Sheriffs tell Senate committee aging 911 infrastructure is failing; urge funding to migrate to NextGen

At a Senate Judiciary and Rules Committee meeting, sheriffs and a policy advisor for the Idaho Association of Counties described repeated failures in Idaho's 911 infrastructure and urged lawmakers to fund a statewide migration to Next Generation 911 (NG9-1-1).

Kelly Brasfield, policy advisor for the Idaho Association of Counties, told the committee that Idaho established a $1 911 fee in 1988 and that the state has been slow to migrate to NG9-1-1 standards established after 2011. "That $1 fee that was established in 1988 is still the fee," Brasfield said, noting that counties now rely primarily on cell-phone-derived fee collections but that some counties do not participate in the state's grant-fee program.

Sheriff Sam Holst (Bonneville County), describing the technical background, said many dispatch centers still rely on legacy "9-1-1 trunks" — copper-based…