NG-911 Backers Hope to Keep Hill Support for Spectrum Sales Funding Despite Reconciliation Push
Backers of federal funding for next-generation 911 tech upgrades told us they remain hopeful that lawmakers will reach an agreement on a spectrum title in a budget reconciliation measure that allocates some revenue from future FCC sales to those projects. GOP leaders have been pushing to reserve that money entirely as an offset for tax cuts initially enacted during the first Trump administration (see 2502190068). Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz of Texas and other Republicans are emphasizing auction proceeds as a reconciliation funding source after repeatedly opposing several spectrum packages during the last Congress that used the potential money to pay for a range of telecom projects (see 2308100058).
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National Emergency Number Association (NENA) officials told us Monday that they see an opening to reverse Capitol Hill’s perceived shift this year on how to use spectrum sales revenue. The group views the 2025 Spectrum Pipeline Act (HR-651), which some GOP leaders are touting as their preferred text for an airwaves reconciliation title (see 2501230064), as “a first bite of the apple and beginning of negotiations,” said NENA Vice President-Government Affairs Jonathan Gilad during an interview as the group convened in Washington to meet with lawmakers about their legislative priorities. HR-651, like its 2024 version, proposes requiring that NTIA identify at least 2,500 MHz of midband spectrum to reallocate within the next five years.
Gilad acknowledged that GOP leaders are eyeing using “a lot of the proceeds … as offsets for the tax cuts,” but “we sincerely believe that Congress will consider it necessary and … very appropriate right now to ensure that 911 has cybersecurity and ensures public safety.” NENA’s conversations with lawmakers thus far in this Congress “haven’t gone” in the direction of discussing alternative mechanisms for NG-911, Gilad said. He noted that there also wasn’t “any opposition" from House Commerce Republicans during the last Congress to using auction revenue on NG-911, “which is a good sign, considering all of the politics at play at the moment.”
NENA CEO Brian Fontes said NG-911 funding “was clearly a bipartisan issue” that had widespread GOP support during previous Congresses. He noted the House Commerce Committee in 2023 unanimously advanced its Spectrum Auction Reauthorization Act with language to allocate up to $14.8 billion in future proceeds for NG-911 spending (see 2305240069). The Senate Commerce Committee was unable to advance its Spectrum and National Security Act, which proposed giving NG-911 $2 billion in future revenue (see 2409170066).
NENA is telling the Hill that “911 is no longer just a call for your individual safety,” Fontes said. “It's a call for your safety in the workplace and school. It's a call for the safety of the community.” The group is also informing lawmakers that “legacy 911 systems are prone to” cyberattacks, and NG-911 upgrades will help “ensure that the public is able to reach” emergency dispatchers in the future, he said. NENA is again advocating for the 911 Supporting Accurate Views of Emergency Services Act (HR-637) and Enhancing First Response Act (S-725), both of which would reclassify public safety call takers and dispatchers as a protective service.
Lawmakers Weigh In
House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Richard Hudson, R-N.C., a co-chair of the Congressional NG-911 Caucus, insisted in an interview that GOP leaders haven’t made "final decisions about what the reconciliation bill will look like,” including a spectrum title. “Hopefully we'll get the process started” soon, after the lower chamber voted 217-215 Tuesday night for Republicans’ budget resolution (H.Con.Res. 14), which will provide a basis for the reconciliation package, Hudson told us ahead of the floor action. “It’s still a priority for me to find a way to fund” NG-911, even if it isn't from spectrum revenue.
Senate Commerce member Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, one of several Hill Republicans who spoke at a NENA-sponsored breakfast event Wednesday, told reporters she believes a spectrum reconciliation title could conceivably allocate sales proceeds to pay for tax cuts and NG-911. Other Republicans at the event also appeared supportive of funding NG-911 but avoided details about how to generate that money.
“What we have to do first is” conduct an inventory of federal agencies’ spectrum holdings and “figure out who is squatting on” those bands, Blackburn said. If Congress passes the Spectrum Pipeline Act, which she co-sponsored last year (see 2403110066), “we'll be able to set the auctions and ballpark what we think we're going to get and how [the proceeds] can be used” for NG-911. Congress must “go through an orderly process to figure out what” the auction revenue estimates mean, “but be certain that we are able to pay for” NG-911 along with the tax cuts offset, she said.
House Communications Subcommittee member Nanette Barragan, D-Calif., said after the NENA event that she's skeptical Republicans would agree to make auction revenue available for NG-911 when their priority is to use the money as a reconciliation offset. “It's an irresponsible use of taxpayer dollars to give tax cuts to billionaires instead of investing in communities and emergency services,” she told us. That's “not on my list as a priority.”