Pennsylvania Localities Benefitting Substantially from Gas Extraction Fee

While Democrats insist Pennsylvania misses out on revenue from natural gas extraction, a Pittsburgh nonprofit’s analysis published on Thursday observes drilling impact fees yielded $2.25 billion through 2021.

Since the boom in hydraulic fracturing (or fracking), the horizontal drilling technique gas companies use to access the vast reserves of fossil fuel from the Marcellus Shale sedimentary rock formation, many politicians have eyed an extraction tax. Instead of such a tax, former Governor Tom Corbett (R) and a Republican-led legislature levied an impact fee in 2012, with revenues going to localities largely to mitigate fracking-related environmental disruption. In the new policy brief from the Allegheny Institute (AI), the think tank’s executive director Frank Gamrat detailed those revenue gains. 

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Pennsylvania Representative Proposes Expanding E-Verify

A Pennsylvania lawmaker is asking colleagues to support an expansion of the state’s mandate that contractors use the E-Verify system to ensure they only hire legal U.S. residents. 

State Representative Ryan Mackenzie (R-Macungie) this week began circulating a memorandum seeking co-sponsors for his upcoming legislation that would require all public contractors and subcontractors to use the federal government’s E-Verify website. Established in the late nineties and now run by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the site lets employers avail themselves of it free of charge. The system cross-references information from workers’ Employment Eligibility Verification Form I-9 with preexisting government data to determine whether a hire is living in America legally. 

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Oz Pennsylvania Senate Campaign Blasts Fetterman for Hiring Two Convicted Murderers

Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz’s campaign on Thursday excoriated his opponent, Democratic Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, for bringing on two convicted murderers as campaign staffers. 

The celebrity surgeon and the National Republican Senate Committee cited Federal Election Commission filings indicating the lieutenant governor’s campaign employs Lee and Dennis Horton, who were both convicted of second-degree murder in 1993, having been found to have aided Robert Leaf in a theft-related killing of a man before fleeing the scene. 

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Fetterman Condition Prompts Pennsylvania State Senators to Consider State Disability Procedures

Pennsylvania’s Senate State Government Committee on Monday heard expert testimony on possible changes to the state’s rules for handling instances when the governor or lieutenant governor cannot perform his or her duties.

The issue has become especially salient ever since Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) suffered a stroke on May 13. He recovered but only gradually returned to his job and to his U.S. Senate campaign. He missed 18 session days as presiding officer of the Pennsylvania Senate, leaving him out of the conclusion of budget deliberations.

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Lawmakers Propose Enhanced Enforcement of E-Verify in Pennsylvania

Two Pennsylvania state lawmakers indicated this week they’re authoring legislation to enhance the effectiveness of a web-based system used to confirm workers’ legal U.S. residency.

In 1996, the federal government established the E-Verify system as a voluntary five-state pilot program to ease employers’ ability to check the immigration statuses of their new hires. It was expanded for use in all 50 states in 2003 and is administered by the Department of Homeland Security.

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