SUNBURY – State Senator John Gordner (R-27th, Berwick) hasn’t been too happy about the massive tax increase approved by the state senate. The bill includes a severance tax on Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling, more taxes on phones and other utilities, and a higher fireworks tax. The tax increases would offset a $2.1 billion deficit in this year’s budget.
Sen. Gordner says since the 2008-2009 recession it’s been a struggle for Pennsylvania to come up with revenues. After trying to come up with different temporary fixes, raising taxes was the only option, “We’ve been averse to raising personal income taxes or the sales taxes or the broad-based taxes. We did last year raise the cigarette tax and other things, but this year, we looked at the consumer-based taxes, as well as the severance taxes.”
Sen. Gordner says the decision to borrow money was very difficult, “We expect to need to borrow $1.2 billion from the tobacco settlement fund. That is a fund that comes in every year and will be coming in for decades to come, so we thought it was okay.”
The senator placed some blame on Governor Tom Wolf. He says Wolf didn’t do something former Governors Tom Corbett and Ed Rendell did during their administrations, “Rendell and Corbett…when we were getting to February, March, or April and not having enough revenues coming in, they froze line items and put money into reserve in order to deal with that short fall. Unfortunately, Gov. Wolf chose not to do any of it.”
