Dueling Impact Fee Debates

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 15, 2011 | 7:07 PM

Pennsylvania lawmakers have been mulling whether or not to impose a tax or fee on natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale for nearly three years, but a bill has never become law. In fact, a severance tax made it to the House floor just twice during the 2009-2010 session (it passed, in two different forms), and never advanced past a Senate committee.
After so much waiting, it’s been a little disorienting to see the House and Senate hold simultaneous debate on two different impact fees this evening. Here’s a taste of what reporters are dealing with in the Capitol newsroom. (The House is in the foreground; the Senate in the background.)