Call 911. You need to report a robbery.

Except that maybe you can’t because you may be using a cell phone in a place where your call will be bounced to a dispatcher somewhere else—that’s happened—and you’ll have to report a technology failure as well. Which brings us back to the robbery.

Somebody has swiped the “911 tax” money you paid on your cell phone bill. Actually, make that “swept.” And even if your call is delayed, the culprit won’t be hard to find. It’s New York State.

Wielding a giant broom, the state has swept a 70-cent monthly surcharge on New York cell phone bills imposed— a 1991 “tax” that was supposed to go toward technology to locate people making emergency phone calls from their cell phones—into the general fund.

Instead of technology improvements, the money is being used to fund the operation of state agencies and other general programs.

News staff reporter Stephen T. Watson recently showed that the money being charged cell phone users—check the writing in small print that comes with the bill—is being used for general revenue and that, to add insult to injury, the surcharge was raised in 2002 to $1.20 per month. That has generated roughly $600 million over 15 years.

From that revenue, a meager-by-comparison $84 million has gone to the municipalities that operate 911 centers, according to the State 911 Coordinators Association.

Add to that a state comptroller’s report showing millions of dollars spent on hotel rooms, meals in restaurants, office supplies and laundry service. Surcharge money gets swept into the general fund and sent to the State Police, the Department of Correctional Services and other agencies. And to the National Guard, which paid for hotel rooms, dry-cleaning and meals at Denny’s and other restaurants.

To be fair, the state is in a continuing fiscal crisis that justifies some emergency financial measures. But this diversion predates that crisis and raiding what was supposed to be a targeted funding stream to support other uses shouldn’t just be routine practice. New Yorkers don’t need to be taken to the cleaners anymore, let alone pay for the privilege.

County officials have a real beef here, especially when state officials claim most of the revenue has supported public safety initiatives. Tell that to the person dialing 911 and waiting for emergency services who has been diverted to the wrong county, to Pennsylvania or to Canada. The bugs in technology have yet to be worked out completely, a task made more difficult when the money to do so is being used in other places.

In a society full of Blackberry cell phones, Apple iPhones, voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) and whatever else to-day’s technology can devise to make communications simpler and cheaper, keeping up with the communications explosion is a difficult enough task even with funding intact. But the public is paying for that service. Restore the revenue stream to its intended use—or change the wording on the bills from“911 surcharge” to a more simple “fleecing.”