PITTSBURGH (Newsradio 1020 KDKA) – Auditor General Eugene DePasquale announced the details of an audit report of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation on Thursday.
“We completed an audit of PennDOT, and I want to make sure that if people are driving that they might want to pull over,” DePasquale told KDKA Radio’s Marty Griffin and Wendy Bell on Friday. “We found $4.25 billion dollars over the last six years has been diverted from gas tax money to the state police for local police protection.”
The Auditor General’s office stated in a press release that $4.25 million billion dollars was transferred from the Motor License Fund to state police since the 2012-2013 fiscal year.
“Again, it’s not the state police’s fault; I want to be clear about that. They are just doing their job from municipalities that have gotten rid of their police departments,” DePasquale said. “We have the highest gas tax in the country and when it was going up they promised it was going to take care of the roads and bridges. First of all, that number’s crazy. It is almost a third of the annual gas tax revenue a year that is being diverted for this police protection.”
DePasquale said Pittsburgh has the third most structure deficient bridges in the country; according to the press release, over 2,800 state maintained bridges across the state are structurally deficient and over 50 years in age. “If this money were available, that number would be cut in half,” DePasquale said.
DePasquale told Marty and Wendy that one solution has been ”floating around” since Governor Tom Ridge was in office. “If you live in a municipality that has a police department, that is a part of your municipal tax,” DePasquale said. “Areas that get rid of that, they should pay a fee to state police. That’s Governor Wolf’s idea and if someone has a better idea I think everybody in the state is all ears. This is now a problem that is well past the breaking point.”
DePasquale said he isn’t convinced that the transferring of funds is even compliant with Pennsylvania’s state constitution: “It says that gas tax money must go to infrastructure.”
DePasquale said the money should be going to road and bridge construction. “When you pay the gas tax, it’s sort of a deal. People don’t like it, but we are going to pay it and then we will fix the roads and bridges,” DePasquale said. “So with potholes you damage a car, and there are roads closing and bridges that are out of whack so they have to close them. So you pay a higher tax with the idea that the roads get fixed. That’s the bargain with this. And it’s not happening.”
“This is not just a Philadelphia or Pittsburgh issue; these bridges are littered all over state," DePasquale said.
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