PA High Tax Game Plan: Keep Impact Fee, Add Severance Tax To It!
Here’s how tax-devouring Democrats and RINOs in Pennsylvania plan to pass a Marcellus-killing severance tax: Step 1: Keep the impact fee (which is really a tax) in place, which amounts to the revenue that a 2%Â 3.2% severance tax would raise. Never mind the state’s corporate income tax more than makes up the other 3% of a proposed 5% severance tax. The media, and politicians, intentionally ignore that inconvenient truth. [UPDATE: MDN has it from a highly-placed and trustworthy source that impact fees now being paid by drillers are actually closer to a 3.2% severance tax, not 2% as we previously noted.] Step 2: Introduce a severance tax bill of 3.2% severance tax bill, offered as a “compromise” that lets local communities keep their 60% of the impact fee, but steals money from landowners and drillers (the other 3.2%) to give to teachers’ unions, feeding the beast to keep it at bay (and to pay back a campaign debt). Step 3: After a year or two, when it’s apparent that Harrisburg’s continuing out-of-control spending hasn’t been reigned in and drilling slows down so there’s less tax revenue coming in, just goose the 3.2% tax all the way up to 5% or higher. That’s the plan of Reps. Gene DiGirolamo, R-Bensalem; Tom Murt, R-Hatboro; Harry Readshaw, D-Pittsburgh; and Pam DeLissio, D-Philadelphia as they introduce their “fair and reasonable” 3.2% severance tax bill…
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Citing concerns over radon, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection “quietly” change the rules on Marcellus drillers near the end of last year with respect to disposing of shale cuttings at landfills. Starting on Jan. 1 of this year, landfills must move to a monthly, instead of annual, limit on how much “radioactive waste” they accept from drillers in the form of cuttings (leftover rock and dirt). The new standard is calculated so that a person living 1,000 years from now in a house built on the landfill would not be exposed to levels of radiation over what is considered safe today. Nice to know the DEP is always thinking ahead, a thousand years…
Peters Township, in Washington County, PA, continues to “struggle” with whether or not they will allow Marcellus Shale drilling within their borders. Peters, you may recall, is one of the seven selfish towns that sued the state over the zoning provisions in the Act 13 law, eventually winning at the PA Supreme Court level (see 
Chevron, according to 
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf is, disappointingly, keeping campaign promises to his anti-drilling supporters. Today he will make a trip to Benjamin Rush State Park in northeast Philadelphia to sign an executive order to prohibit (for now) any more leases for drilling under (not on) state-owned land. The move is creating child-like excitement among far-left “environmentalist” groups like PennEnvironment–well known for rabid anti-drilling activities. You may recall two governors ago Democrat Gov. Ed Rendell was hell bent for leather in leasing state-owned land for drilling ON said land. After his voracious appetite for money was sated and his Democrat cronies in the legislature spent all $444 million of it, Rendell tried to pretend that he’s an environmentalist by slapping an executive order–a moratorium–on any more leasing of state-owned land. Hypocrite. Last year Gov. Tom Corbett lifted that moratorium with an executive order of his own so that another $75 million of badly needed revenue could be raised by leases for drilling under (not on) state land. Today, Gov. Wolf will turn down that $75 million with an executive order of his own for purely political pandering reasons. How utterly disappointing (but not surprising)…