Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Paying for protection
Wolf again tries to get funds from state police-covered towns
There are 2,571 municipalities in Pennsylvania and yet 1,700 of them rely on the Pennsylvania State Police to provide full- or part-time police coverage. The 4,300 enlisted troopers on the force work out of 16 barracks across the commonwealth with jurisdiction over 82 percent of the state and about one-fourth (3.3 million) of the population.
Almost all counties have some mix of local and state police coverage while Philadelphia is the only county providing its own local police throughout, but a handful of counties had all of their municipalities relying solely on the state police.
At an annual operating budget of $1.2 billion, it is not a cheap law enforcement body to fund, but the 1,700 municipalities who receive their police protection essentially get it for free while everyone else has their property taxes pay for a local police force.
To provide new revenue streams to the force, Gov. Tom
Wolf again proposed a $25 per capita fee to municipalities that use state police coverage when he announced his 2018-19 budget proposal in Harrisburg on Feb. 6.
Wolf made the same proposal last year, but it was ultimately killed. It looks to happen again. “Proposing this plan again was just going to be dead on arrival,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. Stan Saylor, R-94 of York County. “I spoke to the governor prior to his address months before: As I told him last year when he proposed it, it wasn’t going to fly here.
“I explained to him very simply that if you look at the General Assembly, that kind of a proposal will never get the votes simply because there are too many state reps and senators who come from areas where they don’t have local police.”
Saylor added that he agrees with Wolf’s idea to recover some of the costs that go to funding the state police.
Currently, about $235 million in the general fund is appropriated to the force, but another $800 million comes from the motor license fund – known as the transportation fund which is used for repairing state roads, bridges and other infrastructure. License and registration fees and gas taxes are major revenue sources for this fund.
A $25 per person fee in state police-covered municipalities could generate as much $80 million in revenue.
There hasn’t been an announced plan by the governor on how he will collect this fee if it gets OK’d.
“There’s no clarity or details on his plan, which is another problem, one of several with the plan he has unveiled,” said Saylor. “One of the concerns I have is when you find something that doesn’t work and you know it’s not going to work, keep proposing it is not going to solve the problem.”
Wolf’s office could not be reached for comment to clarify fee collection.
Saylor and a number of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle, including Reps. Leanne Kreuger-Braneky, D-161 of Swarthmore, and Nick Miccarelli, R-162 of Ridley Park, have sponsored legislation that provide alternatives to the general $25 per person fee including limiting the fee to communities of over 10,000 people, restricting it to municipalities getting full-time coverage and reducing liquid fuels fund allocations to those receiving state police coverage. None have made it out of committee.
The per capita fee as it stands would affect residents all over the state regardless of income, whether it be Forest County where the combined rate for all taxing authorities is around 80 mills and the median household income is $36,000 or in Concord, where properties are taxed at 38 mills and the median household income is $90,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor you need good police coverage,” said Saylor. “The responsibility of emergency services is the responsibility of the local government … to provide ambulance, fire and police services. We at the state kick in for fire, law enforcement and a lot of those services, but we are not the ones who are solely responsible.”
State police provide protection to 55,000 residents in eight of Delaware County’s 49 municipalities: the townships of Chadds Ford, Concord, Edgmont, Middletown and Thornbury and the boroughs of Colwyn (parttime), Chester Heights and Rose Valley. Save for Colwyn, which only re-instituted part-time coverage in May 2017, these are all higherearning communities who receive free police coverage. “If the poor communities like the third-class cities (which includes Chester) can afford it because they have to, then some of our municipalities who have some wealth to them can afford one as well and not live off the piggyback of the rest of the taxpayers when they know that’s their responsibility,” said Saylor.
He later added about wealthier communities, “If you don’t want (local) police coverage then don’t ask for state police coverage. We cannot be all things to all people, and that is a case where they’re trying to get state police to do things locally they want done, but they don’t want to pay for it.”
Concord Supervisors President Dominic Pileggi could not be reached for comment to discuss the feasibility of establishing a township police department.
Saylor noted that there are very small communities of mere hundreds who really wouldn’t be able to afford their own municipal police department where state police coverage has been asked.
There is only one borough in Delaware County that is small in size and population to warrant asking a neighboring jurisdiction to provide coverage: Rutledge.
The four-block by threeblock borough of about 800 residents contracts Swarthmore police to provide police protection to its community, but at a cost. In a 2018 budget of $347,000 police services still cost $91,000, a price that will increase to six figures at the end of its present multiyear deal through 2021.
Other geographically small communities that employ a municipal police include East Lansdowne, Millbourne and Parkside. Colwyn, with its dual-coverage model, is projected to spend over $500,000 in 2018 on its police department personnel, benefits and other related services in a $1.3 million budget.
“I don’t think that’s fair to communities who are working very hard, who have good police departments, good traffic control, who are managing crime in their neighborhoods to have to fund police coverage in municipalities who are in a position to afford to do so,” said Saylor.
Figures provided by the Pennsylvania State Police show the number of municipalities the state police covers staying steady at around 1,700 since the start of 2009.
Saylor believes that number will increase in the future if this free ride doesn’t get solved.
“If we don’t do something, more and more will want to get rid of their local police department and put it on the backs of Pennsylvania as a whole,” he said. “I believe the General Assembly’s intent is to take more of the state police budget out of the transportation
fund and into the general fund. That’s where we’re striving to move.
“I don’t think we’re gonna solve this with one piece of legislation, it’s going to be something that takes over time.”
Appropriations Committee Democratic Chair Rep. Joseph Markosek, D-25 of Allegheny County, could not be reached for comment. Recent budget briefings from his party colleagues on the committee have addressed state police funding challenges and their personnel costs.
“The Wolf administration and legislators have looked at state police coverage of municipalities as an equity issue and as an opportunity to generate much needed revenue to pay for the estimated $665 million worth of state police patrol services they receive,” read a portion of a Jan. 29 budget briefing. “Currently, PSP provides full- or part-time coverage to two thirds of municipalities, spread across the vast majority of the commonwealth’s land mass. But, most Pennsylvanians live in smaller areas not covered by state police, creating an urban-rural divide on the issue of local and state police coverage.
“Municipality fees, contracts between municipalities and PSP, and new revenue sources are among the proposals to resolve this decades-old question.”