PUC Chair: Private Company Will Collect Impact Fee Revenue

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.

February 15, 2012 | 2:30 PM

How will the Public Utility Commission collect impact fee revenue this year?
It won’t.
At yesterday’s PUC budget hearing, Chairman Robert Powelson told lawmakers the utility will likely contract out the collection work to a private third party.
More from the Post-Gazette:

The agency already does so for other revenue-collection duties it holds, related to the Universal Service Fund on telephone service, and the new duties could follow a similar procedure, according to commissioners.
“We’ve got some rigid deadlines,” he said after taking questions from the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday. He added that he believes the agency has sufficient resources and plans to allow for those first collections to begin on Sept. 1.

…and Capitolwire:

“In the short run, the collection and distribution of funds, we could do that … by putting an RFP (request for proposal) out and using a third party,” PUC Chairman Robert Powelson testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday.
Under the law signed by the governor on Monday, the PUC is charged with administering the collection and distribution of a fee that local governments may impose to address the impacts of unconventional natural gas drilling.
“We don’t necessarily have to build an apparatus internally to do this,” he said, pointing to the Universal Service Fund, a telecommunications fund under the authority of the PUC that is administered by a private company.