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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2019 - 2020
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | March 19, 2019 12:07 PM |
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| From: | Representative Seth M. Grove |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | State Police Contractual Program (Former House Bill 860) |
| 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 study from 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 in the PSP providing either full or part-time service to these municipalities. This 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. In order to address this issue, I plan to introduce legislation which would require municipalities which choose to eliminate their local police coverage to contract with PSP for coverage. This requirement only applies to municipalities which eliminate their local police coverage in the future while grandfathering existing municipalities into the program. The payments associated with the future contracts would go directly to covering the costs incurred by the PSP for serving local law enforcement. 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 FORMER SPONSORS INCLUDE: O'NEILL, READSHAW, SCHLOSSBERG, COX, FLYNN, SAYLOR AND PHILLIPS-HILL |
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Introduced as HB1466