Once a New York county sets up enhanced 911 dispatch, can it hand off the dispatching for certain towns to a village police department instead?

Plain-English summary

Before Allegany County set up its countywide enhanced 911 (E911) service, the Village of Wellsville Police Department ran its own 911 communications and dispatch center for the 593 telephone exchange, which included the Village of Wellsville, the Towns of Wellsville, Willing, Scio, and Alma, and the Hamlets of Allentown and Petrolia. The village had written agreements with each town and hamlet and charged a small fee.

In 1992, Allegany County adopted a local law under County Law Article 6 establishing a countywide E911 system funded by a surcharge on telephone access lines. The county chose to dispatch from its own Fire and Emergency Communications and Dispatch Center in Belmont. The towns and hamlets that used to be dispatched out of Wellsville wanted to go back to that arrangement and asked whether the county could simply hand the dispatch function back to the Wellsville Police Department.

The AG concluded that it could not. Article 6's whole design is to consolidate dispatch at the county level. The statute requires the county that establishes E911 to operate at least one public service answering point that serves the entire E911 service area, twenty-four hours a day. When Allegany County enacted Local Law No. 1, all emergency dispatch functions in the county were transferred to the county. The county was then locked into choosing where its own public service answering point would be, not whether to delegate the dispatch function to a local agency. Routing dispatch back through a village police department would defeat the legislative aim of coordinating emergency response across municipal boundaries.

The opinion follows the AG's earlier ruling on the same statute in Op Atty Gen (Inf) No. 94-34, which held that an E911 county cannot transfer responsibility for operating the system to towns, villages, or police agencies within the county.

Currency note

This opinion was issued in 1998. Subsequent statutory amendments, court decisions, or later AG opinions may have changed the analysis. Treat this page as historical context, not current legal advice. Verify current law before relying on any specific rule, deadline, or remedy mentioned here.

Common questions

Could the county contract with the village to operate the public service answering point?

The opinion does not address contracting. It holds that the dispatch function itself cannot be delegated back to a village. The AG's reasoning is that the public service answering point must serve the entire county and be operated by the county, not divided up by municipality. Whether a county could contract for operations support without transferring the dispatch responsibility itself would be a separate question on different facts.

What does "public service answering point" mean?

It is the call-taking center where a 911 call lands first. Article 6 requires at least one PSAP per E911 county, operating around the clock, located within and serving the E911 service area. In Allegany County, the PSAP was at the Office of Emergency Services in the County Office Building in Belmont.

Why does the statute insist on countywide coordination?

The legislative findings in County Law § 300 emphasized that emergencies cross municipal lines and that delays from a patchwork of emergency numbers cost lives. Selective routing and automatic number and location identification, the defining features of E911, work best when one center has the whole picture. The AG read this design intent as inconsistent with handing dispatch back to a single-village center.

Did the county have to dispatch from where it was already dispatching?

The county could pick the location of its PSAP by resolution. Allegany County had passed Resolution No. 240-88 establishing a Fire and Emergency Communications and Dispatch Center at the County Office Building, and the 1992 Local Law incorporated that arrangement. The county's flexibility was in choosing PSAP location, not in choosing whether to delegate dispatch to a non-county entity.

What was the towns' practical option if they preferred the village center?

The opinion offers no workaround. Under Article 6, once the county is the E911 operator, towns within it do not have a statutory mechanism to opt back into a village-run dispatch center. Their recourse, if any, would have been to lobby the county to relocate or restructure the PSAP, or to seek a legislative change.

Background and statutory framework

County Law Article 6 authorizes counties (defined to exclude New York City and other counties wholly within a city) to impose a surcharge of up to thirty-five cents per telephone access line per month to fund E911 service. The Legislature's findings and declaration of intent, set out in § 300, framed E911 as a public safety improvement of paramount importance and described basic 911 as inadequate compared to E911's selective routing and automatic identification of caller location and number.

Section 308(1) requires the operator of an E911 system to maintain at least one public service answering point within and serving the E911 service area, on a twenty-four hour basis. Section 303(1) sets the surcharge ceiling. Section 301(1) defines "municipality" for Article 6 purposes as the eligible county.

The AG's prior opinion in Op Atty Gen (Inf) No. 94-34 read these provisions together as expressing a clear legislative preference for county-level coordination of emergency response, not for re-distributing dispatch to local agencies. The 1998 opinion to Allegany County simply applies that earlier holding to a new fact pattern.

Citations

• County Law, art 6, §§ 300, 301(1), 303(1), 308, 308(1) (E911 enabling statute, surcharge, PSAP requirement).
• Allegany County, Local Law No. 1, § 8 (January 29, 1992) (establishing the countywide E911 system).
• County of Allegany, Resolution No. 240-88 (establishing the county Fire and Emergency Communications and Dispatch Center).
• Op Atty Gen (Inf) No. 94-34 (earlier opinion holding that E911 dispatch responsibility cannot be transferred to towns, villages, or police agencies within the county).

Source

• Landing page: https://ag.ny.gov/libraries-documents/opinions/opinions-year
• Original PDF: https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/opinions/I_98-29_pw.pdf

Original opinion text

COUNTY LAW, ART 6, §§ 300, 301(1), 303(1), 308; ALLEGANY COUNTY LOCAL LAW NO. 1, § 9 (1992). Allegany County, after establishing an E911 system, may not turn over to the Village of Wellsville Police Department the dispatch of emergency services for the Village of Wellsville, the Towns of Wellsville, Willing, Scio and Alma, and the Hamlets of Allentown and Petrolia.

