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Getting More Help for the County from the Commonwealth
Posted 02-20-2001
This week, the county commissioners have scheduled a meeting with
Westmoreland County's delegation of state senators and state legislators to
talk about issues important to our county and how the Commonwealth can
better help us. County government is that sometimes-obscure level of
government that provides many important services, but has very few tools
available to finance those services. Payroll and benefit costs are always
getting more costly as are the goods and services that we procure from the
private sector.
Too often in Harrisburg,
Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties get special consideration for
assistance, and everyone else is left to fend for themselves or wait for the
traditional forms of help. Part of the reason the two big counties get
special attention is that those counties have large legislative delegations
that vote as a block to ensure money flows back home. But as the eighth
largest county, with a sizeable delegation and a looming budget deficit, we
need some special assistance from Harrisburg.
There are a number of areas
that affect county operations that we are going to discuss with our
delegation. We need to adjust the 911 surcharges on telephone service for
inflation and allow counties with the proper full accrual accounting systems
to directly lobby the Public Utility Commission for rate increases. Long
overdue is the application of the 911 surcharges to cellular phones. Many of
our 911 calls now come from cell phones. and as a matter of fairness, the
charges should apply to all phones. From a financial standpoint, the current
surcharges don't even come close to paying for our county's 911 system. We
subsidize the operation with over $1 million annually from the county's
general fund.
On the horizon is a
conversion to the 800 Mhz public safety radio system that will undoubtedly
be extremely costly. We were granted a license extension from the FCC until
2004. So, we have some time to work with our legislative delegation to
identify a strategy that can possibly help with the county's expenses or, at
a minimum, help municipal governments and volunteer fire departments with
their expenses for conversion to the new system.
Another primary issue is the
funding of the courts and the Commonwealth's extremely slow pace in assuming
its Constitutional responsibility. Phase one allowed us to give five jobs
from the Court Administrator's Office to the Commonwealth. That will allow
us to save roughly $300,000 in salary and benefits. But guess what, it cost
us over $500,000 to make the move by having to pay the Commonwealth for the
accrued sick, vacation, and pension benefits of those five employees. This
year, we are spending roughly $22 million on the courts. We receive
reimbursements of about $7.5 million, leaving us about $14.5 million to pay
for with local dollars.
We'd also like to discuss the
issue of a distinction between jails and prisons. Some years ago, counties
were responsible only for holding offenders while awaiting trial. Once they
were sentenced, they went to a state facility. Now if they are sentenced to
less than 24 months, and sometimes between 24 and 60 months, they come back
to the county jail, and we receive no reimbursement from Harrisburg. Since
there is a constitutional requirement for a unified judicial system, we
would hope that the Commonwealth would assume responsibility for sentenced
offenders. Either they should place them in state facilities or compensate
counties for the expense.
I recognize that some of our
issues are major initiatives and will be difficult for our legislators to
get changed. But there are other issues that are simply a matter of fairness
that could also help counties. Municipal governments learn of their liquid
fuel allocations prior to the adoption of their budgets (done on a calendar
year basis like counties) and then receive their full allocation by April 1.
Counties are not informed of their allocation and must make budget
estimates. We then receive only one half of our allocation by June 30 and
must wait until December 31 to receive the balance. Clearly counties are at
a disadvantage, and we ask only that we be treated as fairly as municipal
governments.
The county code forces third
class counties to only maintain one chief solicitor and three assistants. In
our litigious society, we are forced to hire more costly outside counsel for
much of our legal work. We would hope to have the county code amended to
allow counties to set their own staffing limits. We are also asking for
consideration for counties to be able to implement a one-half or one percent
real estate transfer tax. Right now, we collect it, and one percent goes to
Harrisburg and one-half goes to the municipality and one-half to the school
district. We have the expense of collection with no benefit. In our county,
one percent real estate transfer tax could amount to almost one mill of our
property taxes.
I know that it seems like we
are asking for a lot and that is true. But state government regulates us and
isn't nearly as helpful as it should be. I'll be the first person to admit
our association, the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania
(CCAP), is pretty ineffective. That forces counties to start working on
their own deals, and, ultimately, the big boys get heard. I just think it is
time that Westmoreland County's voice is heard in Harrisburg too. |
