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A measure to impose fees on those municipalities — about 20 percent of those in Pennsylvania, including several townships in Lancaster County — passed by a narrow vote Wednesday in the state government committee of the House of Representatives.
"It's a fairness issue," said state Rep. Mike Sturla, a Democrat representing the 96th District and the primary sponsor of the bill.
Most municipalities have their own police departments, are part of a regional force or contract for services with neighbors.
Some, however, rely solely on the state police, which traditionally has provided services free of charge. The state first began exploring the idea of a fee for state police services in 1999, at the behest of then-Gov. Tom Ridge.
A similar measure failed in the House last year. This time, Sturla is more hopeful the bill will find enough votes in both the House and Senate.
"I don't know what the chances are," he said. "But even one of the members who voted against it today came up to me later and said, 'This makes sense. Let's figure out how to get this done.' There are just some things we still need to tweak."
All the same, Sturla said, he understands why some people balk at the plan.
"If somebody was giving me something for free that I would have to start paying for, I might have a problem with it," he said. "My dad used to put gas in my car for me, too. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't pay for it myself now."
State Rep. Tom Creighton, representing the 37th district, was among Republican lawmakers on the committee who opposed the bill.
"It (was) purely a partisan vote," he said.
According to the state House Web site, the measure passed with 14 Democrats voting for it and 11 Republicans voting against it.
"It's not that we really dislike it," Creighton said. "We just don't feel the work of the committee was done."
Townships in Lancaster County that would be affected by the bill include Salisbury, Brecknock, Caernarvon, Elizabeth and Rapho. A complete list was not available Wednesday.
Some Republicans on the committee said they oppose the bill because there are other state services that people in rural areas pay for without getting the benefits. Democrats said it's a matter of fairness and said the bill could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.
Sturla said state police coverage of municipalities without a local police force costs the state close to $500 million each year.
That money comes from the state's motor license fund, Sturla said, which would otherwise be used to pave state-owned roadways.
"These are tough economic times. We have to look everywhere for inequities in the budget," he said.
Sturla said more than 2.4 million Pennsylvania residents are protected only by state police. The cost of that coverage, he said, is about $164 per person each year.
His bill proposes charging municipalities without a police department $52 per person living in the municipality in the first year of the program, $104 per person in the second and $156 per person from then on.
"That's basically $3 a week by year three to pay for protection from the state police," Sturla said.
"When I checked with local police departments and asked how much it costs to operate … the numbers we got back ranged from $200 to $350 per person per year," he said. "I look at the $156 and say, wow, what a bargain."
Creighton, on the other hand, said he opposes this version of the bill precisely because it bills municipalities on a per person basis.
"A thousand people who live in the city probably have a higher crime rate than a thousand people who live out in the country," he said.
"I wonder why (bill supporters) didn't base it on the number of incidents rather than per capita," Creighton added. "If a municipality could pay per incident, it might be an easier thing to push through."
Creighton said he is sure the proposed law will be amended several times before it comes up for a vote before the full House.
"It's a very hard job to come up with something that's going to fit everybody in Pennsylvania," he said. "We're a very diverse state."
Houck said looking solely at the cost of police protection across the state is taking a skewed view of municipal funding.
"We're a rural community, predominantly Amish," he said. "We just don't get a lot of the (police) calls that the high-density areas do."
E-mail: tknapp@lnpnews.com
