Monday, March 30, 2009

Bill to Streamline County Government

This is interesting but I'm not sure it will get a lot of traction in the Pennsylvania House. State Rep. Steve Santarsiero (D-31) plans to introduce a bill that will allow counties to streamline their government. Among the possible changes:

Santarsiero’s legislation would allow second-class counties to abolish the office of Jury Commissioner and consolidate the offices of Prothonotary and Clerk of Courts by way of county ordinance or ballot referendum.

Further, the legislation would regulate the payment of benefits to county solicitors, assistant solicitors and row office solicitors by prohibiting such benefits for solicitors working fewer than 35 hours per week. Santarsiero said the bill also would make the process of retaining outside counsel more transparent.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

What's a second class county?

AboveAvgJane said...

I'm not sure of the exact criteria but the only 2nd class counties are Allegheny, Bucks, Delaware, and Montgomery. You can see all the counties and their designations on this site:

http://www.newpa.com/get-local-gov-support/municipal-statistics/download.aspx?id=214