Time for towns to pay for state police coverage

Give Tom Wolf credit for this.

He’s a persistent guy.

For four years now, the Democratic governor has been jousting with Republicans who hold sizeable majorities in both the House and Senate.

Wolf campaigned in part on a promise to slap a severance tax on the state’s Marcellus Shale business and use the money to pump up funding for education.

Every year since he took office, Wolf has submitted a budget that includes a call for the new tax. And every year Republicans have snickered and knocked it down.

There’s another very familiar element tucked into the budget that the Legislature started debating this week in Harrisburg.

At least it should be to those municipalities – including many in the rural parts of our region – that rely on state police patrols instead of incurring the cost of forming their own police department.

There are 2,571 municipalities in Pennsylvania. Of those 1,700 – more than half – rely on the Pennsylvania State Police for full- or part-time coverage.

Wolf thinks they’re getting a free ride. And he once again wants those towns to pay up. If they want to continue using state police, they will have to pay for it.

Wolf’s budget calls for a $25 per person fee to be slapped on those towns. That money would help the state pay the $1.2 billion annual tab for the state police. Wolf believes the $25 fee would generate as much as $80 million in annual revenue for the state.

As you can imagine, residents and officials in those towns are not exactly thrilled at that prospect.

They claim they already are paying state taxes and the new fee would in effect amount to an unfair case of double taxation.

“Proposing this plan again was just going to be dead on arrival,” said Rep. Stan Saylor, R-94 of York County, the head of the House Appropriations Committee. “It wasn’t going to fly here.

“I explained to (Wolf) 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.”

Which perfectly explains the politics. But doesn’t make it right.

For years, residents in fairly well-to-do towns have relied on state police to respond to incidents. This may have been doable decades ago when these areas were still fairly rural. That’s no longer the case. These are now heavily populated bedroom communities with many of the same crime issues other towns battle every day – but do so with their own force.

Crime is no longer a stranger to these communities. But having their own police force is.

This is not just a suburban issue. Town all across the state forego the cost of having their own police force, instead depending on state police patrols.

Officials and residents in these towns bristle that they are somehow getting a free ride on the state’s largesse, noting they already pay their fair share of taxes.

That’s true, but so does everyone else, as well as picking up the tab for their local police department.

Several state representatives, including Rep. Leanne Krueger-Braneky, D-161 of Swarthmore, and Rep. Nick Miccarelli, R-162 of Ridley Park, have sponsored legislation that would ease the hit, including limiting the fee to communities of more than 10,00 people, restricting it to towns that get full-time coverage, and reducing liquid fuels allocations to towns that rely on state police. None has gotten much traction.

We stand behind Wolf’s plan. We also realize that – much like the severance tax – it is likely doomed to be killed off by Republicans in the Legislature.

It’s not the politically expedient thing to do. Raising taxes never is, especially in an election year. That doesn’t mean it’s not the fair thing to do.

It’s time for this free ride to end.

The state has been picking up the tab for these towns’ police protection for long enough.

You want state police coverage, no problem. But it’s no longer free.