Most Texas counties don't have enhanced 911

So here's something to keep in mind when you're out bouncing along some rural road and your car gets smashed by by a jackalope: You can call 911 from your cell phone, but that doesn't mean anybody's going to be able to find you. That's because most Texas counties — about 80 percent — don't have the requipment to allow emergency operators to pinpoint cell phone locations. And that is because the Legislature keeps pulling money out of a fund created by a 911 tax that's supposed to pay for such things. Good to know the folks under the big pink dome are looking out for us.

The lack of up-to-date 911 equipment isn't a problem in and around the state's major cities, but it means smaller counties end up facing frustrating situations where people are in danger and can't be found. An example: Gail Sternberg, a Waller County woman who called police on her cell phone to say she had been shot. She gave her address, but her call bounced off a cell tower in a nearby county where there was a street by the same name, so police went to that street first. It took them 34 minutes to find Sternberg, and by that time she was dead.

Texas is one of 15 states with the cell-911 technology in 20 percent of its counties or less, and yet about half the state's 911 calls last year were made on cell phones. State Sen. Steve Ogden, a Bryan Republican and finance chairman on the Legislative Budget Board, declined to tell reporters why 911 tax money has been spent on other things. (If you're curious, here's how location-tracking technology works.)