Content area
Full text
LANCASTER COUNTY
What does the future hold for the Lancaster Inter-Municipal Committee?
In the past two months, Lancaster County's two largest townships have pulled out of the organization, reducing its membership from 12 to 10.
East Hempfield Township supervisors voted 3-2 to exit LIMC at their Dec. 19 meeting. Manheim Township commissioners voted 4-1 on Jan. 14 to follow suit.
Both townships complained that the organization's costs have grown sharply, and that LIMC's funding formula put too much of the burden on them compared with other municipalities.
Critics called the moves shortsighted and a setback for those seeking greater local cooperation.
"They've basically become isolationist," Roy Baldwin, a former Manheim Township commissioner and former state representative, said after the commissioners' vote.
LIMC grew out of informal discussions among municipal officials that began in the 1960s, according to its website. In 1989, it hired stafffor the first time and expanded its activities.
In 1995, it became a council of governments, or COG, a type of cooperative organization recognized by state law.
Normally, municipalities must adopt a detailed ordinance every time they want to share services with each other. Members of COGs, by contrast, may collaborate fairly freely, with the COG agreement serving as an openended authorization for joint action.
A COG is not a governmental entity and has no powers of its own, advocates stress.
"The LIMC does not dictate what a municipality can or cannot do," former LIMC executive director Michael LaSala wrote in a Jan. 6 op-ed in Lancaster's Sunday News. "It is simply a mechanism for two or more municipalities to act jointly with reduced barriers."
Advocates of COGs consider them an important tool for solving regional problems, given Pennsylvania's highly fragmented system of local governance.
Pennsylvania has 500 school districts and more than 2,600 municipalities that form a complex patchwork of elected officials, tax rates and public...