GOP-Backed Impact Fee Clears Committee Vote

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.

November 2, 2011 | 11:59 AM

The House Finance committee approved an impact fee measure on a party-line vote this morning, setting the stage for a full chamber debate on the measure, when lawmakers return to the Capitol in two weeks.
The legislation, House Bill 1950, includes controversial language stripping local governments of the right to regulate drilling.
The Post-Gazette has more on the meeting:

HARRISBURG – After an hour of heated discussion, a state House panel approved a Republican-backed drilling impact fee bill on a party-lines vote this morning.
That 15-10 tally marked the first substantive action in that chamber on Marcellus Shale drilling regulation this session.
It also means that both the House and Senate have bills primed for quick floor votes when the General Assembly returns to session on Nov. 14.

The House GOP measure voted this morning closely matches the impact fee plan outlines by Gov. Tom Corbett and the environmental regulations suggested by his Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission. It also includes a provision to use royalty dollars from gas wells on state-owned land to fund environmental initiatives.
But the section drawing some of the loudest concerns from Democratic members of the House Finance Committee was a provision stating that all local rules for oil and gas operations would be superseded. Rep. Phyllis Mundy, D-Luzerne, said that would strip municipalities of their ability to protect residential areas from drilling activity.
Republicans on the panel defended the move as similar to how the state regulates construction activities. Rep. Eli Evankovich, R-Murrysville, said if the state beefs up its Oil and Gas Act provisions to address issues like excessive noise and light, localities would feel less of a need to strengthen their own rules.

We’ll have more reaction to the measure, and a look at what happens next, later today.