Allegheny County Council, the Post-Gazette reports, will “consider massive fee hikes for U.S. Steel and other air quality violators.”
“In some instances, the increases are nearly seven times what they are now,” the P-G reports.
The most eye-popping fee hike would see one item – “installation permit – new source review” – shoot from $7,500 to $50,800.
This and other hikes are defended as being necessary and proper to address “a structural operating deficit in the air quality program — which county health officials say is in the red $1.8 million as of 2024.”
Simply put, when government raises the cost of doing business, it gets less business. It appears the council, doing the bidding of ecocrats, is sending a powerful message to the industrial sector that it doesn’t want its business in Allegheny County.
U.S. Steel, among others, opposes the fee hikes, saying the county Health Department “failed to conduct any economic analysis before proposing the fee increases, which are bound to have a detrimental impact on businesses throughout the Mon Valley.”
That is, for many smaller industrial players, if you can’t pay such steep tributes to governments in bed with the ecocrats, you might as well go home, then go elsewhere.
Should these hikes gain County Council’s approval — and businesses either shut down, leave or not locate locally at all – we can only imagine the council then will criticize those industries for “not being good corporate citizens” or some other similar buncombe.
It’s time for this growing Leviathan to knock it off.
We happen to be conservationists, not ecocrats. And we firmly believe steps must be taken to conserve and protect the environment.
But neither can we allow environmental rules and regulations to become an industrial suicide pact, much like we are experiencing with “green energy.”
Anything less that reasonable regulations and fair compliance costs is anathema to the limited government once so key to America’s success. And key it must be anew.
For government as an impediment instead of the facilitator it should be is a certain recipe for economic failure.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
