Latest PA Budget Bill Drops Fix for Slow DEP Permit Reviews
In an issue that’s growing old, fast, the Pennsylvania legislature has still not dragged the dead horse known as the 2017 state budget across the finish line. It all started months ago when the Republican-led legislature passed a $32 billion budget–with only $30 billion available to pay for it. Big mistake. The pressure was intense to pass a severance tax to help fill the gap. Traitorous Republicans in the Senate caved to that pressure and in July passed a budget bill that hikes taxes on lots of things, including a severance tax (see Traitorous PA Senate Republicans Pass Severance Tax Bill). As part of that misguided and mangled budget bill, Senate Republicans slipped in fixes to the state Dept. of Environmental Protection’s chronic delays in issuing permits related to shale drilling (see PA Senate’s “Olive Branch” of “Relaxed Regulations” for Drillers). As we said at the time, the writing was already on the wall–Democrats would lobby to remove the DEP fix and leave the severance tax. The DEP fix (surprisingly) continued in further revisions to the budget plan–until yesterday, when the DEP fixes came out. Fortunately there is still no severance tax. However, Republicans have floated a plan to nearly double the tax on hotel/motel rooms. Such a tax would make Philadelphia’s hotel tax a staggering 21.25%, the highest in the nation! Gov. Tom Wolf is (so far) not commenting on the hotel tax idea–he still wants a severance tax and said so yesterday. So although a severance tax appears dead, and we think it’s 99% dead, it’s not yet 100% dead–so we need to remain vigilant in our efforts to kill it. And although the fixes to the DEP would be most welcomed, they won’t happen as part of the budget. There’s still some hope those fixes will happen apart from the budget bill. Here’s the latest word on PA budget negotiations…
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Yesterday afternoon Pennsylvania Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman told the media that talks on finishing the state budget are “closer than we’ve been in some time.” He also cautioned, “nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to.” As for a severance tax, Corman said current discussions do not include a severance tax, which is interesting as Corman is one of the traitorous Republican Senators who voted for a severance tax back in July (see 
This is likely the “make or break” week that will tell us whether or not a Marcellus-killing severance tax will pass the Pennsylvania legislature. The PA budget is now close to 100 days late–at least the final bits of the budget. Republicans run both the PA Senate and House. They did the ultimate stupid thing by passing a spending plan of $32 billion with only about $30 billion available to pay for it. So over the past three months there has been intense pressure by Gov. Wolf (Democrat) and Philadelphia (even northeastern) RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) to pass a severance tax–on top of the existing impact fee. Wolf needs the severance tax because he promised the money to Philadelphia teacher’s unions–as payback for electing him. If he doesn’t get the tax, he stands of good chance of not being reelected. It’s always about politics. Lawmakers are back in Harrisburg today, in session, and the mainstream media “mood” indicates a deal will get done this week. Will a severance tax be part of it? We hope not! It is possible, but seems (to us) unlikely that the severance tax will get passed…
Last week MDN told you about a visit by Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf to Wyoming and Susquehanna counties in northeastern PA (see 
The good news is that any number of severance tax proposals in Pennsylvania are still “stalled” and going nowhere fast. The bad news is that there still is not a finalized budget. Republicans have no one to blame but themselves. They passed an unbalanced, whopping $32 billion state budget plan months ago–without a way to pay for it all. Which has set up extreme pressure to adopt new taxes, including a severance tax and gross receipts tax. It appears that the GRT is dead, but the severance tax is not yet totally dead. Why? Because House Speaker Mike Turzai continues to hold the line–preventing a floor vote on the severance tax. Pin a medal on that man! Elect him as your next governor! He knows how to lead. However, since the severance tax is not totally dead (yet), we feel it’s necessary to keep talking about it. We’ve heard from some MDN readers who ask, “Why not adopt a small severance tax? It’s not all that bad, is it?” Yes! It is bad! And the Commonwealth Foundation (of PA) tells us why…
The Marcellus industry is closely watching three pieces of legislation sitting in the Pennsylvania legislature, bills that the industry fervently hopes do not pass. One of the bills is House Bill (HB) 557, introduced by Rep. Garth Everett, which would amend/fix the Oil and Gas Lease Act to ensure landowners get a minimum royalty of 12.5%, regardless of post-production deductions (see 
It’s funny how mainstream media–and liberal Democrats–can turn on a dime. It was just a few days ago we read an AP story endlessly regurgitated across PA about how the PA budget fight had turned “ugly” and “personal” (see 
