Scarnati Wants A Marcellus Bill By October; Ready To Play Ball To Get One

Scott Detrow / StateIm­pact Pennsylvania

Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Pro Tem Joe Scar­nati, talk­ing to reporters this summer.

Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Pro Tem Joe Scar­nati is grow­ing impa­tient. He doesn’t want to wait any longer to pass a com­pre­hen­sive bill deal­ing with nat­ural gas drilling. On the state House’s first day back in Har­ris­burg since June, the Jef­fer­son County Repub­li­can set a dead­line. “I want it moved in Octo­ber,” he told the Penn­syl­va­nia Press Club, refer­ring to a bill cre­at­ing a drilling impact fee, and impos­ing safety and zon­ing reg­u­la­tions. “I am tired of being here, hold­ing the bag year after year, try­ing to get this done.”

Law­mak­ers have been attempt­ing to pass some sort of drilling tax or fee since 2009. A heavy fee passed the House in 2009 and 2010, but never saw any Sen­ate action.

Scar­nati is far and away the most high-profile impact fee advo­cate in leg­isla­tive lead­er­ship, and was vocally frus­trated when a levy on gas drillers wasn’t included in this year’s bud­get. Gov­er­nor Cor­bett is now voic­ing sup­port for a mea­sure that sends money back to coun­ties and munic­i­pal­i­ties where drilling takes place, but House Repub­li­can lead­ers have stayed cool to the proposal.

House Major­ity Leader Mike Turzai isn’t too inter­ested in nat­ural gas drilling, at least when it comes to address­ing it via leg­is­la­tion. Now that he’s got­ten an “on-time, no tax bud­get” – the pri­or­ity he listed again and again, when­ever he was asked a Mar­cel­lus Shale ques­tion, Turzai has focused on pri­va­tiz­ing state-owned liquor stores.

Well, Scar­nati is now ready to play ball, if Turzai wants his Liquor Con­trol Board bill taken seri­ously in the Senate.

Dur­ing the press club question-and-answer ses­sion, mod­er­a­tor Brad Bum­sted asked whether Scar­nati was “really opposed to [Turzai’s plan], or just try­ing to lever­age a gas tax fee out of the gov­er­nor and House.”

“Both,” replied Scar­nati, in a reveal­ing answer.

“I look at the issues that are in front of us – the gov­er­nor has pri­or­i­ties. The House lead­er­ship has pri­or­i­ties. I’ve got a pri­or­ity. My pri­or­ity is clearly Mar­cel­lus Shale. Mov­ing this issue, get­ting it done and putting it to bed.”

“Now, we can all stand at the sink this fall and look at each other, or we can help each other wash our hands and get some of these things done ….so lever­ag­ing has always been a part of busi­ness around here. Ed Ren­dell taught us how to lever­age well. I went to school for four years. The Ed Ren­dell School of lever­age. And I’ve got to tell you, there are some issues there that help move other issues.” The for­mer Demo­c­ra­tic gov­er­nor was a mas­ter at grind­ing the leg­isla­tive agenda to a halt, until he got what he wanted. That’s the main rea­son why Penn­syl­va­nia went from 2002 to 2010 with­out a sin­gle on-time state budget.

Scar­nati wants what­ever Mar­cel­lus Shale bill passes to address three com­po­nents: an impact fee, safety reg­u­la­tions, and zon­ing restric­tions. On the fee, Scar­nati expressed con­fi­dence law­mak­ers could agree on a sys­tem that gen­er­ates $200 mil­lion in annual rev­enue with­out cut­ting into drilling prof­its. His ini­tial bill deliv­ered the bulk of money to coun­ties and munic­i­pal­i­ties host­ing drilling, with addi­tional fund­ing going to statewide envi­ron­men­tal efforts.

On safety, Scar­nati said, “there is a real con­cern about water. Pro­tect­ing water sup­plies, munic­i­pal and home well water.” He called for addi­tional well set­backs (the min­i­mal dis­tance between a drilling pad and water source), but shied away from cre­at­ing new statewide stan­dards for pri­vate water wells.

That’s some­thing drilling com­pa­nies have pushed for, say­ing it would reduce methane migra­tion. But after his speech, Scar­nati warned a statewide law would float like a lead bal­loon.  “You want to see a revolt? You start telling peo­ple back in these rural areas that you’ve got to have a cer­tain stan­dard, mon­i­tored. That’s just not going to fly in rural Pennsylvania.”

The third angle Scar­nati wants to address is zon­ing. He caught seri­ous heat ear­lier this year, by propos­ing to exclude munic­i­pal­i­ties from receiv­ing any impact fee rev­enue, if their local drilling reg­u­la­tions were deemed too harsh. “I’m not yet giv­ing up on that,” Scar­nati said today. “We’ve got to find a clear balance…so we can find pre­dictabil­ity and con­sis­tency across the whole state.”

“The real­ity of the zon­ing issue is, we have a lot of munic­i­pal­i­ties pass­ing zon­ing ordi­nances that are going to be chal­lenged in court. And it’s going to cost them money, and it’s going to cause prob­lems through­out the indus­try.” (This Amer­i­can Life pro­duced a full show on one Wash­ing­ton County community’s legal bat­tle with Range Resources, over local ordinances.)

What hap­pens next? Gov­er­nor Cor­bett is expected to unveil a com­pre­hen­sive drilling bill of his own later this week. The Repub­li­can gov­er­nor has said he shares Scarnati’s goal of pass­ing and sign­ing a bill this fall.