2/14/18 Update: Shortly after this post went live, MDN received a tip from a reliable source that sheds more light on the audit and why DePasquale is moving forward with it. (Hint: He’s being forced to.) See our note below.
This should be interesting to watch. Democrat partisan hack PA Auditor General Eugene DePasquale is about to conduct an in-depth (very invasive and painful) “audit” of the finances for both the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) AND the out-of-control Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC). That is, we have a Democrat turning on some of his own. DePasquale previously audited the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection during the administration of Republican Gov. Tom Corbett. DePasquale’s “audit” highlighted problems that had already been fixed, for years (see DEP to DePasquale: Problems Fixed Years Ago, Where Have You Been?). It was a political stunt, meant to embarrass Tom Corbett and shame the Marcellus industry. When that didn’t work, DePasquale ran a sham audit two years later looking at the impact tax–the money raised by shale drilling–that looks and acts and walks and quacks like a severance tax in PA (see PA Anti-Drilling Auditor General Bashes Impact Fee Spending). His audit found the system needs better paperwork. Yeah, that’ll fix things. More paperwork. DePasquale’s targets have been Republicans and the things they like, as in drilling. So it surprised us to learn that DePasquale will now go after (at least in the case of the DRBC) some of his own. Perhaps DePasquale will “discover” all sorts of nasty problems with the SRBC, but the DRBC will be clean and pure as the wind-driven snow. That’s what we expect from a partisan hack like DePasquale…
