Most school districts and municipalities are dealing with very tight budgets, and will argue that they are operating as efficiently as possible. That might be generally true, but in one significant area - the cost of tax collection - substantial savings continue to be ignored by school districts and municipalities. The reason for the unnecessary spending is the antiquated system of tax collection used across most of Pennsylvania.

Last week, a Pittsburgh newspaper published a report that compared Allegheny County, which has 600,000 pieces of property and 132 elected tax collectors, to Franklin County, Ohio, home of the city of Columbus, where taxes paid on 400,000 pieces of property are handled by a single, centralized tax collection office.

The efficiency advantages of a centralized system appear obvious. The obvious cost savings associated with centralized tax collection should be something county commissioners, school board members and even township supervisors would want to explore.

For now, state law makes that difficult. But efforts should be made to change the law in the long term - and to work around the problem in the shorter term.

Ideally, relief should come from Harrisburg in the form of legislation permitting school districts and municipalities to opt out of using elected tax collectors - or simply mandating centralized tax collection and doing away with the tax collector position, which was effective in the horse-and-buggy era, but is no longer needed.

Unfortunately, it appears that a serious look at this issue will have to wait until school districts and counties are on the verge of bankruptcy, like the City of Pittsburgh, where significant changes now appear likely following last week's approval by city council of a controversial plan of significant spending cuts and some tax increases to balance the budget.

It should not take a crisis on the scale of looming bankruptcy for school board members and municipal leaders to seek out the most efficient use of taxpayers' dollars. Paying fees to 57 different tax collectors across Butler County cannot be as efficient or cost effective as a central, or even regional, system.

About 10 years ago, an amendment to a bill that would have allowed counties to conduct centralized tax collection was killed in Harrisburg by heavy lobbying the state's tax collectors association.

Again in 1996, a similar effort was defeated by similar lobbying efforts. But the spending more money that is necessary to collect taxes cannot be tolerated forever.

School boards across the state, if they are concerned about holding down costs, should take a hard look at the money now paid to collect taxes. They should compare that to estimated costs with a modern system based on districts in other states using centralized collection.

Earlier such studies from other parts of the state have found that collection by elected tax collectors costs three or four times as much per thousand dollars of tax collected as a centralized system. Depending on the amount of money being collected, savings can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

How much longer will lawmakers and voters in Pennsylvania permit this unnecessary spending?

The argument for making the change to a centralized tax collection system, similar to what is found in most other states, should not be seen as an attack on tax collectors. Most tax collectors do their jobs well. The problem is with the system, not the people.

Farmers could still plow fields with horses and oxen, but today diesel-power tractors are more efficient. Accountants could still tally figures on paper, but today calculators and computers are more efficient.

The process of collecting of taxes has also changed in the past hundred years and a modern, centralized tax collection system would be more efficient and would save taxpayers' money.

School boards and elected municipal officials should no longer ignore the benefits of a modern tax collection system.