Impact Fee on Hold as Judge Orders Temporary Injunction

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.

April 11, 2012 | 3:58 PM

The Associated Press reports on the decision from today’s impact fee hearing:

A state judge is ordering a temporary halt to portions of Pennsylvania’s new Marcellus Shale law that limit the power of municipalities to regulate the booming natural gas exploration industry.
Commonwealth Court Senior Judge Keith Quigley issued a 120-day injunction Wednesday after hearing arguments earlier in the day.
The eight-week-old law’s local-zoning provisions were scheduled to take effect Saturday.
A group that includes seven municipalities sought the injunction in the short-term to give them time to argue their lawsuit that the law unconstitutionally takes away local powers that protect them from potential harm.
Senior Deputy Attorney General Howard Hopkirk argued that the state created the municipal planning code, and municipalities have no right or standing to complain about perceived harm to its residents if the state pre-empts parts of it.

For more on the court case, click here.