Gas tax foes, school funding advocates converge at Capitol
June 24, 2015
As Gov. Tom Wolf's plan to raise money for schools by taxing gas drillers slams into Republican crosswinds, hundreds of protesters converged on the Statehouse on Tuesday to call on the Legislature to get behind the proposal.
Wolf has called for a tax on natural gas drillers to raise part of the $1 billion he wants to infuse into public schools. Drilling-for-school-dollars was a keynote of his campaign last year, and his victory over Tom Corbett was the first time in modern political history that an incumbent governor was voted out of office in Pennsylvania.
But opponents say the tax is ill-timed since the industry is already scaling back under the strain of depressed prices. Republican leaders have dismissed the tax as a "de facto moratorium" on drilling.
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