A Taxing Question...

In an email to the local press yesterday, Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) spokeswoman Emily DeSantis remarked on the agency’s need for additional funds for regulating hydraulic fracturing and gas drilling. Apparently those funds “will not be included in the executive budget” – the budget Gov. Andrew Cuomo will propose around mid-January.

That’s about the same time that DEC should be getting down to the business of reading through the thousands of public comments regarding the draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS). And the proposed regulations for high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing.

Wayne Bayer, a DEC engineer who is shop steward for the Public Employees Federation union, said the agency is understaffed and its employees are concerned about adding a new regulatory program like hydrofracking.

At this point the DEC estimates it will need 140 new workers for the first year permits are issued and 226 by the fifth. Add salaries to the cost of needed equipment and you’re looking at an additional $20 million a year.

Where will that money come from? Right now DEC has convened a panel of outside experts to develop a list of fees and taxes that could be levied on drillers to cover the costs. That panel should be issuing a report “sometime in the first part of next year,” says DeSantis.

But it’s going to be tough to sell the need for additional staff when Cuomo has already required all state agencies to cut 10 percent from their budgets for the current fiscal year, and is looking for an additional 2.5 percent cut for 2012-13.

What to do? Ask the industry to pay for the services it uses. Jim Smith, a spokesman for the Independent Oil & Gas Association of New York (IOGA-NY), is confident the money will come into the state once DEC gives drillers a green light. “We support more DEC staff,” he told the press. Once drilling starts there should be enough revenue through permitting and other fees to “more than pay for that staff.”

Gas Activist Runs for PA Governor on Write-In Campaign

Virginia Cody wasn't planning on running for governor. This retired US Air Force captain has enough to do already, what with challenging the Pennsylvania Office of Homeland Security (OHS) to cease surveillance on ordinary citizens and her continued anti-drilling activism. Still, last week Cody announced that she's running a write-in campaign for the top office at the PA Statehouse.

 Cody isn't your typical PA politician. For one thing, her pockets aren't lined with donations from the gas companies. Both of her opponents, Tom Corbett (GOP) and Dan Onorato (Dem) have received scads of money from the natural gas industry. According to Marcellus Money Corbett received  $372,720 and Onorato $74,300 - most of it in the past couple years.

For another, Cody has called for a moratorium on further natural gas extraction. She wants the state to have time to study the impacts of hydraulic fracturing on the environment, water, animals, agriculture... But all we hear, Cody told the Times Tribune last week, "is candidates regurgitating the industry spin that there have been no confirmed cases of contamination. We know better!"

What does Cody want to see happen in her state? Aside from a moratorium, she'd like to see a severance tax. Landowners, says Cody, shouldn't have to pay taxes on the wealth that the gas companies will extract. Cody is not in favor of "forced pooling" - landowners should have the right to reject a lease. And Cody would like to see local municipalities retain their zoning authority.

The problem, Cody told me in an October 1 interview, is that her state government seems to be in collusion with the gas corporations. This was highlighted during the recent "Intelligence Bulletin Scandal" when Cody revealed to the press that the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR), contracted to collect intelligence for the OHS, was targeting anti-drilling activists for surveillance. 

These are law-abiding citizens exercising their rights to protest what their government is doing, Cody explained. She is concerned that law-abiding citizens are being depicted as "eco-terrorists" and  lumped onto a watch list that was sent out to - best estimate of James Powers (head of the OHS)  - some 800 people including universities and gas industry representatives and lobbyists.

You can read more about Cody's platform and her bid for office at her website.