The Pennsylvania State Police should be what the name implies — state police — not municipal police.

And, appropriately, that thinking again is being advanced in the General Assembly.

A bill introduced by Rep. John Pallone, D-Westmoreland, would impose a $100-per-resident tax on large municipalities that do not have their own police departments and instead rely on state troopers.

Similar proposals in the past have not been successful. This one should not be defeated or fail due to lack of action.

When the state police spend inordinate amounts of time doing police work in large communities, they are denying others their services.

Pallone’s proposal is viewed as radical by the communities — at least 21 townships and 12 counties — that the proposed law would now directly affect. But the idea is one whose time has come, with state police now stretched to their limits.

Troopers should not be routinely patrolling communities that have the size, population and tax-revenue wherewithal to have a department of their own.

The state must no longer condone this freeloading. The spongers must be forced to soak up the responsibility for their own police protection.

If Pallone’s proposed legislation doesn’t receive consideration in this legislative session, the lawmaker should remain true to his pledge to reintroduce it in the next session.

The issue should be of interest to taxpayers statewide whose communities have stepped forward to provide the police protection that their and their properties’ safety demands.

Some of the big Western Pennsylvania freeloaders in terms of using state police services when they have the population and revenue sources available to pay for their own protection are Hempfield, Unity, Derry and Mount Pleasant townships in Westmoreland County and White Township in Indiana County.

The 2000 Census listed Hempfield has having 40,721 residents in its 76.6 square miles and Unity, 21,137 in its 67 square miles.

While, based on the last census, Butler County had no municipalities that would be affected immediately by Pallone’s plan, were it to be passed and signed into law, Center Township, with 8,182 residents, based on the 2000 count and no doubt having significantly more residents now, is the municipality closest to the freeloader status that the Pallone bill seeks to curb.

If the proposed measure were voted into law, Center would face a $1 million annual outlay for state police protection once its population reached 10,000 — if the township chose not to establish its own police department or become part of a regional police network.

By comparison, Hempfield’s tab would be more than $4 million annually, and Indiana County’s White Township would have to pay $1.5 million, which would represent a 45 percent increase in the township’s budget.

Thus, Pallone’s proposal looms as a budget buster to the large municipalities that continue to resist having a police department of their own, and Center Township here could be faced with that reality if and when Pallone’s plan is implemented.

And, it would seem to be only a matter of time until some proposal is implemented, because the workload of the state police, just in terms of doing what they’re supposed to be doing, will make it so.

It probably is only due to lack of knowledge about the Pallone plan that more state residents who currently are paying for their own local police protection aren’t now clamoring for passage of Pallone’s legislation to confront the freeloaders.

Back in the 1990s, former Gov. Tom Ridge was an advocate of putting some of the financial load for state police coverage on municipalites that chose not to have their own department. Others in the state capital have come around to Ridge’s thinking over the years.

Despite that, the freeloaders have continued to avoid paying for this service that their residents need and demand.

It’s time for that to change. The state police shouldn’t be giving free municipal service and, in the process, giving less attention to speed-limit enforcement and other tasks that are supposed to be occupying their time.