Jul 28, 2010 By Herald Standard Staff 3 min read

Senator caught in contradiction The level of Philadelphia- and Pittsburgh-bashing was stunning, even by Harrisburg’s admittedly low threshold.

Gov. Ed Rendell has been pushing state lawmakers to address a $470 million hole in the transportation budget because the federal government rejected the commonwealth’s proposal to impose tolls on Interstate 80.

One option the governor has proposed is imposing a 3.25-cents-a-gallon increase to the state’s 31-cents-a-gallon gasoline tax. (Even that won’t be enough. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that a 7.6-cents-a-gallon increase would raise $472 million a year.)

State Sen. Kim Ward, R-Westmoreland County, could not resist the Philadelphia-Pittsburgh-bashing bait. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that she said the governor wants to pass “the burdensome costs of the mass transit systems in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia to those hard-working men and women in rural Pennsylvania who have no other means of transportation except for their automobile.”

The implication that everyone who uses public transit is a freeloader is insulting. Try telling that to people working in minimum-wage jobs in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and, yes, Beaver County who depend on public transit to get to and from work. Such people do exist, you know. (There’s another subtext here. We’ll let you figure it out.)

However, get ready to stand back and savor the irony.

While Ward is against using state funds to subsidize mass transit, she doesn’t mind siphoning money out of the transportation budget to pay for police protection in her hometown, Hempfield Township.

Hempfield is home to more than 40,000 residents. Yet it can’t afford its own police force. Instead, it relies on the state police for protection. And who pays the state police? You do.

So, Ward is against subsidizing public transit systems in most urban parts of the state – one wonders how she feels about the state underwriting operations of the Westmoreland County Transit Authority – but is all for it when it comes to leeching off the state for police protection.

In light of this, we would like to make a modest proposal. Funding for the state police comes out of the motor license fund. Shifting that expense to the general fund would free up $576 million a year for road and bridge work and, yes, public transit. To make up some of the load this would impose on the general fund, the commonwealth should impose a $20 per capita fee on every municipality that does not have its own police force and relies on the state police for protection.

You can bet it will be a cold day in Harrisburg before that happens.

Beaver County Times