Lawmaker Pushes 'Fix 911 Act' After California Scraps $450 Million Upgrade

(TNS) — A California lawmaker wants more oversight over the delayed effort to create a modernized 911 system after an agency spent over $450 million on the project only to later scrap the design.

On Thursday, state Sen. Tony Strickland, R–Huntington Beach, proposed his “Fix 911 Act,” which would require the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services to provide the Legislature with quarterly reports about the project until its completion.

Stickland said the legislation follows reporting by The Sacramento Bee and NBC Bay Area that found the state decided to pause deployment of the massive technology project after encountering call-routing and reliability issues. Cal OES officials decided to scrap the regional approach the agency had adopted and ended the contracts it had with several regional vendors in favor of a new statewide design.

“The fact is we lack accountability and transparency,” Strickland said in an interview. “There was a lot of fanfare about the improvements, but at the end of the day we have nothing to show for it.”

Cal OES spokesperson Anita Gore said in a statement that the agency does not comment on pending legislation.

When Gov. Gavin Newsom first assumed office in 2019, he vowed to replace California’s legacy 911 system that relied on infrastructure from the 1970s. Cal OES hired several contractors to build out a regional system that could better locate callers seeking emergency services and allow people to communicate using text messaging and video calls.

When the state turned on the new system in 2024 issues arose. Dispatchers in the Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office said that calls were lost and misrouted after the Next Generation 911 system was rolled out in their region, which prompted Cal OES to pause deployment. The following year, Cal OES informed several contractors it was planning to redesign the system.

Strickland was elected to his Southern California seat last year after two previous stints in the Legislature, in both the Assembly and the Senate. He said that his constituents have raised concerns about spending by state leaders in Sacramento. The 911 project and California’s effort to build high-speed rail are two examples of that.

Strickland said the delayed project made him question Cal OES’s current authority to control how much Californians pay in monthly 911 phone taxes. He said the agency’s control over the surcharge should be evaluated in the context of its progress based on the quarterly reports on the project’s development, implementation timeline and system readiness required in his bill.

Recently, the topic of fraud has been of particular interest to national Republicans. The Trump administration has attempted to withhold funding for child care and family assistance programs in five Democrat-led states, citing concerns over fraud.

On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission chairman sent Newsom a letter demanding information about the state’s Next Generation 911 project and accused the governor of misspending state and federal dollars.

Strickland said his legislation was not influenced by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s Tuesday letter.

The Huntington Beach Republican said he was hopeful his colleagues across the aisle will support his proposal for more oversight given they have expressed interest in this issue previously. Last year, said State Sen. Laura Richardson, D-San Pedro, grilled Cal OES officials about the lack of a timeline and the project’s ballooning cost during a May hearing.

He said this bill is an important step for the Legislature to act as a co-equal branch of the government and ensure that tax dollars are being spent responsibly.

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