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Motor License Fund: Roads should remain the chief benefactor

The Williamsport Area Transportation Study has a game plan for 76 different highway improvements at an estimated cost of $88 million to be completed by 2020.

They include major modernization on West Third and West Fourth streets in Williamsport and a redesigned safety corridor on Route 220 between Williamsport and Jersey.

And they won’t happen if the funding intended for them instead goes to the Pennsylvania State Police budget.

The Motor License Fund that pays for many of these highway improvements also includes an allocation for the state police operations budget.

That makes sense, since much of the state police operation is dedicated to highway patrol and safety.

What doesn’t make sense is that the Motor License dedicated funding has been increased 8.8 percent on average each year since 2002.

Mark Murawski, Lycoming County transportation planner, calls it the “big elephant in the closet.”

And he’s concerned that elephant will trample the highway modernization that was supposed to be the point of the Legislature’s massive transportation bill two years ago.

The current state budget diversion of Motor License funding is about 65 percent of the $755 million state police budget.

That’s too much.

Something a bit less than 50 percent would make logical sense.

The priority for the Motor License funds should correctly be highway maintenance and improvements.

This is not meant to denigrate the importance of the state police.

Their funding does not need to be cut.

We don’t want it cut.

They are too important for that.

The state’s sourcing for the funds needs to be broadened.

For starters, any community getting state police protection at no cost needs to start paying for that service.

That arrangement is simply unfair to all the other communities, where taxpayers are paying for their own police protection and then watching both an outsized portion of their Motor License payment as well as other state taxes fund police protection for other communities.

Perhaps the collision of state highway and state police funding needs will bring some long-overdue logical changes in the way state police operations are funded.

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