In the News - Rural Police Funding

Posted by M Paradis

August 14, 2008

Officials fight patrol fee

Representatives from both Warren and Hunterdon counties meet to discuss alternatives to paying for state police protection.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008
BY STEPHEN J. NOVAK
The Express-Times

HAMPTON | Less than a week after South Jersey officials gathered to find alternatives to charges for state police coverage, leaders from Warren, Hunterdon and Sussex counties assembled to form their own ideas.

“This is the tip of the iceberg,” said Knowlton Township Mayor Frank Van Horn, one of the organizers of Tuesday’s informal meeting in Hampton.

About 50 officials attended.

Van Horn previously had said he would rather be arrested than let his township pay the $123,060 the state, under Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s budget, says it owes for continued state police coverage.

Officials left the meeting with sample resolutions opposing the payment to bring back to their respective bodies. The resolutions were supplied by Jim Doherty, township administrator for Wantage Township, Sussex County. The township had drafted and passed a similar resolution in 2006, the last time state police rural patrol fees were proposed in Trenton.

According to the state budget, rural municipalities that use state police patrols are required to raise $12.6 million to fund continued coverage.

Hampton Mayor Rob Walton asked for unity among local leaders in opposing the mandate.

“A lot of people have the misconception that the state police are patrolling in front of our houses 24/7, and we all know that’s just not the case,” Franklin Township, Warren County, Mayor Bonnie Butler said.

Twenty-four Warren and Hunterdon municipalities owe money for the coverage, according to the state Treasury Department. That includes Oxford Township, which only briefly used state police coverage. Facing a charge of $236,077, White Township stands to be the hardest hit in either of the two counties.

Towns have until Dec. 15 to find an alternative for law enforcement before being subject to the charge.

Efforts to avoid the cost have municipalities looking at sharing police departments with other towns, considering county sheriffs for coverage and weighing the option of forming a regional police force.

About 40 elected officials from Cumberland to Hunterdon counties attended a news conference in Buena Vista Township, Atlantic County, on Aug. 6 where they supported a plan to place a $40 surcharge on moving violations. The fee could fund a grant system to give money back to affected municipalities.

While there were doubts such a system would work, even from state legislators present at the meeting, all local officials were encouraged to plan on attending another meeting of officials from around the state to be held at The College of New Jersey in September.

“They call us crybabies,” Van Horn said Tuesday about other parts of the state. “But we pay for everything else in the state besides the state police.”

Reporter Stephen J. Novak can be reached at 908-475-2174 or by e-mail at snovak@express-times.com.