MuniLand

In the media appearance above, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane announces that the contract drawn up by Governor Tom Corbett to privatize the state’s lottery management “contravenes the Pennsylvania Constitution and is not statutory authorized.” Translation: Pop- Bam- Take that, governor – You don’t have the power that you think you have.

This is one of democracy’s more glorious moments.

I wrote in early December around when Corbett’s deal to privatize the lottery became public:

There is a lot of darkness and a web of connections around the efforts to privatize the Pennsylvania state lottery. Tom Corbett, the governor of Pennsylvania, is attempting to force through the privatization before the legislature comes back into session in January and has a chance to review the terms of the 20-30 year deal. Democrats are howling.

It was a fatal mistake for Corbett to take a public asset, with expected cash flows of $70 billion over the next 20 years, and give its control to a British firm with no legislative oversight. It was crony politics and it failed.

If public assets are to be given to private interests, it must happen by daylight. These deals that often last decades must be thoroughly examined. The rule of law must prevail.

David Fillman, with union of #PALottery workers, says public mgmt could be more lucrative than private. “And we don’t have a profit motive.’

— Marywilson (@Marywilson) January 14, 2013

A big brawl is going on in Pennsylvania over the way that Republican Governor Tom Corbett has been maneuvering to privatize the state’s successful public lottery. The governor held negotiations in secret for months before announcing in November, 2012 that he had chosen a single bidder, the UK’s Camelot Global Services, to be awarded a 20-25 year contract to operate the lottery.

This announcement, made while the Pennsylvania legislature was in recess, was intended to move the governor’s process to conclusion before the legislature came back into session. Public outrage caused Corbett to initially delay the contract, but in a move that seemed to show contempt for the state’s legislators, his office gave Camelot a “Notice of Award” late last Friday; just before the Senate Finance Committee was to hold a hearing on the details of the contract.

Nothing makes me happier than to see law as the weapon of choice in a fight between public officials. There is a big battle underway in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania over the efforts of the governor to privatize the lottery, currently a big source of revenue for the state’s senior citizen programs. I wrote last week about Pennsylvania’s sweetheart lottery privatization deal:

There is a lot of darkness and a web of connections around the efforts to privatize the Pennsylvania state lottery. Tom Corbett, the governor of Pennsylvania, is attempting to force through the privatization before the legislature comes back into session in January and has a chance to review the terms of the 20-30 year deal. Democrats are howling.

One Democrat with a lot of legal authority is howling away, and he has essentially blocked the governor’s efforts to sell the highly profitable lottery to a British firm. The Patriot News writes:

There is a lot of darkness and a web of connections around the efforts to privatize the Pennsylvania state lottery. Tom Corbett, the governor of Pennsylvania, is attempting to force through the privatization before the legislature comes back into session in January and has a chance to review the terms of the 20-30 year deal. Democrats are howling.

The Patriot News tells one side of the story:

Calling the administration’s pursuit of this potential deal “too secretive,” House Democratic Leader Frank Dermody, D-Allegheny, urged Corbett to be more transparent about his plan for privatizing the lottery that he said would cost older Pennsylvanians hundreds of millions of dollars in lost funding for services over the life of the 20-year contract.

“Now, when there is no General Assembly in session, he is trying to hand-deliver a lucrative contract to the lone bidder with no hearings, no legislative approval and no public scrutiny. This whole thing stinks,” Dermody said.

Bloomberg View’s Josh Barro wrote an interesting piece Thursday urging Scranton, Pennsylvania to declare Chapter 9 bankruptcy. Scranton has achieved national attention after the mayor reduced all city workers’ pay to minimum wage last week because the city could no longer afford paying their full salaries, a powerful image of how little cash Scranton has left.

The problem with Barro’s proposal is that Scranton cannot file for Chapter 9 without the consent of Pennsylvania’s state government. Chapter 9 bankruptcy is a part of the federal bankruptcy code, and it gives individual states the authority to decide whether their cities can go bankrupt:

States play a key role as gatekeepers or guardians in that, by virtue of [bankruptcy code] amendments codified in 1994, they have to specifically authorize their municipalities to file for Chapter 9. Silence on the matter is taken as a prohibition on filing.

