Sure, operator, we'll take the call. But we'd like to reverse the charges.

A $4 to $5 rebate on wireless bills belongs in the text-happy hands of the phones' users. The state Legislature should hang up on Gov. Jim Doyle's proposal to use a little budgetary sleight of hand and shift those dollars into government coffers.

For the past few years, a surcharge on customer bills has paid for improvements to the 911 system so dispatchers can track emergency calls from cell phones. Because the project was completed ahead of schedule, the state Public Service Commission voted last summer to refund the leftover money to customers through their cell phone providers.

Instead, Doyle sensed an opportunity. Figuring customers wouldn't miss what they never had, he proposed keeping the money and distributing it to already lean-running local governments.

Perhaps using the $25 million to boost police or fire department staffing would make more of an impact than returning a few dollars to individual residents. Yet this is one of those proverbial good intentions paving a road that slopes sharply downward.

This wouldn't be the first time a state leader has diverted money from its intended use. Several years after Gov. Scott McCallum used most of the infamous tobacco settlement money to balance one budget rather than fight smoking, Doyle may figure taxpayers have tacitly accepted these kinds of tricks.

Are Wisconsinites too weary to protest every one of these attempts? Maybe, but that's not the same as acceptance.

This is the wrong place to be nickel-and-diming residents. American wireless users shelled out $21 billion in taxes and fees last year, according to an industry group. The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association and a bipartisan group in Congress are making headway on a bill that would stop local and state governments from adding new cell-phone taxes for five years.

Besides, Doyle's secretary of administration, Michael Morgan, has said the governor wants to minimize quick-fix solutions to the current fiscal shortfall because they won't help in future budgets. As a one-time payment, the cell-phone refund would just serve as another budgetary Band-Aid for the state.

If anyone needs the first-aid kit, it's the residents who keep getting gouged.