to address and make sure that we can accommodate in the legislation so that everybody can be safe in Missouri,” said Lauer. “It has been rather complex – a little bit like a Rubik’s Cube putting it together – but it came together and it is so, so exciting to have that done.”

The funding plan in HB 1456, Lauer hopes, will not only allow Missouri to have 911 service statewide – a handful of counties have no service at all – but will also allow counties to have the latest 911 technology. That would allow emergency responders to do things like locate cell phones when a caller can’t give his or her location, receive texts, and other upgrades and functions that many Missouri counties haven’t been able to afford.

The issue has been an emotional one for Lauer. In the eight years she’s worked on it she’s heard multiple stories of people who were in need of emergency services and their outcomes were worsened because they were in a part of Missouri where no 911 service exists, or they couldn’t be located because the 911 service hadn’t been upgraded.

“This has never been about a bill … it is about what it does,” said Lauer. “Of all the things that we’ve done here in the Capitol and that I’ve been personally involved with, this truly has significant impact on the life and wellness of people, and I couldn’t be more gratified.”

Lauer and other lawmakers have seen several 911 funding proposals fail over the years, either for lack of support or by running out of time in the final days of a session.

HB 1456 would allow counties and certain municipalities in Missouri to seek voter approval for a fee of up to $1.00 on any device that can contact 911. Areas adopting this new funding source would replace their current 911 funding source; they could not keep both.

Representatives Elaine Gannon and Glen Kolkmeyer congratulate Representative Jeanie Lauer upon passage of her 911 funding legislation. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications – click for larger version)

The bill would create a 3-percent charge on the purchase of prepaid phones, to go toward 911 funding. A portion of that money would go to 911 service in the county the phone was bought in; the rest would go to a statewide fund to support and improve 911.

The bill would also address the need for 911 facilities in many parts of the state to consolidate. Lauer said in Missouri’s 114 counties there are 185 Public Safety Answering Points, or PSAPs.

Under the bill, where consolidation is needed, voters could not be asked to approve a new funding stream unless a plan for consolidation is developed. Lauer says some locations are ready to consolidate but need the bill to be passed to make it possible.

Now that legislature has voted to send the bill to Governor Eric Greitens, Lauer is hopeful it will be signed into law.

“He has been supportive at the very beginning. I have continued to talk to his staff and they have continued to assure support, so I would certainly hope that he would find this important,” said Layer.

Greitens could sign the bill into law, veto it, or allow it to become law without his consent.

Earlier story: Term-limited House members hopes for, at long last, statewide 911 funding solution’s success