The Deadbeats on Route 30

Take a good hard look at this: .

Can't make it out? Let me enlarge it: .

Still not sure what it is? Well, listen closely, and you'll hear soft, sad music: It's the world's smallest violin playing, "My Heart Bleeds For Hempfield Township."

Hempfield (which contrary to popular belief is not a stoner's paradise) has its knickers in a knot over a proposal in the state legislature that would impose a $100 per person fee on communities of more than 9,000 residents that rely on state police protection. State Reps. John Pallone of New Kensington and Jim Casorio of Irwin are backing the bill, and I say bully for them.

Yet here's a typical letter-to-the-editor from one of the overtaxed residents of Hempfield:

Don't we already provide funds through our local income and state taxes, toll road fees and car registrations? Don't forget about the huge amount of revenue generated by fines and citations issued within our townships and boroughs, many to folks who don't live in our communities. They are mostly commuting from areas like, say, um, New Kensington. I believe that is where you come from, Mr. Pallone, not Hempfield Township, where I and other hardworking, fed-up taxpayers live.

Hardworking? I'm sure the letter-writer is.

But he's also a welfare recipient, as far as I'm concerned, and he and his neighbors don't deserve the largesse. It's time to kick them off the state's dole.

With a population of 40,000 people, Hempfield is one of the largest municipalities in Westmoreland County. It has also developed into the retail and commercial hub of Westmoreland County. And yet it pays not a dime for police protection, over and above the state income taxes that all Pennsylvanians pay.

Take neighboring North Huntingdon Township, population 29,123. It pays about $2.9 million for police protection out of its $9 million budget, or 32 percent.

I couldn't quickly get exact figures for Murrysville, population 18,872, but according to a recent financial condition analysis, 39 percent of its budget went for police protection in 2003; Murrysville's fiscal 2006 budget is set at $7.8 million, so that would work out to $3 million.

From my reading of the Monroeville budget, it pays $8.4 million for police services (excluding crossing guards), or about 31 percent of its $27 million budget. Monroeville has a population of 29,349.

No doubt about it, police protection is expensive.

So why are the taxpayers of North Huntingdon, Murrysville, Monroeville, West Mifflin, Our Fair City, and hundreds of other smaller Pennsylvania communities subsidizing Hempfield Township, which is bristling with new residential and commercial development?

Former Hempfield Township supervisor Bob Regola, now a state representative, says it would create a "tremendous tax burden" on residents. Current supervisor Kim Ward estimates it will add 10 mills to the Hempfield property tax. I heard her on the radio with KDKA radio's Fred Honsberger the other day; he was tut-tutting and moaning about how those bureaucrats in Harrisburg keep raising taxes. We're overtaxed as it is, says Fred.

I'll drink to that. And one of the reasons we're overtaxed is that we have too many layers of government --- too many municipalities, too many school districts, too many municipal authorities. Too many legislators in Harrisburg, too.

But another reason is that some Pennsylvania municipalities keep their taxes artificially low, depending on the state for services that other municipalities provide for themselves.

Take a look at the property tax rates in some other Westmoreland County communities that do provide their own police protection. North Huntingdon's property tax rate is 12.55 mills, Greensburg's is 20, Murrysville's is 11.15, and Irwin's is 11 mills.

And Hempfield? A tax rate of a whopping 3 mills on a $9 million budget. Only about $1.3 million of the township's revenues are derived from property taxes; the largest share of income (nearly $2.8 million) is derived from earned income taxes.

If the neighboring communities of Murrysville and North Huntingdon are any example, I'd estimate it would cost Hempfield about $4 million to operate its own police department. That jibes well with the $100 per head fee that the Pallone bill would impose on communities like Hempfield.

Some communities (like Unity and Mt. Pleasant townships) are complaining that they don't have the tax base or the revenue to justify paying for state police service, starting their own police department, or contracting with a neighboring municipality for service.

Given that Irwin, with a population less than half of the limit in Pallone's bill, can afford police protection, I find that argument specious at best. If those communities are so financially strapped, then they'd better seek a merger with a neighboring municipality, or enter Act 47 distressed status.

The Pallone bill seems eminently fair from where I'm sitting, unless some of the elected officials in Hempfield can adequately explain why all of the new shopping plazas on Route 30 in Hempfield, and all of those new $200,000 to $1 million houses being built out along Route 819, require welfare payments from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to the tune of $4 million a year.

Otherwise, I agree with Alan Wallace of the Gateway Newspaper chain, who wrote:

(Instead) of calculating potential tax increases, Hempfield officials (should) figure out just how much their residents have saved over the years because of the involuntary largesse that taxpayers elsewhere in Pennsylvania have bestowed on the township.

And when they have that figure, Hempfield officials ought to send out a couple of thank-you notes.

One should go to all those taxpayers elsewhere for subsidizing police services in the township for far too long. The other should go to Pallone for asking Hempfield just to start paying its fair share -- and not demanding the township repay those who've made its free ride possible.

The free ride has been fun for Hempfield, ever since the 1960s, when it began shifting from a rural community to a suburban community. But the ride has to stop --- now.