Bad news for the Republicans’ “impact fee” on fracking:
Nine Republican state Senators have signed a letter expressing major concerns about local zoning restrictions within the natural gas drilling impact fees passed by both the House and Senate.
The legislators say they’re on board with a plan to allow the Attorney General’s office to challenge “unreasonable” local drilling restrictions, but write, “we feel the language contained in the current version of the bill goes far beyond that concept and actually works more like a model ordinance by specifically spelling out permitted uses.” [...]
Republicans hold a comfortable ten-seat majority in the Senate, but these nine Republicans could kill the impact fee’s chances of becoming law, if they remain opposed to the letter.
If Democrats listen to Ed Rendell and force a party-line vote on this, and these Senators vote no, we only need one more Republican to kill this joke in the Senate. Are there some other Tea Party reps who oppose this thing on principle?
(h/t Scott Detrow)
One hopes. PADEP, like the governor, has been completely corrupted by the surfeit of lobbying dollars flowing from the shale gas industry. The only people with the will to protect us from the ravages of this industry is us.