Last year, a Lehigh County constable turned in expense reports for 76,000 miles of travel in one year. The constable averaged, he claimed, 208 miles in his car every day.In Northampton County, a constable billed for 1,800 travel miles in one day -- an average of 75 miles an hour for each of the day's 24 hours.
Constables' mileage -- billed at 48.5 cents a mile in both counties in 2007, when both bills were submitted -- are usually paid by defendants but often fall to county taxpayers when defendants can't cover them.
The alleged overbilling here and a number of other billing and conduct problems across Pennsylvania highlight what state and county officials say is an ongoing problem with the county constable system: lack of oversight.
Now State Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald Castille has teamed with a state legislator from Berks County and they are poised to introduce the first set of reforms to a system they have called outdated and unwieldy.
''We would like to bring some organizational structure and professional control over their activities to make them more efficient and less costly,'' said Castille, who is working to institute one set of standards for all constables statewide.
There are definate problems with this article. In some counties the Constable must Bill for each of his deputy constables and then pay them himself. Many of these Constables have 4 or 5 Deputies. It would not be abnormal for them to put on those types of miles for that many men. It also appears that these problems are occurring in just 4 counties out of 67 in PA. I think the individuals should be addressed and if found to be engaged in illegal activity appropriate action should be taken. Seeing all of the corruption in Harrisburg, maybe this legislature is just trying to take some of the heat off of himself.