No New Forest Leases in Corbett's Budget

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

February 7, 2012 | 2:53 PM

Environmentalists worried that Corbett would try to help balance the state’s budget by selling off more mineral rights on state land can breathe a sigh of relief. The Governor’s proposed budget has no new revenues coming in from lease bonus payments. In fact, the revenue from mineral leases is projected to go down significantly. That’s partly due to a continued moratorium on new state forest leases, but also, the price of gas has hit record lows, meaning much less in royalty payments from drillers.
That’s the good news. The bad news? No funds proposed for forest regeneration, forestry research or the Keystone Park and Recreation Fund. Former DCNR chief John Quigley says that means the department would have no money to give grants. “No grants to communities,” says Quigley. “No reinvestment in parks and forests, no grants to landtrusts in Southeast Pennsylvania to protect open space. None. Zero.”
Corbett’s budget proposes the approximately $46 million from real estate transfer taxes that had gone to the Keystone Fund in the past, to go into the general fund.