Panel: Funding is an issue for 911 training

Regarding the mechanics of creating a national certification program, the consensus thinking is to start by analyzing the various standards that exist within the four training organizations and within jurisdictions across the county, and then use the best of them to establish training guidelines. These guidelines would ensure that 911 telecommunicators are able to meet the core competencies of the job. Once they are established, they would be used to craft legislation that each state could use to mandate telecommunicator certification.

Each of the presenters—English, Parry, Wooten, as well as April Heinze, director of Eaton County (Mich.) Emergency Communications; Heather Pierce, standards coordinator, PowerPhone; Jamison Peevyhouse, director, Weakley County (Tenn.) Emergency Communications; Mark Lee, vice president of the Denise Amber Lee Foundation; and Carlynn Page, associate director, IAED—stressed that the guidelines would represent a baseline and that state and local jurisdictions could add to them, based on their unique circumstances.

Speakers also emphasized that states and local jurisdictions should not be allowed to subtract from the national guidelines and that any training-and-certification program should have some sort of test—or other method of establishing competency—associated with it.

“This will be the equivalent of training a driver to understand that an octagonal red sign means, ‘Stop.’” Wooten said.

Regardless of how those core competencies ultimately are defined, the consensus was that the requirements should be national in scope and that states should be held accountable, if they fail to implement a training-and-certification program based on the national requirements.

“Any legislation that comes out of this effort has to have teeth,” Heinze said. “The teeth are what are going to make this happen. It has to be tied to some sort of penalty.”

Some suggested that withholding federal highway funds might do the trick, but others thought incentives—perhaps a pool of additional federal money—would be more effective.

While the notion of a national training-and-certification requirement might seem unassailable, the devil will be in the details, and there will be plenty of challenges, with funding chief among them.

“We need this national requirement, but each state will need to figure out how to pay for it,” Wooten said. “We can’t come up with a national funding program.”

While acknowledging the funding issues, Page suggested that the states—and the jurisdictions in them—take a bigger-picture perspective.

“The funding issues are real,” she said. “But one major tragedy can result in a lawsuit that will cost you money that you can’t even dream about now.”

The simple act of establishing training-and-certification guidelines could render the funding question irrelevant, according to John Kelly, NENA executive board counsel.

“No one asks who’s going to fund police, fire and EMS training, because it is expected by government and by the public,” Kelly said. “911 doesn’t have that—yet. You first have to establish a bottom-line core competency, like the other sectors have.”

Peevyhouse acknowledged that the effort to create national training-and-certification guidelines may take years and it will require input from many. Further, it will take a Herculean effort to distill that input down to something manageable, he said.

 “The Big 4 training organizations are the meat and potatoes,” Peevyhouse said.  “Your ideas are the carrots and the spices. This is going to take some time and patience, but when we’re done, we’re going to have something that’s going to change people’s lives.”