Feb 12, 2017 3 min read

In life, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. The same can be said about police services in Pennsylvania.

Municipalities in the state without full-time police departments rely on the Pennsylvania State Police for their law enforcement, saving communities money while offering them police protection.

But as more communities eliminate their own police departments to balance their budgets, greater stress is being placed on state police as the agency has more territory to patrol.

In Greene County alone, the state police serve 22 communities, since there are only three full-time police departments operating in the county. While the level of crime in the county is relatively low, it still taxes the manpower at the Waynesburg police barracks and stretches them thin as they try to patrol more than 500 square miles of territory.

That story is familiar in many rural counties across the state.

In response, Gov. Tom Wolf has proposed in his budget that communities that rely on state police for protection pay a $25 per capita fee to help fund the department. The state estimates it would generate about $63 million annually.

The fee seems like a commonsense proposal that is a relative bargain for communities that rely on state police. Franklin Township, the largest community in Greene County with a population of 7,694 residents, would pay close to $200,000. Compare that to the $583,500 that Cumberland Township paid in 2016 for its full-time police department, which is about $94 per resident.

In addition to raising money to help state police bolster its ranks, the fee will push communities that can afford their own police department to form one or to join in regional services with neighboring communities. Morris Township in Greene County has done just that by partnering with Wayne and Perry townships to form the Greene County Regional Police Department.

The poster child for this change is Hempfield Township in Westmoreland County, which has used state police services for years. With a population of more than 43,000, there’s no reason that this township, which surrounds Greensburg, shouldn’t have its own police force or contract out with a neighboring community. The proposed per capita fee would cost the township more than $1 million, making it more than likely that municipal officials would reconsider and form a police department.

But proposals such as these have come and gone in the past as rural legislators have blocked earlier bills. The bloated Legislature has a history of failing to make tough decisions and most locals are confident that this, too, will be voted down like the rest of them.

Still, it seems that Wolf’s proposal is more than fair for rural townships and boroughs in our area that rely on state police.

It’s a small price to pay to add a couple more troopers to patrol their neighborhoods while giving state police a long-lasting funding stream to help keep their budget in the black without bankrupting rural communities.