Business Leaders Push For Impact Fee Resolution

• Scott Detrow
  BioRecent Stories

  

  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.

As referenced in Drill Bits this morning,four major business groups are weighing in on ongoing impact fee debates, urging lawmakers to hurry up and pass a bill.
The missive from the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry and two other groups comes just before Pennsylvania Society, the annual New York City event where politicians, business interests and lobbyists mix and mingle at the Waldorf-Astoria. There’s a good chance this issue will come up a few times over cocktails and dinner.
The Tribune-Review has more details:

They asked lawmakers to resolve differences between House and Senate-passed bills to enact legislation by the end of this month to deal with Marcellus shale and other unconventional gas drilling. Others joining the letter included the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce and the Pennsylvania Business Council.

“Environmental, safety, health, labor, transportation, taxation and impact fee policies must be standardized and made consistent across all municipal jurisdictions in the commonwealth without local variation or uneven enforcement,” the letter said. “We recognize the powers of municipal governments in land use planning and zoning, and support legislation that sets out clear, statewide, uniform standards reserving to our local governments their relevant zoning powers.”
The impact fee “must be competitive with other shale producing gas states, reflective of well industry economics, transparent, and predictable,” the business groups said.

Editor's Picks