COLLEGE TOWNSHIP — A Marcellus Shale impact fee is close to passage, state Sen. Jake Corman, R-Benner Township, said at a breakfast hosted by the Chamber of Business and Industry of Centre County Wednesday.
A bill implementing an impact fee will be passed out of committee and face a floor debate either next week or the week after, Corman said.
“We’re on the precipice, finally, after years, of finishing an impact fee for Marcellus Shale legislation,” he said. “It’s been difficult to try to reach a compromise ... Any time you’re talking about a new funnel of money there’s a lot of different ideas of how to spend it.”
The new funds available to the state might not be as much as some had hoped, Corman said.
“Ironically, we’re going to get this done right as gas prices are at a record low, so I’m not sure how much money this is ultimately going to generate,” he said.
Corman also discussed the deteriorating road infrastructure in Pennsylvania and the need to fix roads like U.S. Route 322 near Boalsburg, which he called particularly dangerous.
“We need to fix that road. It’s a safety hazard,” he said.
Though it’s badly needed, a comprehensive transportation bill is unlikely to see the light of day in Harrisburg, Corman acknowledged. A bill that would pay for infrastructure upgrades by lifting the cap on the oil company franchise tax has not been put to a vote since Corman introduced it in October.
“The cost of maintaining the system that we have is far outgrowing the ability to pay for it under current mechanisms,” he said. “Nobody likes to pay more ... but having said that, we have benefits to paying more if (transportation) projects are done.”
If the opportunity does arise to discuss transportation funding, Corman said he would push to convert mass transit systems in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to natural gas to take advantage of local gas reserves. He lauded State College’s conversion of its fleet of CATA buses to natural gas more than a decade ago as a wiser business model than relying on foreign-sourced diesel fuel, as CATA buses run on gas that costs 60 cents a gallon.
“Why are we paying Middle Eastern countries for diesel when we could be paying Pennsylvanians for natural gas?” he asked.
In his introduction, Corman expressed outrage at the national media for its coverage of the scandal at Penn State.
“They take every angle that it possibly can, try to do stories with it, and take people who live in this community who have done nothing but give time and money their whole lives to charitable causes in this community, and then try to tear them apart,” Corman said. “I thought that was a pretty sad thing to watch.”
Cliff White can be reached at 235-3928.
