Dead Ringers;

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TED SCHWARTZ WAS SURE A proposed Illinois bill to boost taxes for long-distance telephone users was dead. So he moved The Apac Corp., his telemarketing service bureau, from Skokie to a state-of-the-art facility outside Chicago, "confident this bill was killed."

Schwartz was wrong. Last year, the bill passed. Now such heavy long-distance phone users as Apac will be ringing up $60 million a year for Illinois's coffers, and Schwartz says that he'll look elsewhere for any future expansion. But before Illinois telemarketers up and leave, they had better check out the more than 100 proposed bills and laws aimed at regulating the industry in almost every other state.

Consumer complaints against sham phone operations and intrusive dinnertime cold calls have provided the impetus for most of the measures to regulate the frenetically growing industry. Telemarketing sales revenue nearly doubled from 1983 to 1985, and totaled $91 billion last year. Companies with in-house telemarketing operations, the bulk of which are small businesses, numbered 25,000 in 1983, 80,000 in 1985, and are expected to reach 140,000 this year.

For telemarketers aimed at consumers, the biggest threat is the "asterisk bills" being considered in 18 states. By starring their phone directory listing, consumers could avoid "junk calls." A quarter of the pending bills regulate the use of recorded-message machines. Three states are considering bills to limit the hours that telemarketers may phone. And business-to-business marketers aren't off the hook entirely. They could be hit by some of the broadly written bills and others requiring time-consuming paperwork.

Faced with these prospects, two industry associations have proposed self-regulating guidelines to address consumer conderns. It is a sure signal that the industry expects to have its telephone lines clipped -- and soon.