Evening links: Impact fee update, fracking disclosure and a fracosaurus

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.

June 20, 2011 | 5:54 PM

The big question, as budget talks head to a crescendo, is whether this year’s spending plan will include an impact fee on Marcellus Shale drilling. At least one leader at the negotiating table, Senate President Pro Tem Joe Scarnati, is insisting on it, and he’s being backed by a growing number of House Republicans.
Today, however, Governor Corbett made it clear that when he said he wanted lawmakers to wait until his Marcellus Shale Commission had issued its report – due in late July – he meant it. Reporting this morning from a rare public appearance by the governor, the Post-Gazette’s Laura Olson writes, “Mr. Corbett also was critical of potential plans to include a fee on natural gas drillers in those budget bills. He has said repeatedly that he would like lawmakers to wait to act on any shale fee, so his Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission can first issue its report late next month. Asked whether he would veto a budget measure that includes a new fee on drillers, he replied: “I would certainly lean that way right now.”
Corbett flat-out opposes a severance tax, but has said he’d be “open” to a fee, as long as it doesn’t send any money to the state’s General Fund. Scarnati and other fee authors have worked hard to tailor their bills around Corbett’s “no new taxes” pledge, authored by Grover Norquist’s group, Americans for Tax Prosperity. PennFuture’s Jan Jarrett doesn’t like that, writing:

So, here’s the deal that’s coming together that will satisfy both the drillers and Grover. It will have:

An impact fee that will require local governments seeking compensation to absolutely quantify and substantiate impacts;
A model ordinance that local governments will be required to adhere to if they want to qualify to receive impact fee dollars which significantly weakens their ability to control drilling in their own communities;
A paltry 1 percent drilling tax — all of the revenues would go to reducing property taxes for seniors — so that no increased revenue could be used to fund environmental programs, full day kindergarten, Penn State or health care for the working poor.

And what about the environment? The deal would allow environmental programs to keep something they already have — revenue from drilling on public lands. The drillers dictated the amount of the impact fee and the drilling tax rate. Will Grove Norquist bless the arrangement? We’ll see. He decreed that Sen. Scarnati’s original impact fee proposal violated the sacred pledge in an unsolicited letter to Sen. Mary Jo White.

Right now, the drillers are playing the fiddle and Norquist is calling the tune. And it’s a nasty tune.

Shifting away from the budget and impact fees…

Governor Rick Perry’s signature makes Texas the first state in the nation to pass a law requiring drillers to publically disclose chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing. Pennsylvania and other states have regulations mandating disclosure, but no statutes. (And in Pennsylvania, companies provide lists to the Department of Environmental Protection, which then keeps the chemicals’ exact volumes confidential.)

Confused about drilling? A friendly fracosaurus is here to help! (Need more answers after that? Ask Charlie the Beagle.)