One of the dumbest things Gov. Ed Rendell and the Pennsylvania Legislature did earlier this year was to include $75 million in tax breaks to encourage Hollywood movie makers to film in Pennsylvania.
The money is relatively small compared to the $27 billion in the General Fund budget, but the tax breaks for Hollywood millionaires came at the expense of money to clean up hazardous waste sites in Pennsylvania.
That's right. Gov. Rendell found money to bribe Steven Spielberg to come to Pennsylvania, but couldn't come up with any money to clean up hundreds of hazardous waste sites in the state.
Is the governor looking to jump-start a film career, a la Fred Thompson?
An editorial in today's edition of The Mercury goes into greater detail about the debacle.
Southeastern Pennsylvania lawmakers vow to correct Rendell's folly as they return for the Legislature's fall session.
State Reps. Rick Taylor, D-Montgomery, and Mike Vereb, R-Montgomery, announced this week they have introduced House Bill 1810 that would provide $30 million for the Hazardous Sites Cleanup Act Fund (HSCA) to keep removing pollutants from old industrial sites, according to Capitolwire.com.
Taylor and Vereb want to use money slated to be transferred to the Rainy Day Fund (aka Legislative slush fund) to keep HSCA afloat through the end of the 2007-08 fiscal year in June.
The two lawmakers say this will give the General Assembly time to provide a new, stable source of funding for the cleanup program, reports Capitolwire.com. HSCA had been funded by the Capital Stock and Franchise Tax, which is being phased out, and the available monies will dry up at the end of this year, according to Capitolwire.com.
Last week, Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Chester, and Sen. Mary Jo White, R-Venango, unveiled a plan that would initially set aside $15 million from legislative reserve accounts to fund HSCA through the current fiscal year, Capitolwire.com reported. Those accounts fund the operations of the House, Senate and legislative agencies, Capitolwire.com says.
Beginning in 2008-09, cleanup efforts would then be funded with $40 million a year from the Capital Stock and Franchise Tax, according to Capitolwire.com.
State Sen. John Rafferty, D-Chester/Montgomery, is pushing a bottle bill that would impose a 5-cent deposit fee on all bottles sold in Pennsylvania, with the money going to a fund to pay for the cleanup of hazardous waste sites. To fund the HSCA program through the end of the year, Rafferty said he’d like to see $30 million taken from the existing state surplus.
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