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DEP Pulls Plug On Funding For SEO Training, Creates Unfunded Mandate
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Townships and sewage enforcement officers are paying the price now that the state Department of Environmental Protection has decided to stop funding classroom training.
By Jill Ercolino, Managing Editor, PA Township News
A recent decision by the state Department of Environmental Protection threatens to jeopardize the very thing the agency is charged with overseeing and places yet another unfunded mandate on townships.
In August, DEP announced that it would no longer fund continuing education training for the state’s sewage enforcement officers. In the past, the cost to develop and attend these classes was underwritten in part by sewage planning module fees that applicants paid to the department. As a result, classes were offered at little or no cost to SEOs or municipalities.
Not Anymore.
“DEP has told us that effective immediately, all funding for classroom training has been discontinued,” PSATS Executive Director David M. Sanko says. “Currently, the only DEP-funded and -approved SEO training will be limited — for now — to those courses offered online.”
Sanko worries about the impact on the state’s water supplies, which sewage enforcement officers help to protect, now that DEP has significantly reduced the training that enables SEOs to maintain required certifications.
“Ironically, DEP is charged with protecting the environment, yet this decision may put our waterways at risk,” Sanko says. “If SEOs can’t take classes, they can’t maintain their certifications, and they can’t oversee onlot septic systems. I don’t even want to think about what the resulting malfunctions will do to our water supplies.
“And people are worried about fracking in the Marcellus Shale region?” he asks. “A rash of malfunctioning septic systems statewide could be an even bigger threat to the environment.”
To ensure that member townships have access to competent and qualified sewage enforcement officers, PSATS was an early advocate of DEP’s efforts to formalize and strengthen its SEO curriculum, which the Association has administered from the start.
Sanko points out that the recent training decision is not the state’s only assault on the sewage-funding front: The General Assembly has continued to reduce funding that helps townships update mandated sewage plans and enforce state sewage laws.
Another Unfunded Mandate
Because state law requires DEP to train SEOs, the agency plans to approve third-party providers to offer fee-based continuing education classes, Sanko says.
“Whether the agency chooses to work with PSATS isn’t the issue,” he says. “While we would certainly like to continue our training partnership with DEP, our concern is that a third-party system will commercialize and ultimately erode the quality of what has become a very reputable and respected educational program.”
Sanko says it’s unclear when the new third-party system will be put in place.
One thing is certain, though: Sewage enforcement officers and the townships that employ them will now have to bear the full cost of this training. Under state law, townships must employ or contract with a primary and an alternate SEO.
“So here we are again: Townships are faced with another unfunded mandate from the state,” Sanko says. “And that’s the other irony in this whole thing: The state has a special task force assigned to study unfunded mandates and how to ease the burden on local government, and DEP makes a decision like this. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
Despite this turn of events, Sanko says PSATS remains committed to providing high-quality training at an affordable price. It also will provide additional information to its members and SEOs as soon as DEP finalizes any new training approach. In the meantime, SEOs can take classes online.
For more information about the department’s decision to suspend classroom training for SEOs, townships should call John Diehl, DEP’s chief of Act 537 Management Section, at 717-783-2941.
(Reprinted from the Pa. Township News magazine with permission from the Pa. State Assn. of Township Supervisors.) |
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10/10/2011 |
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