A new report on the PA State Police by the PA Legislative and Budget Finance Committee provides a nice follow up to a 2014 report on municipal police, the debate over whether to charge municipalities that do not have their own police force and rely on state police, and the issue of funding of state roads and bridges.
It is this third area that the report is most focused upon, especially the study’s finding of what is appropriate for “direct costs related to safety on the public highways and bridges”. The main finding, as reported in a news article and on page 60 of the study, is that
Expressed in terms of highway and bridge work, if the PSP had been allocated only $532.8 million from the Motor License Fund, rather than $755 million, it would have increased the amount available in the Motor License Fund by $222.2 million. This would have been sufficient to resurface about 1,111 lane miles of urban arterial roadway or design, replace, and maintain 138 bridges for the next 25 years.
The police gets funding from multiple funds beyond the motor license fund (general, federal, state stores, and others) bringing the total to just over $1.1 billion. The enlisted and civilian component of the state police was authorized for 6,655 positions and had 6,093 filled as of the fall of last year.
