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From the “Marcellus Shale Documentary Project”: A gas-drilling rig in Hopewell area of Washington County.
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Brian O'Neill: Don't trade our air for a budget deal

Scott Goldsmith

Brian O'Neill: Don't trade our air for a budget deal

Be careful what you wish for.

The state Senate narrowly approved a modest severance tax on fracking in July, but slipped a plan to weaken state pollution standards into the same bill.

Trading Pennsylvania’s air for the sort of tax revenue every other big drilling state already gets — that’s a terrible deal. Yet now we have to count on the America’s Largest Full-Time State House to fix this before it becomes law.

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Normally I’d say don’t hold your breath, but in this case do just that. You may need the practice. This bill intends to create an Air Quality Permit Advisory Committee, with members appointed by legislative leaders and the governor, to review air quality permits issued by the Department of Environmental Protection to unconventional gas drillers.

In other words, the idea is to hand over DEP’s permitting to a seven-member, politicized board that need not have any expertise in air quality issues.

“It’s just amazing,” said David Hess, who served as DEP secretary under Republican governors Tom Ridge and Mark Schweiker in 2001 and 2002. “They threw a bunch of words together with no thought to their impact.”

Nobody can be entirely sure what will happen next except that it won’t happen soon. The budget is nearly three months overdue, and our chronic tardiness and fiscal gamesmanship already recently sent the state’s bond rating downward, but the House nonetheless decided to call it a week before Wednesday was over.

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It’s hard to imagine any halfway-there bill getting through the other chamber and to the governor’s desk intact now. Republican leaders from both houses met with Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf this week, and Democratic leaders have met with him, too, though not at the same time.

It’s pretty clear that nobody wants to make any more votes on bills that don’t stand a chance in the other chamber, because that only means one more vote that might be used against the legislator in the next election. There’s widespread desire to reach some rough consensus before any votes are recorded.

“Slow” and “reverse” remain the only choices on the Harrisburg gearshift. Here’s hoping that lawmakers use the time to scuttle this quasi-qualified air quality board, but House Republican spokesman Steve Miskin said many in the caucus like this idea.

“Why? Overreach,” Mr. Miskin said in an email. “DEP’s move to introduce costly restrictions on industry through permits and outside of our established regulatory process is a real concern. This on top of report after report that shows producers are responsibly reducing emissions on their own has members question the need and benefits of these costly new rules the Wolf administration is pushing,” he said.

Yes, and many people observe the speed limit on the Pennsylvania turnpike. That doesn’t mean we don’t need cops. Defanging the DEP can’t be the price paid to get a severance tax into state coffers.

For all the hubbub about the severance tax — a pot I’ve stirred myself for years — it won’t be a lot of money in Pennsylvania’s struggle with a $2.2 billion deficit. Daniel Raimi of the nonprofit think tank Resources for the Future guessed it would add only about one-quarter of 1 percent to state tax revenues.

There’s also the question of who would really be paying it. It should not be deducted from the royalties being paid to the owners of the properties where the wells stand, as so many other drilling expenses are. That needs to be clarified before any new tax is imposed.

House Bill 542, approved by the Senate with amendments, would tie the new tax to the existing local impact fee that has been sending revenue to the local governments. Those governments would continue to receive no less than $200 million a year collectively, with the remainder going into the state’s strapped general fund.

Maybe that remainder can be a $100 million piece of the budget puzzle the Legislature is nearly three months late in solving, but don’t bet your air on it.

Brian O’Neill: boneill@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1947 or Twitter @brotheroneill

First Published: September 28, 2017, 10:00 a.m.

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From the “Marcellus Shale Documentary Project”: A gas-drilling rig in Hopewell area of Washington County.  ( Scott Goldsmith)
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