June 29, 1998

Keith A. Slep, Esq.
Town Attorney
Town of Wellsville
P. O. Box 1237
Wellsville, NY 14895

Informal Opinion
No. 98-29

Dear Mr. Slep:
You have requested an opinion regarding whether Allegany County, in choosing the method of dispatch used by its Countywide enhanced 911 service (E911), may turn over the dispatch of emergency services for several towns and hamlets in the County to the Village of Wellsville Police Department. You have informed us that prior to the establishment of E911 service in Allegany County, the Village of Wellsville Police Department operated its own 911 communications and dispatch center. Emergency calls were received by the Wellsville Police Department from the entire 593 exchange, which includes the Towns of Wellsville, Willing, Scio and Alma and the Hamlets of Allentown and Petrolia. The Wellsville Police Department received all emergency calls and dispatched the appropriate agency. The Village of Wellsville had written agreements with each town and hamlet and charged a nominal fee for the dispatch service. In 1992, Allegany County passed a local law establishing a County-wide enhanced 911 service. All localities within Allegany County are now serviced by the County-wide E911 service, including those previously serviced by the Wellsville Police Department. However, you have told us that the towns and hamlets previously serviced by the Wellsville Police Department dispatch center wish to once again have their emergency calls dispatched by the Wellsville Police Department. Accordingly, you inquire whether the County, consistent with the E911 statutory

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authorization, may turn over the dispatch of emergency services for these towns and hamlets to the Village of Wellsville Police Department. County Law, article 6, authorizes municipalities1 "to adopt, amend or repeal local laws to impose a surcharge in an amount not to exceed thirty-five cents per [telephone service] access line per month on the customers of every service supplier within such municipality to pay for the costs associated with obtaining, operating and maintaining the telecommunication equipment and telephone services needed to provide an enhanced 911 emergency telephone system to serve such municipality." County Law, art 6,
§ 303(1).
The Legislature enacted article 6 to provide municipalities with a mechanism to assist them in obtaining, operating and maintaining an E911 system. The statute's aim was to increase the potential for providing E911 service to all citizens of the State. In the "Legislative findings and declaration of intent" found in County Law, article 6, § 300, the Legislature stated as follows: The legislature recognizes the paramount importance of the health, safety and welfare of the citizens of the state and further recognizes that when the lives or property of its citizens are in imminent danger that timely and appropriate assistance must be rendered. The legislature recognizes further that such assistance is almost always summoned by telephone and that a multiplicity of emergency telephone numbers exist within any one county and that unintentional, though avoidable, delays in reaching appropriate emergency aid can and do occur to the detriment and jeopardy of life and property.
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The legislature finds that the enhanced emergency telephone service known as E911 1

A municipality is defined as "any county except a county wholly contained within a city and any city having a population of one million or more persons." County Law, art 6, § 301(1).

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provides substantial benefits beyond basic 911 systems through the provision of selective routing and automatic number and location identification and that these enhancements not only significantly reduce the response time of emergency services but also represent the state of the art in failsafe emergency telephone system technology.
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It is clear from the statute and the "Legislative findings and declaration of intent" that the Legislature intended to transfer to counties outside the City of New York that establish E911 service the function of dispatching emergency services on a county-wide basis. Municipalities that establish E911 service must operate at least one public service answering point within and serving the E911 service area (i.e., the entire municipality) on a twenty-four hour basis. County Law, art 6, § 308(1). Allegany County's 1992 local law, enacted under County Law, article 6, established an enhanced 911 emergency telephone system to serve Allegany County and provided that "[a]t least one public service answering point within and serving the 911 service area shall be operated on a twenty-four hour basis. Such answering point or points shall be determined by resolution of the Board." County of Allegany, Local Law No. 1, § 8 (January 29, 1992). Prior to the establishment of E911 service and the imposition of a telephone surcharge therefor, Allegany County passed a resolution "[e]stablishing and designating the location of an Allegany County Fire and Emergency Communications and Dispatch Center and merging therein and transferring thereto the operations of the Allegany County Fire Control Center." County of Allegany, Resolution No. 240-88. This resolution established a fire and emergency communications and dispatch center, known as the "Allegany County Fire and Emergency Communications and Dispatch Center," located in the Office of Emergency Services, County Office Building, Belmont, New York. When Allegany County enacted Local Law No. 1 establishing E911 service, all emergency dispatch functions within the County were transferred to the County pursuant to County Law, article 6. Accordingly, Allegany County was entrusted with the selection and establishment of at least one public service answering point within the County. The Allegany County legislative body chose to have all emergency services within the County dispatched from the Allegany County Fire and Emergency Communications and Dispatch

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Center, located in the Office of Emergency Services, County Office Building, Belmont, New York. In a prior opinion of this office, involving County Law article 6, we stated that
[i]n our view, the statute clearly evinces the intent to establish a funding mechanism to support an E911 service that would coordinate the activities of public safety agencies throughout the county and not merely to upgrade [911] service in individual municipalities within the county. The transfer by a county of responsibility for operating the E911 system to towns, villages or police agencies within the county, would be contrary to the legislative intent. E911 is designed to coordinate emergency response in the county without regard for municipal boundaries. Such a centralized system helps to ensure the availability of needed assistance. Op Atty Gen (Inf) No. 94-34. Accordingly, Allegany County, having established E911 service, may not turn over to the Village of Wellsville Police Department the dispatch of emergency services for the Village of Wellsville, the Towns of Wellsville, Willing, Scio and Alma, and the Hamlets of Allentown and Petrolia. The Attorney General renders formal opinions only to officers and departments of State government. This perforce is an informal and unofficial expression of the views of this office. Very truly yours,

YVONNE M. HOVE
Assistant Attorney General