Pay for service

State budget needs local payment for state police

With a revenue package more than a month overdue, a shortfall of about $1.2 billion to make up, the state soon to run short of cash and a potential credit downgrade on the horizon, legislators should be scrounging the couch cushions for change, not leaving large sums on the table.

That’s what the Senate did last week, however, when it passed a revenue package that did not include Gov. Tom Wolf’s proposed $25-per-person fee on municipalities that rely entirely on the state police for protection. The fee would have raised about $63 million — no panacea — but it was a starting point and an idea whose time had come.

The GOP-controlled Legislature passed a budget of nearly $32 billion on June 30, and Mr. Wolf, a Democrat, let it become law without his signature. Lawmakers failed to deliver the revenue portion, so there’s currently no way to pay for the spending the budget authorizes. State Treasurer Joe Torsella, warning that the state will begin running short of cash later this month, on Thursday issued a two-week, $750 million line of credit from the Treasury’s Short-Term Investment Pool.

After the House more than a week ago failed to agree on revenue plans — even the Republican majority couldn’t come to a consensus — the Senate passed its own revenue package.

The Senate deserves credit for moving the ball and for doing it in bipartisan fashion.

It approved a severance tax on gas drillers, which is much overdue, and expanded taxes on utility bills. The Senate also envisions a borrowing against the tobacco settlement and an expansion of gambling — not the soundest way to balance a budget and a risky bet given the fluctuating proceeds.

Absent was Mr. Wolf’s proposed $25-per-person fee on municipalities that rely exclusively on the state police for protection. Sen. Jay Costa, DForest Hills, the minority leader, said Democrats supported the idea but couldn’t get support from Republican colleagues. The sticking point, he said, was finding a “fair way” of imposing the fee.

Understandably, the proposal was unpopular in municipalities — many of them poor and rural but some of them large and affluent — that don’t budget for local police. But it’s unfair for residents of other communities to pay local taxes that support local police and state taxes that support the state police, especially when they’re unlikely ever to use the latter. How many calls do the state police answer in Pittsburgh? Not many, because the city spends nearly $100 million on its own force of hundreds of officers.

That works out to about $323 per resident by the way, a far cry from the $25 per resident Mr. Wolf wants from municipalities that rely solely on the state police. Mr. Wolf would have been right to ask for more, considering his proposal would have raised only about $63 million when the state spends about $600 million annually protecting municipalities without their own police departments.

After getting nowhere on their own proposal, House leaders seem in no hurry to recall their members to Harrisburg to try again. We’ve criticized them for that.

With the state due to run out of money soon, they should put their noses to the grindstone and get the job done.

Whenever it resumes work, the House should resurrect the state police fee and insist it be part of the final revenue package. There are only so many ways to make money. Lawmakers shouldn’t let this one get by them.