May 11, 2024 3 min read

The Washington County municipalities of McDonald and Midway, along with Robinson and Mount Pleasant townships, are considering regionalizing their police departments into one unit rather than four separate entities. Town hall meetings have been held on the subject and, from our vantage point, the advantages would outweigh the disadvantages.

The individual municipalities would lose complete control over their police budgets, and someone would lose out in the competition to lead a regional police force. Still, pulling together a regional police force would be a winner for residents, who would have more officers, more patrols, and a force more able to attract and retain officers through higher salaries and more opportunities to move up in the ranks.

More communities across Pennsylvania need to consider similar efforts at regionalizing services, or even merging with one another

Only Texas and Illinois have more municipalities than Pennsylvania. Because the commonwealth does not have unincorporated land that would fall under the control of county government, Pennsylvania is a patchwork of boroughs, cities and townships. These municipalities have a variety of authorities that handle public services like water treatment and hospitals. Then, there’s the multiplicity of school districts, each with their own administrative structure.

Taken to its extreme, Allegheny County has the most municipalities of any county in Pennsylvania – a jaw-dropping 130. The smallest is Haysville, with fewer than 100 residents.

Most of these municipalities and school districts were established decades ago, and residents and their elected leaders are often reluctant to merge or consolidate services with other communities because of the loss of identity that would come with it. For example, almost 20 years ago, residents of Coal Center in Washington County nixed a proposal to join with its larger neighbor, California Borough, even though Coal Center has only five streets.

David Rusk, a senior fellow at the D.C. Policy Center in Washington, D.C., said at a forum sponsored by Spotlight PA in 2023 that many of Pennsylvania’s communities and school districts can be classified as “little boxes” and that “the almost unspoken mission of every little box government and every little box school district is to keep our town or keep our schools just the way they are, for people like us, whoever ‘us’ happens to be.”

If residents can break out of this mentality, it could pay dividends. There would be less reliance on property taxes, bulk purchases could be made at lower costs, services would improve and faltering communities would be stabilized. It would also be a boon to economic development.

We hope that the merger of the police departments in the four Washington County communities happens. And we hope it serves as a much-needed example for other municipalities.