County Commissioners Shift Stance, Now Support Corbett Impact Fee

Scott Detrow / StateIm­pact Pennsylvania

Gov­er­nor Cor­bett intro­duced his impact fee ear­lier this month, in Pittsburgh

Here’s a sign Gov­er­nor Corbett’s pro­posed nat­ural gas impact fee is gain­ing momen­tum: the County Com­mis­sion­ers Asso­ci­a­tion of Penn­syl­va­nia, which pre­vi­ously expressed “strong reser­va­tions” about the pro­posal, is now back­ing it.

Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Doug Hill says the shift comes after numer­ous dis­cus­sions with two of Corbett’s Mar­cel­lus Shale point men, Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Jim Caw­ley and Energy Exec­u­tive Patrick Henderson.

CCAP has aggres­sively pushed for an impact fee, but balked at Corbett’s plan to admin­is­ter and col­lect it on the county level. Hill said mem­bers were wor­ried the process would add more demands to already-stretched county tax col­lec­tors and admin­is­tra­tors. He had also expressed con­cern coun­ties would impose dif­fer­ent levies, and cre­ate an eco­nomic “bor­der war” of sorts, where drillers would flock to areas with lower fees.

How much money would Corbett’s fee gen­er­ate for each county? Click on StateImpact’s inter­ac­tive map to find out.

The poten­tial for a county-to-county dis­par­ity still remains, but Hill said Caw­ley and Hen­der­son assured CCAP that coun­ties would not need to develop the dis­tri­b­u­tion for­mu­las for their munic­i­pal­i­ties, or be charged with enforc­ing the municipal-level fee spend­ing. “The bot­tom line is, our respon­si­bil­ity with munic­i­pal­i­ties ends with us dis­trib­ut­ing the funds to them,” said Hill. Statewide data reported to the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion would form the basis for fee dis­tri­b­u­tion for­mu­las, he said.

One remain­ing CCAP con­cern: the fact coun­ties may not see any impact fee rev­enue until 2013, at the ear­li­est. “If the leg­is­la­ture acts, let’s say in Novem­ber, that is not enough time for coun­ties to adopt [an ordi­nance] by Decem­ber 31,” said Hill. “Which, if you read the bill, is the trig­ger for the fol­low­ing year’s levy.” One pos­si­ble solu­tion: lan­guage stip­u­lat­ing the fee would be col­lected in, say, June, of the first year, and then March 1 after­wards. That would give coun­ties the extra wig­gle room to debate and pass local-level fees.

What hap­pens next? Leg­isla­tive staffers tell StateIm­pact Sen­ate lead­ers from both par­ties are work­ing to turn the Cor­bett Administration’s out­lines into leg­isla­tive form, and a new bill could sur­face next week.