County leaders from throughout Pennsylvania have unveiled five key county government legislative priorities for 2021, led by a call for election reforms based on counties’ experience in 2020, as well as expanding broadband, creating solutions to the emergency medical services crisis, protecting funding for county human services, and increasing funding for community-based mental health services.
The 2021 county priorities are essential for counties to continue to successfully provide critical services to Pennsylvania residents — services that affect everyday lives, health, safety and democracy.
Kevin Boozel, County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania (CCAP) president and Butler County commissioner, noted, “Counties need Governor Wolf and the General Assembly to continue engaging and partnering with us on these priorities so that we can maintain healthy, safe and resilient communities. Together, we can implement solutions that better reflect the needs of Pennsylvanians, improve stewardship of taxpayer dollars, reduce cost, increase local flexibility and assure the quality of services we provide.”
Counties’ number one priority for 2021 is elections reform. Specifically, counties are renewing their call to allow pre-canvassing — that is, opening and preparing mail-in and absentee ballots — to begin prior to Election Day. This would allow counties to focus on administering an in-person election on Election Day, improving workload management and allowing results to be available much more efficiently. Additionally, moving the deadline for mail-in ballot applications back to 15 days will benefit voters by providing more time for the ballot to be able to get from the county to the voter and back again through the mail. This would create less stress and uncertainty for voters and is the best opportunity to enfranchise mail-in voters.
Counties’ second legislative priority is broadband expansion, recognizing how COVID-19 has further exposed the lack of availability and the need of Pennsylvanians for high speed and reliable internet for business, education, health care, emergency services, agriculture and other key parts of our everyday lives.
“Communities cannot continue to wait for infrastructure that is critical to our economic vitality and our personal quality of life,” stated Rob Postal, Mifflin County commissioner and chair of the CCAP Community and Economic Development Committee. “The commonwealth must develop partnerships among federal, state and local government, as well as the private sector, that can help to deploy the resources and data needed to make meaningful progress on broadband expansion.”
Counties’ third legislative priority is to help create solutions to the emergency medical services crisis; fourth is protecting funding for human services; and final priority is increasing funding for community-based mental health services, such as prevention, crisis intervention, treatment, community residential programs, family-based support and outpatient care.
