Act 13 Review Prompts Testy Legal Exchange

Scott Detrow

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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.

September 10, 2012 | 2:47 PM

South Fayette, Allegheny County, is not a big fan of the fact that the Public Utility Commission is reviewing whether or not its drilling ordinances fit within the parameters of Act 13. More from the Post-Gazette:

In a filing dated Friday, attorneys for South Fayette, which was part of the legal challenge to Act 13, responded to the agency’s notification. They disputed the PUC’s decision to begin reviewing ordinances and pointed to comments from agency officials prior to the July court ruling in which they said the pending litigation created too much uncertainty to judge ordinances.
“Although portions of Act 13 have now been declared unconstitutional and despite the increased uncertainty of the pending appeals in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the PUC has nevertheless inexplicably chosen to reverse its prior policy of restraint and has commence[d] its zoning ordinance reviews by reviewing the zoning ordinances of two of the municipal petitioners,” the attorneys wrote.
They continued: “This punitive action of the PUC evidences malicious intent and is indicative of professional persecution.”

Commonwealth Court threw out portions of Act 13 dealing with local ordinances, but the Corbett Administration appealed the ruling to the state Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on the case next month.