Your Turn: The real waste in Pennsylvania government
Acting Secretary Jessica Shirley explained that DEP's 'rulemaking' process allows everyday people to ask for a new rule or repeal an existing one. And if a citizen's petition is backed by scientific data, it can merit review by the DEP's rulemaking body, the Environmental Quality Board.
Shirley also explained that EQB's review includes legislative touch points and consent, as well as legislators among its members.
Evidently. too fixated on degrading the democratic process to listen, Kail then delivered a textbook non sequitur, stating that since DEP rulemaking includes 'absolutely no legislative input,' the agency's time spent in rulemaking is 'wasted.'
His claim is both erroneous and authoritarian.
Kail's performance red-flags whether he understands or even cares what a legislator's job requires under our constitution. How can any legislator call listening to everyday citizens a waste of time when the heart of being a legislator is to hear and represent constituents' needs?
More so, why would any legislator be outraged (or even pretend to be, as Kail's thespian muscle-flexing suggested) at a lawful, 40-year-old process designed to ensure public input – a process our Legislature wrote and passed and understood to be protected by the First Amendment?
Then comes the biggest question of all: Do we – as a country of, by, and for the People – continue to elect legislators who want to take power from us?
Or do we refuse to elect legislators who call our voices a 'waste?'
That Kail tried to shame the DEP for working with the People to create regulations is in itself shameful. Under the pretense that time spent addressing the People's petitions is fiscal squandering, Kail named three such petitions to exemplify his point: One for joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), one for increasing security bonds for oil and gas wells, and one for establishing mandatory set-backs for oil and gas wells.
Given that all three petitions would bring hundreds of millions in income and savings to Pennsylvania, characterizing time spent on them as fiscally irresponsible is a farce. If Kail actually listened to the People, his feigned fiscal concerns would be relieved.
Although the RGGI matter started from a rulemaking petition, when Gov. Tom Wolf signed an executive order requiring DEP to join RGGI, the petition was set aside. But this cap-and-trade program of CO2 would have brought in an estimated $443 million in income to be spent only on clean air initiatives such as monitoring and constraining polluting facilities. If Kail could imagine how much his constituents, who are plagued by carcinogenic emissions from thousands of oil wells, need DEP to step up and protect them, he might be able to help legislate the funding DEP needs to do so.
Or is that funding a waste?
The well-bonding petition asked oil and gas companies to post higher bonds before drilling a well. The current bond amount is $2,500, which creates zero incentive for companies to plug wells at a cost of about tens of thousands of dollars per well. It's a business no-brainer to default on the bond, rather than spend twenty times more to plug a well. So that defaulting leaves Pennsylvanians with the public health and environmental wreckage, while taxing them for the massive cost of plugging up to hundreds of thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells. While Pennsylvania is currently fighting for $300 million in federal funding to plug wells, the People's well bonding petition simply proposed raising bonds to about $38,000.
Is such a proposal really a waste?
Finally, the setbacks petition seeks a common-sense mandate that oil and gas wells not be built too close to waterways and buildings. Currently, health-harming wells can be and are built only 500 feet from buildings such as schools and hospitals. Instead, this People's petition asked DEP to base these distances on scientific research by requiring
Set-backs of 5,280 ft from any building 'serving the vulnerable' (schools, hospitals).
Set-backs of 3,281 ft from any building or drinking water well.
Setbacks of 750 ft from any waterway.
Is Kail l saying that protecting our children, our elderly, our infirm, is a waste? Is protecting our drinking water a waste?
Any citizen who values their voice should scorn Kail's disingenuous performance on Feb. 27 and his audacious inclination to snatch away our power to develop and shape regulations.
The right to hold Kail accountable rests especially with the People of his 15th District, which includes Shell's massive pollution-spewing plastics plant, along with half of Washington County – the most fracked county in Pennsylvania.
The real waste in our state government is not time spent on the DEP rulemaking process. It's time spent by lobbied legislators in selling out the government of, by, and for the People to the petrochemical industry.
Terrie Baumgardner is a resident of Aliquippa and Clean Air Council's Outreach Coordinator for Beaver County.
