Gov. Shapiro's proposed Pa. State Police fund saves road dollars but raises accountability concerns

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(link) https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2023/04/pa-josh-shapiro-budget-state-police-transportation/

HARRISBURG — In his first budget proposal as governor, Democrat Josh Shapiro aims to resolve a longstanding fiscal conundrum: funding the Pennsylvania State Police without taking money away from bridge and road repairs. At the moment, $900 million of the agency’s roughly $1.4 billion budget comes from the state’s General Fund, while the rest comes from the state’s Motor License Fund, which receives money from the state’s gas tax and is primarily meant to be used for infrastructure spending.

Shapiro would end those transfers by creating a new restricted bank account for State Police. Unlike the General Fund — the state’s main account, which can use the billions of dollars it receives from sales and income tax payments each year for any purpose — this new police account wouldn’t be subject to annual budget negotiations between the governor and legislature.

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Shapiro’s plan has the support of legislative Democrats, who see another possible upside: Creating such an account would mean the legislature and Shapiro would need to pass a law, which could also include provisions like a long-sought requirement for state and local police to collect racial data from traffic stops. As Spotlight PA previously reported, State Police stopped collecting such data for nearly a decade, leaving observers unable to check for racial bias.

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Pennsylvania has used its gas tax to fund State Police for decades. But a big gas tax hike in 2013 — approved by former Republican Gov. Tom Corbett as a way to increase funding for repairs to the state’s crumbling infrastructure — spotlighted those growing transfers as a barrier to the commonwealth catching up on decades of deferred maintenance.

Meanwhile our bridges are collapsing, roadways are crumbling.