Corbett Sticking By County-Level Impact Fee

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.

October 5, 2011 | 5:05 PM

Despite skepticism from lawmakers, Governor Corbett is sticking by his plan to implement an impact fee on the county level.
Capitolwire has the details on Corbett’s latest statement.

Asked at a Capitol press conference if he would stick to that proposal against legislative opposition to that part of his sweeping Marcellus Shale proposal, Corbett said: “I think it’s a very important piece.”
“If you bring the money here to Harrisburg first, history demonstrates to us that administrations and Legislatures” will eventually claim some or most of the money for state projects, not the original purpose of the revenue measure, Corbett said.
…Corbett said the fee should be imposed locally and most of the money stay local – his proposal would spend more than 90 percent or more of the revenues in the counties where the drilling is taking place, because “the impact takes place in the counties where the drilling is.”
In addition, since the impacts are local, the decision on whether to impose the fee should be local, too, the governor said: “If the impact is in the county, they will determine whether they think they need it or not.”