Day: March 4, 2015

Using the same class warfare language all Democrats resort to when they want to justify their enormous appetite for taxing and spending, yesterday Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf introduced the highest-ever budget in PA and attempted to lay a huge theft, in the form of a so-called severance tax, on the Marcellus industry by saying, “We deserve to be fairly compensated for the use of our resources.” Just one problem Tom: IT’S NOT YOUR RESOURCES! The resources in question belong to private landowners and your proposal to steal their money, along with the money of the drillers who risk a lot of capital to drill, is abhorrent. The justification is that the money stolen will be given “to the children”–by which he means given to teachers’ unions who turned out the vote for him. The Wolf budget landed yesterday–with a thud–and it calls for $1 billion in taxes on the Marcellus industry. Wolf thinks he can get buy-in by ensuring $225 million of that amount will be kept local, like the old “impact fee.” That’s the payoff to try and get support for this Marcellus-killing budget. He plans to fork over the rest of it to Big Education as their reward for voting for him. Even the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette calls his budget “a miss” and “utter folly.” Can you believe that? It’s so bad even the anti-drilling editors at the Post-Gazette don’t like it…
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In all of the coverage of PA Gov. Wolf’s ill-fated budget–the highest ever for the state of Pennsylvania–we spotted one comment that validates what we’ve been saying for more than two years: The Act 13 “impact fee” is really just a tax. In fairness, it’s 60% fee and 40% tax because 60% of it stays in the communities where drilling happens to reimburse them for things like improving roads, extra law enforcement personnel and beefing up local fire departments. The 40% portion disappears into the black hole of Harrisburg–into greasy politicians’ fingers. In February 2012 MDN pointed out the so-called impact fee is really just a tax (see PA’s New Tax on Drilling (er Sorry, Impact Fee)). The chief architect of the impact fee, State Sen. Joe Scarnati (Republican from Jefferson) finally admitted it yesterday. He blamed Gov. Tom Corbett for not wanting to call the impact fee what it really is–a tax–and he said so to the Philadelphia Inquirer…
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