Shamokin, Pa., tucked away in the coal country about 120 miles northwest of Philadelphia, has $800,000 of unpaid bills and can't get a loan from a bank, so the city council has agreed to seek entry to a state financial oversight program dating from 1987 that facilitates access to credit and permits the levying of certain taxes, Reuters reported today. Now, though, some lawmakers say the program is more like a trap than a benefit: few municipalities that get into it ever get out. Just seven of the 27 local governments to enter state oversight under the program, known as Act 47, have ever been released from it. As a result, legislators want to cap how long cities can stay under state oversight and, in the hardest cases, impose a municipal death penalty that amounts to disincorporation and a state takeover. The law was passed in a bid to help Pennsylvania cities battered by the decline of the American steel industry in the 1970s and '80s. The bill now moving through the legislature would codify the state's early-intervention options and improve financial reporting to allow the state to spot and help troubled municipalities earlier. State oversight under the amended Act 47 would be capped initially at five years, and the absolute limit, with extensions, would be eight.
