Crowd Gets Rowdy At Impact Fee Meeting

Scott Detrow

Recent Stories

Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

April 13, 2012 | 11:05 AM

Things got testy at a Bucks County forum on the new impact fee this week, according to the Morning Call. More than 300 people showed up at the event, and were so hostile toward the new legislation – which goes into effect next week – that one supporter said he felt like he was wearing “a Dallas jersey at an Eagles game.”
Of note, besides the rowdy crowd: a promise from a Republican state Senator to amend portions of the new law:

State Sen. Chuck McIlhinney R-Bucks, spoke first, saying that he drafted an amendment to Act 13 that would grant communities without unconventional wells, the type used on Marcellus and Utica shale deposits, immunity from the act’s zoning usurpation. McIlhinney said he and Sen. Bob Mensch, R-Bucks, will introduce the amendment and vowed to have it enacted.
“That’s the commitment I am making to you tonight,” McIlhinney said, adding that the amendment should be voted on by the end of June.