With some concentrated effort - or help from Congress - Gregg County may soon be out of the cell phone business.

Depending on whom you talk to, it’s about time.

At present, the county provides cell phones to key employees with the sheriff ’s office, District Attorney’s office and juvenile department, as well as to 33 employees within the main county hierarchy, depending on the need for cell phone contact for their jobs.

Out of the county’s 500-plus employees, the number issued a county cell phone is a minority, said county purchasing agent Shelia Embrey.

“County department heads and elected officials decide who needs a cell phone to do their job,” she said.

“Our policy says don’t use them for personal use, and cell phone bills are audited,” said Gregg County auditor Laurie Woloszyn.

“We’re reviewing it and we want to make sure we’ve looked at all sides of it. We want to make sure than as an employer, Gregg County is handling cell phones correctly,” she said.

The county auditor’s office handles cell phone billing and reimbursement.

According to existing IRS guidelines, government employees under such systems are supposed to reimburse the county for any personal calls.

Because of minute allowances, however, Gregg County employees are only paying for minutes used that go over their department’s prescribed cell phone plans, said Valeria Palmer, first assistant auditor for Gregg County.

“If there’s an overage, if it’s determined the overage is related to personal calls, the bill goes to them,” Palmer said. “If there’s not an overage, they just submit the bill. As long as they’re under on their minutes, nobody has to write a check.”

Shelia Embrey explained the difference between work and personal calls.

“If you called your friend Clare to set up a lunch date with another girlfriend, you’re going to know you called Clare. You’re going to add up all the personal calls, and you pay the check to Gregg County. You also have to sign an affadavit that it’s true and correct. That goes to the auditor’s office,” she said.

Embrey said current county cell phone policy was first formed almost a quarter of a century ago - back in 1986, in an era when cell phones or “car phones” were more of a novelty.

“That was the original cell phone policy written back then, and it’s changed very little,” she said.

However, according to www.irs.gov, the Internal Revenue Service Web site, if a state agency provides an employee with a cell phone and pays the monthly service charge, the employee is required to highlight all personal calls on the monthly bill. The employee is then required to timely reimburse the agency for the cost of the personal calls, and the employee is charged a pro rata share of the monthly charge.

If the government provides an employee a cell phone for business purposes, and the government’s written policy prohibits personal use of the phone but the government does not audit phone use to verify exclusive business use, the fair market value of the phone, plus each monthly service charge and any individual call charges are supposed to be reported as taxable income to the employee on the W-2.

However, if the employee owns the phone, any amounts the employer reimburses the employee for business use of the employee’s own phone may be excludable from wages if the employee accounts for the expense under certain rules.

The only other alternative is for the government’s written policy to prohibit personal use of the phone. In this case, the IRS says the government routinely audits the employee’s phone billings to confirm that personal calls were not made.

But Congress is looking at legislation that would make cell phones like desk phones for government employees, said Gregg County auditor Laurie Woloszyn.

“NACo (the National Association of Counties) has been trying to get Congress to view cell phones like they do desk phones. It’s part of doing business, you’re going to get personal calls.

“That’s what organizations would like Congress to do, because cell phones are virtually the same things (as desk phones),” Woloszyn said.

“As we look to the future, we look at monthly supplements - that way, we get out of the cell phone business and we don’t have to deal with the IRS issues,” she said.

Wolozsyn said counties that give employees supplements for cell phones often have tiered plans with three different flat amounts, based on the employees’ needs for work calling. Employees who are out on the road may have additional money for GPS locator features, for example.

“Most counties I’ve looked at are trying to get out of the cell phone business,” she said.

Going to a stipend system might make sense, Wolozsyn said.

“In my mind, it wouldn’t cost any more money. Instead of paying for the cell phone, the county would pay the employee to be responsible for their own cell phone,” she said, noting that providing an allowance to employees to purchase their own phones would present its own challenges.

