Pennsylvania is the only major gas-producing state that doesn’t tax extraction — beyond a relatively small impact fee.
Some Republicans and Democrats are calling that a major lost opportunity to put money into a state looking at a $2.3 billion deficit and where school funding has been drastically cut.
Gov. Tom Wolf ran on platform that included imposing a 5 percent extraction tax. This week, two cohorts of state legislators made public their own plans to tax shale production in the state to raise funds for education, the pension systems and the environment.