This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Opinion: The real waste in Pennsylvania government
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
31 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Judge issues temporary injunction against Trump administration cancellation of humanities grants
WASHINGTON (AP) — A district court judge in New York issued a preliminary injunction Friday night stopping the mass cancellation of National Endowment for the Humanities grants to members of the Authors Guild on the grounds that their First Amendment rights were violated. Judge Colleen McMahon of the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York stayed the mass cancellations of grants previously awarded to guild members and ordered that any funds associated with the grants not be reobligated until a trial on the merits of the case is held. In reaching her decision, the judge said the 'defendants terminated the grants based on the recipients' perceived viewpoint, in an effort to drive such views out of the marketplace of ideas. This is most evident by the citation in the Termination Notices to executive orders purporting to combat 'Radical Indoctrination' and 'Radical … DEI Programs,' and to further 'Biological Truth.'' One of the grants was to a professor writing a book on the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s and 1980s. On a spreadsheet entitled 'Copy of NEH Active Grants,' the government flagged the work as being connected to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, McMahon wrote. The judge said several other history projects on the spreadsheet were also canceled in part because of their connection to DEI-related subjects. 'Far be it from this Court to deny the right of the Administration to focus NEH priorities on American history and exceptionalism as the year of our semiquincentennial approaches,' McMahon said. 'Such refocusing is ordinarily a matter of agency discretion. But agency discretion does not include discretion to violate the First Amendment. Nor does not give the Government the right to edit history.' McMahon said some of the grantees lost grants simply because they had received them during the Biden administration. The Guild filed a class action lawsuit in May against the NEH and the Department of Government Efficiency for terminating grants that had already been appropriated by Congress. The humanities groups' lawsuit said DOGE brought the core work of the humanities councils 'to a screeching halt' this spring when it terminated its grant program. The lawsuit was among several filed by humanities groups and historical, research and library associations to try to stop funding cuts and the dissolution of federal agencies and organizations. McMahon noted her injunction is narrowly tailored 'to maintain the status quo until we can decide whether Plaintiffs are entitled to ultimate relief. It does nothing more.' The judge denied a temporary injunction request from the American Council of Learned Societies, as well as several of their claims in the lawsuit. Their case included the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association. Solve the daily Crossword
San Francisco Chronicle
32 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Judge issues temporary injunction against Trump administration cancellation of humanities grants
WASHINGTON (AP) — A district court judge in New York issued a preliminary injunction Friday night stopping the mass cancellation of National Endowment for the Humanities grants to members of the Authors Guild on the grounds that their First Amendment rights were violated. Judge Colleen McMahon of the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York stayed the mass cancellations of grants previously awarded to guild members and ordered that any funds associated with the grants not be reobligated until a trial on the merits of the case is held. In reaching her decision, the judge said the 'defendants terminated the grants based on the recipients' perceived viewpoint, in an effort to drive such views out of the marketplace of ideas. This is most evident by the citation in the Termination Notices to executive orders purporting to combat 'Radical Indoctrination' and 'Radical … DEI Programs,' and to further 'Biological Truth.'' One of the grants was to a professor writing a book on the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s and 1980s. On a spreadsheet entitled 'Copy of NEH Active Grants,' the government flagged the work as being connected to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, McMahon wrote. The judge said several other history projects on the spreadsheet were also canceled in part because of their connection to DEI-related subjects. 'Far be it from this Court to deny the right of the Administration to focus NEH priorities on American history and exceptionalism as the year of our semiquincentennial approaches,' McMahon said. 'Such refocusing is ordinarily a matter of agency discretion. But agency discretion does not include discretion to violate the First Amendment. Nor does not give the Government the right to edit history.' McMahon said some of the grantees lost grants simply because they had received them during the Biden administration. The Guild filed a class action lawsuit in May against the NEH and the Department of Government Efficiency for terminating grants that had already been appropriated by Congress. The humanities groups' lawsuit said DOGE brought the core work of the humanities councils 'to a screeching halt' this spring when it terminated its grant program. The lawsuit was among several filed by humanities groups and historical, research and library associations to try to stop funding cuts and the dissolution of federal agencies and organizations. McMahon noted her injunction is narrowly tailored 'to maintain the status quo until we can decide whether Plaintiffs are entitled to ultimate relief. It does nothing more.' The judge denied a temporary injunction request from the American Council of Learned Societies, as well as several of their claims in the lawsuit. Their case included the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association.
Washington Post
33 minutes ago
- Washington Post
Statehouses are the public's houses, but the fight for potty parity continues
For female state lawmakers in Kentucky, choosing when to go to the bathroom has long required careful calculation. There are only two bathroom stalls for women on the third floor of the Kentucky Statehouse, where the House and Senate chambers are located. Female legislators — 41 of the 138 member Legislature — needing a reprieve during a lengthy floor session have to weigh the risk of missing an important debate or a critical vote.
