HOLLIDAYSBURG — Blair County Commissioner Bruce Erb is again pointing to a shortfall of state funding that falls upon county taxpayers to cover.

The state recently sent $227,746 toward 2019 county court costs, the same amount it sent in October 2018 to cover 2018’s costs.

The state should be sending $350,000, Erb said, based on a pledge of providing $70,000 per county judge. Or it should be sending more, the commissioner added, based on $595,000 Blair County spent in 2019 for judicial staff salaries, benefits and employer-paid expenses.

That $367,000 shortfall, Erb said, translates into 62% less than costs, an amount that falls to county taxpayers to pick up.

“We realize that the state budget is tight,” Erb acknowledged. “But no more so than the county’s.”

The commissioner’s comments mirror ones he rendered in October 2019, also after the county received the state’s $227,746 reimbursement check. At that time and again on Tuesday, Erb called upon Gov. Tom Wolf and state lawmakers to meet their obligations to the counties.

“It’s time for you to step up, do what the state appellate courts have told you to do, and actually reimburse counties for their court costs because it is the county taxpayers, and more specifically the property owners, who end up bearing the burden from which the Commonwealth is shirking,” Erb said.

In 1987, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued a ruling, finding a lower court system funded by 67 counties created “an inherently unequal system of justice.”

As a remedy, it was proposed that the state take over funding and administration of the county courts, to be accomplished through appropriate legislation that lawmakers should take time to enact.

In 2012, the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania and 10 counties tried to get the state Supreme Court to force the General Assembly to enact legislation with 100% state funding of county court operations. But the justices, in a 36-page ruling, concluded that “further enhancements” of the court system should be produced by the three branches of government working together.

While the state currently pays the salaries of county judges, magisterial district judges, court administrators and district attorneys, it continues to reimburse counties for a portion of the judicial staff salaries, benefits and employer-paid expenses.

“Since I took office five years ago, the commonwealth has shortchanged (Blair County) by a cumulative total of over $650,000 using the formula from the 1980s,” Erb said. “The annual amount reimbursed keeps decreasing while the actual cost keeps rising.”

In February 2016, the state provided Blair County with a $350,000 reimbursement of 2014’s court costs, based on $70,000 for each of the county’s five judges. At that time, it was recognized as the first-time the county ever received that much. It’s now recognized as the last time the county received that much.

Mirror Staff Writer Kay Stephens is at 814-946-7456.