(Image: Most PA local tax bases are too small to do anything real)

With a patchwork of over 2,500 different municipalities, 500 school districts, and over 1,500 different special authorities making up the most local layer of local government in most of Pennsylvania, most areas of the Commonwealth aren't terribly well-governed at the municipal level.

That's because the skimpy local tax bases that result from so much fragmentation can support only bare-bones services in many places—and a great many PA local governments don't even have all the basics covered, with fully half of them lacking even a local police department. 

(Hitting the road to talk low-capacity municipal governments | Photo: Wolf for PA)

New Lt. Governor John Fetterman is out on a listening tour to learn more about Pennsylvanians' attitudes toward recreational marijuana, in what feels like advance work for a legislative push from the Wolf administration on the topic.