DN Editorial: Roads to hell?

THE GOOD NEWS is that the General Assembly has finally approved an impact fee for Marcellus Shale gas drillers.

The bad news is that it's too little, too late, and way too weak to have much impact on anyone but the drillers, who must be holding secret victory dances about how much it favors them.

With Wednesday's passage of HB1950, the commonwealth has gone from being the only state that doesn't tax gas drillers to the state that asks the least of them.

The fee, in place for 15 years, is pegged to the price of natural gas and inflation. At the current price of gas, that would bring in $240,000 per well. Compare that to the average per-well tax paid in West Virginia ($993,700) and Texas ($878,500).

It would be more accurate to call this a gas PAC fee - as in, "Thank you for your political action and contributions, gas industry; in return, we've gone easy on you."

Among many areas that drilling affects, such as drinking water quality and the general environment, the state's transit infrastructure is made now even more vulnerable: that is, big trucks and equipments tearing up the state's roads.

It's not like Pennsylvania's roads and bridges are in good shape to begin with - a problem that Gov. Corbett acknowledged in his budget address this week. Unfortunately, acknowledging the problem is all Corbett did about it. He called the issue "critical," but said it was "too large" to be dealt with as part of the budget. He also warned that the problem wouldn't be solved "overnight."

It had not occurred to us to worry that the transportation problem would be solved too quickly. Pennsylvania's leaders have known for years that they need to come up with money to repair roads and bridges. We have more than 5,000 "deficient" bridges - more than in any other state - but have failed to do anything about it, preferring to kick the can down the deteriorating road.

Last year, an advisory committee offered a package of ideas to raise about $2.5 billion annually for infrastructure repair. The suggestions included raising motor- vehicle-registration and -license fees, and uncapping the oil-company-franchise tax. These measures were incorporated into a bill introduced last fall by Republican Jake Corman, and then again in a bill introduced last month by state Democrats.

Despite bipartisan support, neither has gone anywhere. Corbett doesn't want to act on it, apparently because (here we go again) he doesn't want to raise any taxes or fees.

Corbett said in his speech that he has developed some "workable solutions" on infrastructure. We're looking forward to hearing those, because what we're seeing is a governor who is actually cutting funding for transportation more than 5 percent while paying lip service to serious deficiencies. But lip service won't make the problem go away, and the money to fix it ain't coming from a gas-drilling tax.