Pennsylvania has a workforce problem - a growing skills gap that is making it difficult for employers to find qualified job candidates to fill open positions. We're fighting to close this gap by working with businesses, educators, students and their families to help build the skilled workforce of tomorrow.
Government should operate within its means: evaluating the effectiveness of current programs; weeding out waste, fraud and abuse in spending; and investing wisely in worthy state-run programs that directly benefit taxpayers.
Our natural gas industry holds the promise of economic growth and job creation. Additional taxes hinder this opportunity and drive companies to states with friendlier tax climates that share our resources. We're fighting against proposed new taxes on the industry that would pay for more state spending.
Good public policy brings people together, creates opportunity, improves quality of life and strengthens our economy.
It wasn't that long ago that President Barack Obama highlighted the value of natural gas as a bridge to a clean energy future.
The Pennsylvania Senate unanimously approved a House bill Wednesday that eliminates an asset tax law that has been on the books since 1935.
In her eight years on Ebensburg's borough council, Cecilia Houser has witnessed the gas industry's "Impact Fee" restore area streams, improve a borough park and support fundraising efforts for Hastings Swimming Pool.
Opponents of Gov. Tom Wolf's Restore Pennsylvania initiative held a news conference Thursday to express their concerns that the plan would unfairly impact the state's natural gas industry.
Not long after Gov. Tom Wolf wrapped up his stop in Towanda to tout his natural gas severance tax-funded Restore PA initiative, business and industry officials, as well as representatives from neighboring Tioga and Wyoming counties, began sharing concerns via conference call that using a severance tax to fund a variety of much-longed-for infrastructure projects would do nothing but push the natural gas industry away and worsen the area's economic climate.
Tioga County commissioner Erick Coolidge; Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry director of Government Affairs Kevin Sunday; president of the Wyoming Chamber of Commerce Gina Severcool Suydam; PIOGA president Dan Weaver and API-PA associate director Jonathan Lutz discussed the pitfalls of the $4.5 billion "Restore PA" initiative and its negative impacts on Pennsylvania's economy and the state's natural gas industry.
Gov. Tom Wolf's "Restore Pennsylvania" fund sounds nice, but it's really just a vehicle to impose another severance tax.
Eleven weary months later, Gov. Tom Wolf is about to deliver a second budget proposal that he says will narrowly focus on boosting school funding while raising taxes to pay for automatic cost increases.
It's rare for a tax to be done away with entirely, but, once in a while, it happens.
A Pennsylvania business tax that predated the Civil War and in modern times pumped hundreds of millions of dollars a year into state coffers has been swept away with the new year.
A much-reviled Pennsylvania business tax has been swept out by the new year.