Of the $763 billion in tax revenues that states collected in 2011, only $14.6 billion – less than 2 percent – came from severance taxes on coal, gas and oil. Energy production is very concentrated in the United States: Just nine states receive over 5 percent of their tax revenues from energy producers. Currently, the bulk of severance revenues comes from oil production. Alaska, a state floating on an ocean of oil, gets 76 percent of its revenues from a handful of big oil companies that have drilling rights on the North Slope of the state.

Although there has always been natural gas production in America, hydraulic fracking has given rise to substantial drilling activity in several Northeastern states along the Marcellus and Utica shale formations. Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio have substantial reservoirs of natural gas, but the impact this boom will have on state finances is not yet known. These new supplies have come to market when demand is down and have swamped the nation’s usage and storage capacity, driving gas prices down to record lows. States that rely on, or plan for, revenues from energy severance taxes will face a lot of volatility from demand and price changes. Natalie Cohen, head of municipal research at Wells Fargo, sketched it out in a recent report:

Wyoming, for example, collects severance tax based on the taxable value of current-year production. With the drop in natural gas prices, it has had to reduce its forecast on severance tax revenue. The state is now looking to cut 4% out of next year’s budget, despite a current-year budget surplus. According to the state’s Economic Analysis Division, each dollar drop in natural gas prices costs the state about $226 million in revenue.

We are now watching Harrisburg crash and burn. The busted Pennsylvania capital of 49,000 is crushed by $463 million in city debt and an additional $282 million in debt for the public school system. The state senator representing the area, Jeff Piccola, used his power last June to pass state legislation (Act 47 amendments) that shackled Harrisburg with accepting a receiver appointed by the governor and barred the city from filing bankruptcy until June 30, 2012.

Adhering to the Act 47 requirement that the mayor work with the city council to approve a fiscal recovery plan, Mayor Thompson fought a months-long war that resulted in her plan being rejected three times and the governor’s appointment of a receiver, David Unkovic. After the Dauphin County court approved Unkovic last November, he tried to help the city balance the budget, sell assets and negotiate with bondholders. Amid all that action, a subset of the city council, against the mayor’s wishes, filed a Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy petition that was ultimately rejected by a federal judge as a result of Senator Piccola’s Act 47 legislation.

Harrisburg’s biggest albatross is its responsibility for the debt of the Harrisburg incinerator – a monstrosity of design and a debacle of public financing. The responsibility for this debt first lies with the city and then with Dauphin County and bond insurer Assured Guaranty.

As Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett prepares to release the state’s fiscal 2013 budget tomorrow, the AP is reporting that Republicans in the state legislature are planning to cram through a law that levies a minimal tax on gas and oil drillers in the state. Although taxes on gas and oil production could be a means of plugging substantial revenue shortfalls, it’s likely that the legislation will require drillers to pay the smallest level of fees of any state with recoverable energy assets.

From the AP today (emphasis mine):

Pennsylvania’s top-ranking state senator says he’s hoping for a speedy vote in his chamber on sweeping legislation to impose a drilling fee and update safety regulations on the booming natural gas industry.

Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati said he hopes senators will vote on the bill by Monday night. The proposed compromise hasn’t been released publicly or amended into a bill, but Scarnati says he believes it will get enough votes to pass.

In a post earlier this week I said that Pennsylvania would be forgoing approximately $24 billion in fracking royalties and that the adoption of an “impact fee” would shortchange the citizens of the state.

The Pennsylvania governor’s office responded to my post claiming that I had neglected to include other taxes collected related to gas drilling:

First, any fair consideration as to the value that Pennsylvania taxpayers will receive from natural gas development would include ALL taxes paid by operators, and landowners, engaged in the activity. Nowhere in the analysis is consideration given to the hundreds of millions of dollars paid annually already under the state’s existing corporate net income, personal income, capital stock and franchise, liquid fuels and other taxes.

On my post arguing that the state of Pennsylvania will forgo $24 billion in royalties from gas fracking, the governor’s office has responded:

The premise of the article – that PA will “forgo” billions in royalties because it does not adopt a severance tax – is simply misplaced – and misleading.

First, any fair consideration as to the value that Pennsylvania taxpayers will receive from natural gas development would include ALL taxes paid by operators, and landowners, engaged in the activity. Nowhere in the analysis is consideration given to the hundreds of millions of dollars paid annually already under the state’s existing corporate net income, personal income, capital stock and franchise, liquid fuels and other taxes. While many states [against] which Pennsylvania is actively competing for limited capital investment may impose some level of severance tax, they do not impose the same suite of taxes.