Thursday, June 09, 2011
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
by Brad Bumsted, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
A Bucks County Republican is asking legislators to co-sponsor her shale impact fee which she says is designed to try to win GOP Gov. Tom Corbett's approval.
Corbett has said any measure must be a fee and not a tax and the main purpose must be to help compensate municipalities for damages gas drilling causes. He has said revenue from a fee should not go into the state's General Fund.
For starters, Rep. Marguerite Quinn says her proposal is a fee. It is not based on gas well production nor is it tied to the price of natural gas like a half-dozen or so tax proposals pending in the House and Senate, she said. It's a flat rate on a declining scale, starting at $50,000 per well.
While the state Department of Revenue would collect the fee, the revenue would not go into the General Fund, Quinn told colleagues in a memo seeking co-sponsorship.
"I've been working on it -- something that does meet the governor's criteria," Quinn said today. "I tried to respect the governor's call for no tax. I made it a simple impact fee."
Asked about Quinn's proposal, Kevin Harley, Corbett's spokesman was non-committal. "Gov. Corbett has said he is open to an impact fee. But he wants to wait until his Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission issues a report."
The commission, headed by Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley, is attempting to quantify local drilling costs. The report will be issued July 22 while lawmakers are likely on summer recess after adopting a state budget by June 30.
Quinn said she plans to meet with Cawley to outline her proposal.
Under Quinn's proposal, half of the revenue would be deposited into an "impact mitigation fund" for use by counties and municipalities hosting drilling. That would cover fire, police and emergency service costs, as well local water issues, and repairing roads and bridges.
Twenty-five percent of money would go for statewide environmental projects and hazardous waste cleanup. The money would go to a state fund for environmental use called Growing Greener. It would be used for projects such as watershed protection, acid mine drainage abatement and cleanup and plugging of wells.
And 20 percent of the revenue would go to the state Motor License fund for road and bridge repairs. Five percent would go to local conservation districts.
Quinn says she is calling her plan a fee on shale, not Marcellus shale. The point is to cover drilling in deeper layers beneath the Marcellus shale formation such as the Utica formation.
"We don't want to be shortsighted in structuring this and have to re-invent the wheel later," she said.
Copyright (c) 2011, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
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