“It’s one of those taxable fringe benefits according to the IRS and we want to make sure the county is doing what’s required. Whether we agree with it or not, we still have to follow those guidelines,” she said.

While the idea of a flat stipend to pay for a cell phone sounds simple, it may not be, Embrey said.

“As our assistant DA said, if you turned around and did that right now, that would be considered a raise,” she said.

That would be a raise at a time when County Judge Bill Stoudt implemented a 10 percent cut across the board.

There might be another hitch: desk phones are generally priced by the month and not by the number of minutes. Taking plans currently billed by specific plans and removing the per-minute equation - and making them unlimited like desk phones - could quite likely hike the county’s cell phone bill.

Currently, the juvenile, district attorney and sheriff ’s departments are on separate pools because of unique telephony needs. (The total cell phone bill for the county runs close to $14,000 a quarter, according to figures from the auditor’s office.)

Embrey brought a State of Texas-brokered deal with Verizon Wireless to the commission Monday morning.

The proposed plan would cost $1,238.31 a month for the main group of 33 phones, providing a pool of 10,200 minutes for the main county group, which excludes the sheriff ’s, DA and juvenile departments.

According to a chart provided by Embry, there are 33 cell phones currently in the main county pool. On average, current usage on the 33-phone pool would account for about 75 percent of the proposed 10,200-minute pool.

The chart, which doesn’t go into detail about how many minutes are free mobile-to-mobile, has an “average use” column that shows average usage varying widely, up to 300- plus minutes.

The top five cell phone users in that pool are Bruce Dalme, DPS, 875 minutes; Talyna Carlson, Justice of the Peace 3, 743 minutes; James Plumlee, Constable Pct. 1, 625 minutes; and Robby Cox, Constable Pct. 4 and Bill Eckhart, Constable Pct. 3, 500 minutes apiece.

Pct. 1 Constable James Plumlee averaged 625 minutes of usage a month, according to the chart. He has a lot of job-related phone contact, he said.

From time to time, he gets family related calls, Plumlee said.

“If I have an overage, I just write them a check,” he said, adding that he doesn’t find current county policies to be an imposition.

“I’m very blessed to be in the position I’m in,” he said.

Pct. 3 justice of the peace Talyna Bennett Carlson uses an average of 743 minutes on her county-issued cell phone, according to the county chart.

She has courtrooms in Kilgore and in Gladewater.

Carlson said that as one of just two JPs in the state holding court in more than one office (Russ Casey in Tarrant County is the other one), she relies heavily on her cell phone.

“A lot of my down time is in my vehicle,” she said, noting that that’s when she returns a lot of calls.

She sifts through her phone bill each month and writes a check for overages for personal calls. The amount varies, she said.

“I go through it, I write a check and send it to the auditor’s office,” she said.

The current system seemed bulky to the commissioners court Monday.

“That seems like an awful lot of busywork,” said Pct. 2 Commissioner Darryl Primo.

Primo moved the issue be tabled for another meeting to allow time for additional research.

County Judge Bill Stoudt concurred.

“If this will keep us from dealing with this on a month-tomonth basis, I’m okay with that,” he said.

Sifting through the plans and policing the taxation of individual employees’ personal minutes could be time-consuming, said Pct. 3 Commissioner Bob Barbee.

“There’s going to be personal calls, and to penalize them is a shame, to have to pay tax on a cell phone,” Barbee said. “The problem is they’re going to have to go through and try to sort it out to determine what is a personal call and what is a county call.”

For county workers who have to travel widely on the 150 miles of roads in Barbee’s precinct, delineating each day which calls were personal and which were county calls doesn’t make sense, he said, taking exception to the IRS’ standing policy.

“There’s just got to be a better way to do it than that,” he said.

Barbee said he’s hoping the county can wait until the new budget year begins - October - to explore options and change the policy. Dealing with cell phone issues is simply a modern reality, he said.

“Cell phones are almost a must. I know it’s something that in the past we didn’t have to have, but it makes it much quicker to get to jobs and take care of problems,” he said.