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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2017 - 2018
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | January 6, 2017 09:28 AM |
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| From: | Representative Seth M. Grove |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | State Police Contractual Program |
| Over the past few years, the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) has seen their workload expand significantly as many of Pennsylvania’s municipalities receive police services from the state police. A recent study of the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee, from the fall of 2014, reported that 1,279 municipalities receive full-time police service from the PSP. Additionally, the state police provided another 420 municipalities part-time police service. As a result, approximately 75% of the PSP incident responses were for events within these municipalities. According to the report, this was due in large part to half of Pennsylvania’s municipalities lacking local police service. Additionally, many municipalities with police service only have 10 or fewer officers. The lack of officers in these municipalities results with the PSP providing either full or part-time service. Providing police services to the 1,699 municipalities, served by the PSP, has major financial implications for taxpayers as the state police estimated in 2012 services to these municipalities cost them $540 million. Although the state police do receive a portion of local fines, these fines do not begin to pay the cost for the ever expanding role of the PSP. Unfortunately, some municipalities with local police are eliminating their local police and opting for state police service. In order to address this issue, I plan to introduce legislation which would require all future requests from municipalities with local police coverage and opt to eliminate it to contract for state police coverage. The payments associated with the contract would go directly to covering the costs incurred by the PSP for serving as municipal law enforcement. These costs, over half a billion, are currently shouldered by all taxpayers including those who are already paying for their own police protection. Under this legislation, we can help the PSP continue to provide police service to our municipalities without continuing to overburden our current state police force. As a result, this legislation serves to protect our municipalities and bolster our state police force while reducing the cost to taxpayers. Please join me and cosponsor this legislation. If you have any questions please contact Jordan Grant by phone at 717-767-3947 or by email at Jgrant@pahousegop.com |
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| View Attachment | ||
Introduced as HB860