Near-Fatal Blow for PA Carbon Tax – Commonwealth Court Blocks 4-1
In the end, Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court was not fooled by the Democrat left’s attempt to rename a tax as a fee to circumvent the necessary approval needed by the state legislature in approving taxes as provided for by the state constitution. We’re referring to the illegal attempt by former PA Gov. Tom Wolf in 2019 to force the state into a carbon tax scheme called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which would slap a new (very high) tax (i.e., “fee”) on electricity produced by coal- and gas-fired power plants, forcing them out of business in favor of unreliable “renewable” energy sources (see Gov. Wolf Goes Bonkers: EO Destroying Gas-Fired Elec, Carbon Tax). After exhausting all other possibilities, in 2022, energy producers and PA Senate Republicans sued to block Wolf’s plan (see PA Legislators File Court Challenge to Block $2.6B RGGI Carbon Tax). Yesterday, they won that lawsuit in Commonwealth Court, blocking PA from participating in RGGI without legislative approval. Why is this decision a “near-fatal” blow for RGGI in PA and not just fatal?
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The Pennsylvania State Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) should prepare to cough up some of the money it receives from the steep charges it assesses for Chapter 102 Erosion and Sedimentation and Chapter 105 Water Obstructions and Encroachments permits. For YEARS, we’ve told you about these permits sometimes taking two, three, even six to eight months for approval — instead of the law-mandated 14 days. It got so bad that in the fall of 2019, PA State Sen. Gene Yaw introduced a bill to allow third-party reviews of these permits (see 
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