Pennsylvania’s Independent Fiscal Office says Gov. Tom Wolf’s proposed severance tax on natural gas extraction would be the highest effective such tax rate in the country.
That rate? A whopping 9 percent.
And the Marcellus Shale Coalition’s Dave Spigelmyer says such an onerous tax would tamp down shale gas production in the Keystone State which, in turn, would retard jobs.
As the MSC put it, “The obsession with enacting even higher energy taxes by some Harrisburg politicians further undercuts the commonwealth’s competitiveness and ability to attract job-creating capital investment, putting Pennsylvania at a disadvantage (with) states with lower taxes as companies decide where to invest.”
That, of course, is elementary. Pity that so many policymakers continue to believe that taxing policies have no consequences. Again, the more you tax something, the less you get of it.
There is, however, some very good news for the shale gas industry.
The Federal Regulatory Commission has issued its final environmental impact statement on the $1 billion, 120-mile PennEast Pipeline, reports The Philadelphia Inquirer. And it’s a most positive report.
The underground pipeline will deliver Marcellus shale natural gas from Northeast Pennsylvania to the Lehigh Valley and to New Jersey utilities.
FERC’s statement is considered the last major regulatory hurdle before the federal government signs off on the project. Pennsylvania regulators already have approved water-quality permits; similar approvals must still come from New Jersey officials.
Penn State and its president, Eric Barron, have offered the best, and most concise, rationale for not allowing graduate students to unionize:
“Penn State does not oppose the concept of unions or the unionization of employees,” Barron recently said. “However, the university’s relationship with our students is fundamentally different from that of an employer and employee.”
Bingo.
Prior to Barron’s statement, the university noted that “Penn State considers graduate assistants, like all graduate students, to be students first and foremost, whose primary responsibility is to earn advanced degrees.”
Bingo.
This is another elementary fact that pro-organizing forces can’t seem to grasp. Or misrepresent by design.
Two Pennsylvania appellate courts — the Superior Court and the Supreme Court — now have ruled that “the state” cannot be considered “a victim” for the purposes of restitution in public corruption cases.
The latest case involved former state House Speaker John Perzel.
On April 4, the Superior Court cited a November 2016 Supreme Court decision (in the Mike Veon political corruption case) that the styling of state statutes preclude those convicted of such crimes from being forced to make restitution to “the state” (i.e. a state agency) versus a “human victim.”
Indeed, these rulings sound absurd on their face. After all, “the state” is “the people,” is it not? And, after all, the Supreme Court, again in the Veon case, noted thusly:
“It cannot be denied that … public funds were diverted to inappropriate purposes and thus were unavailable to be used in the ways intended, effectively victimizing the commonwealth and its citizens.”
But, as a matter of law, when considering the clear language of the applicable statutes — involving only precisely defined human victims — the rulings were correct. And it’s certainly not up to the courts to do anything other than to apply the law as written.
Again, from the Supreme Court ruling:
“Should the General Assembly wish to rectify this apparent gap in its restitution scheme, it may do so. We, on the other hand, may not.”
That said, it now is incumbent on the state Legislature to amend the law. Crooked pols should not be given a legislative pass on paying for their crimes.
Colin McNickle is a senior fellow and media specialist at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
