NY Comptroller Wants New Tax to Cover Gas Drilling Accidents

Even though New York still has not adopted new drilling regulations, and likely won’t until late this year, and even though drilling will not begin until 2012 at the earliest, New York politicians are lining up to dip their hands into driller’s and landowners’ pockets. The latest example is New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli who has proposed a bill to the state legislature to create a driller-funded pool of money (i.e. a new tax on drillers) to cover the cost of any future accidents that may (or may not) happen because of drilling.

The problem, of course, is that any pool of money in Albany—home of politicians with sticky fingers—has a half-life of about 30 minutes before it will be borrowed, moved from one side of the ledger to the other, or otherwise disappear.

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