York County to PA: Restore human services funding
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York County has signed on to a resolution with roughly 30 other Pennsylvania counties and the County Commissioners Association “to ensure that counties are never again placed in a situation where they are forced to cover the state’s funding obligations.”
Pennsylvania is 253 days overdue on a full 2015-16 state budget as of Wednesday. Gov. Tom Wolf advanced a partial state budget on Dec. 29, 2015, when he decided only to veto roughly 100 line-items in the budget sent to him. That released about $23.4 billion of the roughly $30.3 billion budget bill.
The resolution calls on the state government to restore the full funding to the key human services line items cut by 10 percent in the 2012-13 state budget, to help better serve the neediest citizens. It also resolves that York County will work with the legislature and the governor to find ways to run human services programs as efficiently as possible.
The York County Board of Commissioners joined the resolution, which was created by CCAP on March 3, at their Wednesday meeting.
“We cannot allow this to happen again,” said President Commissioner Susan Byrnes, “and that’s why we make this resolution.”
As of Tuesday, 28 of Pennsylvania’s 68 counties have sent in copies of their similar resolutions to CCAP, according to a map on the organization’s website. That means York County is at least the 29th to sign on.
The resolution urges “the General Assembly and Administration to restore funding for human services programs to historic levels, and to put mechanisms in place to assure any future budget impasse or delay does not become a burden on York County and its constituents,” states the preamble.
York County spent about $25 million in its reserves and exhausted an additional $20 million line of credit by the end of 2015 to ensure that human services and other functions of county government usually paid for by state funds remained open. The resolution further states that the county lost about $35,800 in expected interest returns and in interest spent on borrowing and legal fees.
County Administrator Mark Derr said the county learned of the resolution when the idea was emailed from CCAP.
“Look, we can’t deal with all the mandates the state has put on us if you’re not going to give us the funding that is due to counties — all the children and youth, all the human services agencies– area agency on aging,” he said, describing the intention of the resolution.
This article is part of a content-sharing partnership between York Daily Record and WITF.
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