New York Diverts 41 Cents of Every 911 Fee Dollar to the General Fund
Summary
New York collects a $1.20-a-month 911 surcharge on every wireless phone bill. State law sends 41.7% of it — $113 million in fiscal year 2024, $1.3 billion since 2010 — to the general fund, not to emergency dispatch. Nationally, more than a third of 911 centers reported vacancy rates above 30% the same year, and lost nearly 4,000 staff in twelve months.
Follow the dollar
NY Tax Law §186-f sets the surcharge at $1.20 a month for standard wireless service and 90 cents for prepaid phones, and it does the diversion math right in the statute: exactly 41.7% of every dollar — 50 cents of the $1.20 — is routed to the state's general fund before a cent reaches a dispatch console. The Empire Center for Public Policy, analyzing the state's own collection filings, found the surcharge raised $270,904,182 in fiscal year 2024. Of that, $112,967,044 — the statutory 41.7% — went straight to the general fund. The remainder, $157,937,138, reached the state's Public Safety Communications Account, which in turn funds the state police, interoperability grants for first responders, and grants to local 911 call centers.
View data as table
| 911 surcharge collected, FY2024 | $270,904,182 | NY Tax Law §186-f |
|---|---|---|
| Diverted to state general fund | $112,967,044 | 41.7% of collections |
| Public Safety Communications Account | $157,937,138 | 58.3% of collections |
This isn't new, and it isn't improving. The 's own 911-fee report to Congress found that in calendar year 2018, five states diverted roughly $187 million nationally — more than 7% of the $2.6 billion collected that year, according to then-Chairman Ajit Pai. New York's share of that diversion was already an estimated $83 million — the state didn't fully disclose its number that year either. Run the comparison forward: New York's diversion grew from roughly $83 million in 2018 to $113 million in fiscal 2024, a 36% increase, while the 41.7% statutory carve-out that causes it has sat unchanged on the books. Over the fifteen years for which the Empire Center has data (FY2010–FY2024), New York has diverted $1,302,221,190 out of $3,122,832,590 collected — 41.7%, exactly as designed, applied consistently for a decade and a half.
The same system, counted in people
None of that diverted money was ever earmarked for staffing — it's general fund revenue by law, not a payroll line for 911 centers. But the desks the surcharge is nominally supposed to support are, separately, badly understaffed, and the two facts sit next to each other whether or not the statute connects them.
View data as table
| 30–49% vacant | 166 centers | IAED/NASNA, 2022 data |
|---|---|---|
| 50–69% vacant | 92 centers | IAED/NASNA, 2022 data |
| 70%+ vacant | 13 centers | IAED/NASNA, 2022 data |
The IAED/NASNA staffing survey, covering 774 emergency communications centers across 47 states, found 271 of them — 35% — running with 30% or more of their dispatcher positions vacant, including 13 centers where 70% or more of the seats were empty. The same centers reported 3,952 total staff departures in a single year, and 36% had fewer filled positions in 2022 than in 2019. NENA's follow-up "Pulse of 9-1-1" surveys show only partial recovery since: the share of centers reporting any open position fell from 82% in 2024 to 74% in 2025, but burnout — not hiring — is now the profession's top-cited problem, with a 22% training-failure rate for new hires and nearly 70% of telecommunicators reporting daily pre-shift stress.
The takeaway
- The diversion is not a loophole — it's the statute. New York's Tax Law spells out the 41.7% general-fund cut in the same section that creates the 911 surcharge. There is no accounting failure to fix, only a policy choice to reverse.
- It has gotten worse, not better. New York's diverted total rose from an estimated $83 million in 2018 to a confirmed $113 million in fiscal 2024 — growth, not correction, in a practice the has flagged in every annual report it has issued since 2009.
- The people side of the system is starving on its own timeline. More than a third of 911 centers nationally can't fill a third of their seats. Fixing the money doesn't automatically fix the staffing — but starving the money never helps it.
New York figures cover the state's fiscal year (April–March); the national diversion figures cover calendar years and are not directly additive with the New York totals, which are one state's contribution to the national figure. Staffing figures are from a 2022 data-year survey, the most granular vacancy-rate breakdown publicly available; NENA's 2025 survey updates prevalence but not severity.
Sources
- Empire Center for Public Policy, The 411 On New York's 911 Skim — analysis of official New York State 911-surcharge collection filings under Tax Law §186-f, including the FY2024 and 15-year (FY2010–FY2024) totals. empirecenter.org
- Route Fifty, Five States Diverted 911 Fees For Other Purposes, Says — reporting on the 's calendar-year-2018 911 fee diversion findings, including the $187 million national total and New York's estimated $83 million share. route-fifty.com
- Federal Communications Commission, 911 Fee Reports and Reporting — the 's ongoing annual-report series to Congress on state collection and diversion of 911 fees, the origin of the national diversion findings cited above. fcc.gov
- IAED/NASNA, America's 911 Workforce Is in Crisis — nationwide 911 staffing survey (774 centers, 47 states, 2022 data), hosted by the National 911 Program. 911.gov
- EMS1, Study: Staffing an issue for nearly 50% of 911 dispatch centers — corroborating coverage of the IAED/NASNA survey's vacancy-rate and departure figures. ems1.com
- National Emergency Number Association, Third Annual "Pulse of 9-1-1" Report — 2025 follow-up survey on 911 workforce vacancy prevalence, burnout, and training-failure rates. nena.org
Comments
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Every wireless bill in New York carries a line item most customers never read: a $1.20 monthly "public safety communications" surcharge. It sounds like it pays for 911. Under state law, less than 59 cents of it does. The rest is diverted to the general fund by statute — not by accident, not by emergency, but as the plainly written design of the tax. Meanwhile, the call centers the surcharge is named for are short-staffed nationwide.