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Posted on 02/03/2021 11:12:41 AM PST by lightman
At a glance: Gov. Tom Wolf’s budget proposal once again includes a municipal fee that’s expected to raise $168 million for the Pennsylvania State Police. Unlike in previous years, when the proposal failed to pass the Legislature, this fee would be charged to all municipalities based partially on services rather than focusing on a specific group of communities. Across all funds, including a significant one-time infusion of COVID-19 aid via the federal government, the agency’s budget remains relatively flat at $1.38 billion.
Over at the Department of Criminal Justice (corrections, probation and parole to us laypeople), total funding decreases slightly to $2.8 billion, reflecting a 5-percent budget cut due in part to declining prison populations.
What it means: This year’s municipal policing fee proposal is just the latest volley in a long-simmering debate over how to fund the state police. For years, the agency’s finances were linked to the Motor License Fund, a pot of money created ostensibly to maintain road infrastructure. The state police is gradually weening itself off that fund but it still has to find a sustainable source of funding elsewhere.
One solution was to begin charging the growing cohort of municipalities — roughly 1,300 at last count — that rely solely on the state police for patrols and to respond to 911 calls. Wolf faced significant opposition to his previous plans to charge those communities a flat fee or base charges on a sliding scale, and even to include communities that rely on the state police for part-time coverage. Some of these communities argued that they don’t see (or need) much police protection and worried that it would hurt residents living on low- or fixed incomes when the fee inevitably gets passed on as a local tax hike.
We’re still awaiting details but Wolf’s latest proposal would apply to every municipality in the state and would be based at least in part on how many calls the state police responds to in a given community. According to Wolf’s budget description, “this fee is predicated on station coverage costs, which are driven by incidents and coverage area, and considers various factors, including population and income. It is further weighted for municipalities benefitting from full- or part-time police services.”
Pennsylvania Ping!
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Defund the police, right?
SMH. PA needs to sort out its priorities. As do most states and cities. They can't do everything.
Heaven forbid they cut somebody else’s budget.
Defund the police, right?
Weren’t the PA dems against any and all evil Cops before BB.
BB=Before Biden
For those not familiar with Pennsylvania’s fragmented local government:
According the Pennsylvania Department of Community Affairs, within the Commonwealth’s sixty-seven Counties there exist five-hundred (500) School Districts; fifty- six (56) Cities; one (1) Town; nine hundred sixty-four (964) Boroughs; and one-thousand five hundred forty-six (1546) Townships.
Penn’s mistake was not instituting these fees when they started to provide the services 100 years ago.
That part will be considered "Racist!" when the bill for the ghettos comes due.
Basically you have some jurisdictions taxpayers paying for their own police departments as well as paying for the State police to police other jurisdictions that have chosen to close down their own police departments so the State can take care of it for them, with taxpayers state-wide footing the bill. So no thank you. Not a fan of defunding the police no matter who does it.
Biden's attacks on fossil fuels can't help the PA budget.
Cities are already paying for local police so they aren’t going to get hit with these fees since State police don’t get the calls.
Unlike other states where the State Police are pretty much the state highway patrol, the PA State Police are typically the primary law enforcement in unincorporated areas that don't have their own municipal department.
Maybe start sending social workers out on calls to inner city 911 calls.
The solution might be to get townships to form regional police forces. I know that some exist already. Then scale back the PSP to highway duties. An augmented Troop T.
True. Increasingly, though, they are also becoming the primary law enforcement in incorporated areas that are choosing to disband their local police departments. Consequently, the State police is blowing a bigger and bigger hole in the State budget as this practice becomes more widespread.
Hey, Tommie The Commie: SPEND LESS ON TRANNY, HOMO, OTHER SOCIAL PERVERT AND CRIMINAL ILLEGAL ALIENS PROGRAMS, YOU LEFTIST SCUMBAG!
OK, my comment was badly worded - I was thinking of "the other side of town" in smaller communities.
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