No New Forest Leases in Corbett’s Budget

February 7, 2012 | 2:53 PM

By Susan Phillips

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Envi­ron­men­tal­ists wor­ried that Cor­bett would try to help bal­ance the state’s bud­get by sell­ing off more min­eral rights on state land can breathe a sigh of relief. The Governor’s pro­posed bud­get has no new rev­enues com­ing in from lease bonus pay­ments. In fact, the rev­enue from min­eral leases is pro­jected to go down sig­nif­i­cantly. That’s partly due to a con­tin­ued mora­to­rium on new state for­est leases, but also, the price of gas has hit record lows, mean­ing much less in roy­alty pay­ments from drillers.

That’s the good news. The bad news? No funds pro­posed for for­est regen­er­a­tion, forestry research or the Key­stone Park and Recre­ation Fund. For­mer DCNR chief John Quigley says that means the depart­ment would have no money to give grants. “No grants to com­mu­ni­ties,” says Quigley.  “No rein­vest­ment in parks and forests, no grants to landtrusts in South­east Penn­syl­va­nia to pro­tect open space. None. Zero.”

Corbett’s bud­get pro­poses the approx­i­mately $46 mil­lion from real estate trans­fer taxes that had gone to the Key­stone Fund in the past, to go into the gen­eral fund.