When he was governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Wolf annually pushed a budget proposal to have municipalities in the Commonwealth that did not have their own police force pay a per-resident fee for state police protection within their borders. But Wolf could never gain enough support to push it through. Now a state representative from Bucks County is proposing it again, saying allowing municipalities to get away with abolishing their own police forces and forcing their duties on state police in “unsustainable.”
Representative Tim Brennan, a Democrat from Doylestown, has proposed a resolution to study the issues, and has introduced a bill that would provide incentives for municipalities to create or consolidate police forces.
State police provided protection for about 1,300 local towns and townships in 2023. Opponents of Wolf’s past proposals claimed it’s unfair to force communities to count up their residents and pay an arbitrary amount per head. For instance, under his 2017 plan, which would have charged $25 per resident for each municipality in the state that relied most on state police rather than have their own police force, White Township in Indiana County would have paid the eighth highest fee in the state, $408,050. Under that plan, the average amount paid by state municipalities would have been just over $49,000. But Wolf’s proposals varied through the years, sometimes demanding much more money per capita.
Brennan says “it’s hard to imagine a future where zero contribution to your police and your residents’ safety is a responsible way to govern.”
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