Republicans hold majorities in both the Pennsylvania Senate and the Pennsylvania House. As is happening on the national level, the Republican Party in PA is also rife with establishment, left-leaning members who are not in their positions to benefit their constituents and all residents of the Keystone State, but are there to feather their own nests. Swamp dwellers. They are Republicans In Name Only (RINOs). One such RINO is PA Rep. Kate Harper, a “Republican” from Montgomery County–a Philadelphia suburb. Harper has been in the House since Jan. 2, 2001 (16 years, long past time she was voted out of office). Harper proposed an insane severance tax as part of this year’s budget deal. It’s not her first time at the trough. Harper has been proposing a severance tax for years (see 
Three cheers for Pennsylvania House Republicans. Hip hip, hooray! House Republicans did the near impossible–they held the line against a cockamamie plan to raise all sorts of taxes, including slapping a severance tax on the Marcellus gas industry (on top of the existing impact tax). You may recall our story about a group of hardworking Republican House members who, during the recent recess, did a masterful forensic accounting job of locating existing money sitting idle in a variety of programs and departments–money that can used to plug a deficit in the budget this year (see 
Following yesterday’s vote by the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to take the first step in a permanent ban on fracking in the Delaware River Basin (DRB), reaction from those who support drilling was swift. The American Petroleum Institute issued a statement saying, among other things, that the DRBC’s intention to permanently ban fracking in the DRB is “bad public policy.” More than a few Pennsylvania legislators took issue with PA Gov. Wolf’s vote to endorse a permanent frack ban. Three ranking State Senators–Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, and Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Chair Gene Yaw, ripped into Wolf with a joint press release yesterday, saying they “strongly objected” to Wolf’s vote. The three said a permanent ban on natural gas drilling in the Delaware River Basin is “arbitrary, short-sighted and a blow to economic development, job-creation and landowner’s rights.” We appreciate their support. However, those same three Senators recently sold out the gas industry when they voted for a severance tax. They were part of the high-tax cabal that made the job of the House that much harder (thank God the House passed a no-severance-tax budget yesterday, see today’s companion story). While we appreciate the Senators’ support on the DRB frack ban issue, their bloviating against Wolf on the frack ban vote doesn’t remove the stain of their betrayal of the gas industry in voting for the severance tax. All three Senators need to go at the next primary…
The Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee amended a bill yesterday that will rename PA’s impact fee to a “severance tax,” a move which really ticked off the high taxers in the legislature, and anti-drillers (most of them one and the same). The PA House came back into session yesterday and 25 House members (most of them Democrats) made a move to get a vote on a bill with a 3.5% severance tax. The Republican majority on the committee flipped things around and replaced that measure with a vote to rename the impact fee–as a way of illustrating that the industry IS ALREADY TAXED, JUST LIKE A SEVERANCE TAX, even if you don’t call it one. So, let’s just call it one! Brilliant! Of course there are differences between a severance tax and an impact fee–actually the fee is a better revenue generator than a severance tax. However, the point remains: the industry is already paying a high tax, and to slap another on top of it is suicide. Republicans on the committee got their point across…
We’ve written plenty about Philadelphia-area RINO (Republican In Name Only) State Rep. Gene DiGirolamo. In May DiGirolamo introduced yet another severance tax bill (see 
The Republicans in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives have done the hard work that PA Senate Republicans failed (or refused) to do: they have just introduced a budget bill that doesn’t raise a single tax, including no horrible severance tax–and yet they will balance a wildly overspent budget. How will they accomplish this feat of Houdini magic? By tapping into the bloated extra money budgeted but not spent by numerous state agencies. For example: mass transit, ports, rails and infrastructure accounts have a cumulative extra $507 million sitting in bank, unused. Why not reallocate it? Hazardous waste and industrial cleanups, agriculture, environmental, conservation and recycling programs have an extra $440.5 million laying around. Why not reallocate it? Etc. House Republicans, unlike their traitorous Senate counterparts, have “found” $2.4 billion in money laying around, unused in other accounts, that they plan to reallocate to the state budget. Genius! This is why House Speaker Mike Turzai should be PA’s next governor, not the inept Tom Wolf…