PUC Chair Says Commission Will "Let The Play Come To Us"

How will the Public Utility Commission address its new role overseeing and implementing Pennsylvania’s impact fee? Chairman Robert Powelson provided some preliminary answers during a budget hearing at the state Capitol today, as Pennsylvania Public Radio’s Mary Wilson reports:

The state Public Utility Commission Chairman Robert Powelson said the agency is “staffed up and ready” to implement the impact fee law when it takes effect in just under two months.
For about an 18-month period, Powelson said the PUC will outsource the collection of the fee to a third private company.  He also predicted the agency’s legal ranks to expand to include more attorneys specializing in municipal planning code, as well as administrative law judges.  Powelson made his remarks to a Tuesday Senate Appropriations Committee budget hearing.  He was flanked by the other four members of the PUC.
For all the questions about whether the agency could handle its new bailiwick, several lawmakers voiced concern that the panel tasked by the Legislature with administering the new fee could do so with total impartiality.
“We’re not going to be advocates out there,” Powelson said.  “To use a football analogy, we’re going to let the play come to us.”

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