HARRISBURG - Millions of dollars of traffic fine revenue are being diverted from municipal coffers to help pay for training state troopers under a new state law.
The law simultaneously addresses two long-standing issues at the Capitol - the need to refill trooper ranks being depleted by a wave of retirements and the dispute over state troopers providing free law enforcement to municipalities lacking police coverage of their own.
It's a product of the marathon legislative session that led to a new state budget. Gov. Tom Corbett signed the law after it won unanimous approval in the Senate and a 141-48 House vote.
The law, effective in two months, affects more than 1,200 municipalities with more than 3,000 people that provide fewer than 40 hours a week of local or regional police coverage. They lose their half of the fine revenue collected by state police issuing traffic citations in their jurisdiction.
That revenue share - estimated at $4 million annually - will now help support training of trooper cadets. The 50/50 revenue split has been distributed until now under a formula set in 1955.
"More and more municipalities have ended local police coverage to depend on state police," said Sen. Christine Tartaglione, D-2, Philadelphia, the law sponsor. "We have not been training enough troopers to keep up. The (law) begins to reverse that trend."
Rep. Matt Baker, R-68, Wellsboro, voted against the bill on grounds it uses the wrong approach to fund state police needs.
"They took the revenue to fund the new cadet class off the backs of our local municipalities," he said Tuesday. "Every single municipality in Tioga and Bradford counties lost money because of this."
Baker wanted to earmark a portion of Marcellus Shale drilling impact fees to support the state police, but that wasn't included in the law enacted last February.
The new law is more palatable than other proposals to charge a per capita fee to municipalities without state police coverage that rely on troopers, said Elam Herr, assistant executive director of the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors.
Even municipalities with police departments call on the state police for help with crime labs, fire investigations and helicopter searches, he said.