Celebrate! Ohio Severance Tax Increase Dead in 2015
Very good news for the Ohio Utica Shale industry: RINO Gov. John Kasich’s plan to raise the severance tax is dead–at least for this year. Yesterday Ohio legislators stripped out a proposed tax hike from the state’s budget bill. We’re still not out of the woods yet as far as a tax increase down the road. Legislators decided to set up a “study committee” made up of both House and Senate members to consider a severance tax increase in the future. This is the third year in a row Kasich has tried and failed to raise the severance tax. Perhaps sensing yet another defeat on the tax issue, last month Kasich made a not-so-subtle threat that if the drilling industry doesn’t accept his 6.5% severance tax now, a ballot initiative may just pop up out of thin air to enact a higher severance tax–and that imitative would probably be for 10% or more (see OH Gov Kasich the Bully: Accept My 6.5% Tax or Risk a 10%+ Tax). In other words, you take my “minor” shakedown or I’ll be sure you get screwed over big-time. Will Kasich carry out his threat?…
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This is a strange and complicated tale that boils down to this: Aubrey McClendon has a singular talent for finding and taking money from people who later turn around and stick a knife in his back. You may remember in February the story we brought you that Chesapeake Energy had sued its former co-founder, Aubrey McClendon, claiming he stole data on his way out the door (see 
The Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association turned up the heat on newly-elected Gov. Tom Wolf and Acting Dept. of Environmental Protection Secretary John Quigley. In fact, the temperature is downright hot. The issue is Wolf and Quigley’s possibly illegal maneuver in firing the members of the previous DEP Oil & Gas Technical Advisory Committee (TAB) and appointing all new members, PLUS appointing so-called non-voting members who are largely from environmentalist organizations–there to gum up what until now has been a well-oiled machine. In a letter addressed to current TAB members (minus the extra non-voting members), with copies going to Wolf, Quigley and a host of others, PIOGA tells TAB they should reject Quigley’s last minute reworking of Chapter 78 and 78a rulemaking (i.e. new regulations, see