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State Rep. Mike Sturla's bill to require rural municipalities to pay more for state police protection is taking fire from all sides.
House Bill 1500 remains bottled up in the House Appropriations Committee, but throughout Pennsylvania municipal officials have ripped the legislation, and the Pennsylvania Association of Township Supervisors made the controversy the subject of a front-page article in Pennsylvania Township News magazine this month.
The association itself opposes the bill, said Elam Herr, assistant executive director.
The crux of House Bill 1500, called the State Police Municipal Patrol Services Act, is a provision that would require an estimated 1,700 municipalities throughout Pennsylvania to levy an annual per-capita fee of up to $156.
The reason: Those municipalities don't have their own police forces, aren't part of a regional force, or pay a neighboring municipality for coverage. Instead, they rely on state police patrols.
But Sturla said that's unfair to the 75 percent of Pennsylvanians who live in communities with their own police forces, and who are in effect taxed twice for the same service. The bill, he said, is an attempt to level the playing field.
Officials in municipalities that rely on state police don't see it that way.
Lowell Fry, chairman of the board of supervisors in Rapho Township — the largest of the 17 Lancaster County municipalities that depend upon State Police coverage — calls it a "backdoor tax increase."
"The state legislators will be able to claim a balanced budget with no tax increase, yet their actions forced local officials to substantially raise local taxes instead," Fry said.
Throughout the state, rural communities have held forums and lobbied legislators in an attempt to get the bill killed.
Sturla, however, remains convinced that the bill is fair. "Apparently this is an 'unfunded mandate' because I won't pay for [rural Pennsylvanians'] stuff," he said. "You have areas with a 2-mill tax rate where they'd have to go to a 4-mill tax rate, and think the world will come to an end."
Local townshipsSturla has estimated that more than 2.4 million Pennsylvania residents are protected only by state police. In Lancaster County, that includes residents of Rapho, Elizabeth, Caernarvon, Salisbury, Leacock, Paradise, Strasburg, Sadsbury, Bart, Eden, Providence, Martic, Colerain, East Drumore, Drumore, Little Britain and Fulton townships.
Reliance on state police helps keep tax rates in those municipalities comparably low, Sturla said.
"It's distasteful to me that some municipalities haven't raised taxes in years because they are getting free police and fire," he told Pennsylvania Township News.
Rural officials retort that the service is hardly free — and that they're not the only ones utilizing it.
"Everyone gets some use of the state police," Herr said. "Whether it be patrolling or help with other types of crime, or the state police fire marshal or crime labs."
Beyond that, he said, small municipalities that rely on state police don't receive much for their tax dollar beyond patrolling. Troopers "aren't enforcing local ordinances, and they're not taking complaints from citizens that deal with ordinances," Herr said. "It's a bare-bones service."
Sturla's bill, introduced last summer, would charge municipalities without a police department $52 per resident in the first year of the program, $104 per resident in the second and $156 per year from year three on.
The bill would also require municipalities with part-time police forces that use state police to cover off hours to pay a per-capita levy of $17 the first year, $34 the second and $52 the third year and beyond.
H.B. 1500 is one of five bills now under consideration to provide additional funding for the state police. Sturla's bill is considered by opponents to be the most egregious. According to news reports, it's been the subject of public meetings in Warren, Dauphin, Union, Perry and Cumberland counties, among others, where most municipal officials have inveighed against it.
The Pennsylvania Association of Township Supervisors estimates if the bill becomes law it could force some rural municipalities to "scrape together hundreds of thousands of dollars — in some cases, nearly as much as their current annual budget — to comply with the proposal."
Steve Oldt, a supervisor for Shippensburg Township in Cumberland County, told Pennsylvania Township News: "If this passes, I'm going to resign and move. This would bankrupt us."
But some in larger municipalities support the proposal. Earlier this year Carol Simpson, a Manheim Township commissioner, told the Sunday News that "The fact is that [Manheim Township] residents are subsidizing that service for other residents of the county and state, and I don't think it is fair."
Other backers say that even the additional $156 per year wouldn't come close to covering the actual cost of state police patrols in rural communities.
But Herr notes that rural communities sometimes get the short end of the funding stick. "In some areas of the state they feel they are paying more in state taxes, yet receiving less back for school subsidies," he said.
And while Sturla's bill would cost rural Pennsylvanians more, it doesn't mean they would see an increase in patrols. "They're not going to get any more police protection than they are now. State police aren't going to get any more manpower, and those municipalities [with their own police forces] aren't going to see any reduction in their taxes," he said.
Rather, the money would simply go to the general fund, "for legislators to do whatever they want with it. ... Today it's the state police, tomorrow is it DEP [Department of Environmental Protection] services or something like that?"
In its October edition of Pennsylvania Township News, the supervisors association urged municipal officials to call legislators and ask them to vote against the proposal. Sturla said a vote on the bill is not imminent.
Meanwhile, local officials like Rapho Township's Fry continue to keep a wary eye on the proposal.
"We remain acutely aware," he said, "of what the impact of this bill would be on our residents."
Gil Smart is associate editor of the Sunday News. E-mail him at gsmart@lnpnews.com, or phone 291-8817.
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