With pressure building to find a way to pay for the state's $32 billion spending plan for 2017-18 that is now law, a bipartisan group of House members are calling on House Speaker Mike Turzai to allow for a vote on a bill that imposes a severance tax on natural gas drillers.

With a need to find revenue to fill a projected $2 billion budgetary hole, a letter signed by 12 Republican lawmakers and three Democrats who have authored shale tax legislation states they believe it is time to "pass a proposal that is fair, reasonable and responsible."

The letter points out that there is overwhelming support among Pennsylvania citizens for the tax as well as bipartisan support in the Legislature, not to mention high on Gov. Tom Wolf's list for addressing the state's revenue needs. Wolf is calling for a 6.5 percent tax on gas production.

It also points out that credit rating agencies have put the state on notice that a downgrade to its credit rating - already one of the worst in the nation - could be in the offing if its 2017-18 budget relies too much on non-recurring revenue such as borrowing money and one-time revenue sources.

"While an extraction tax would not solve all our budgetary issues, it is a crucial step toward putting Pennsylvania on the road to fiscal health," it states.

But Republican leaders in the GOP-controlled House and Senate, however, don't appear ready to budge on it anytime soon. They have opposed the idea fearing it would drive drillers out of state especially given the low price of natural gas globally only now starting to recover from 20-year lows, and lack on infrastructure to move the gas to market.

House Majority Leader Dave Reed, R-Indiana County, said it's a difficult conversation to have right now.

"For folks who want to have that discussion, and we've said this to the governor for months, maybe sit down with the industry, maybe figure out what's driving up their costs, maybe try to work through those items, and maybe they can actually come to an agreement," Reed said. "But we're going to need to see leadership in the [governor's] office to actually accomplish that goal."

From the Senate side of the building, interest in pursuing the tax to balance the budget wanes even more.

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We continue to maintain that taxing this employer beyond the $1.2 billion in impact fees that it already pays is not the best option when it comes to encouraging economic growth in the state," said Senate Republican spokeswoman Jennifer Kocher.



House Democratic spokesman Bill Patton clarified that the $1.2 billion is a cumulative six-year total and 2016's impact fee revenue fell to $175 million, the lowest so far.

A 2016 Franklin & Marshall College Poll conducted during the 2015-16 prolonged budget impasse indicated that 73 percent of respondents supported taxing companies that extract and sell natural gas while 22 percent opposed it.

Pennsylvania remains the only major gas-producing state without a severance tax. But energy companies say it could affect their future investment in the commonwealth and have threatened that it could drive them out of state.

In a related development, a discharge resolution signed by 36 Democratic members was presented to the House Tuesday on a bill introduced by Rep. Kate Harper, R-Montgomery County, to get it released from the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, where it has sat idle since January.

Her bill calls for assessing a 3.5 percent tax of the gross value of gas extracted in addition to keeping the impact fee that drillers currently pay. Revenue from that new tax would be split between the mounting school pension obligation and state police services in rural communities.

Harper, who was not part of the discharge resolution effort, said she thinks it's only fair to ask natural gas companies to help out the state in dealing with its revenue needs since they are using up a non-renewable commonwealth resource.

"If we're going to do any tax at all this year, this is probably the one we should do," she said.

Going the discharge resolution route is rarely successful in forcing a vote on a piece of legislation. The speaker can choose to allow a vote, announce it will be voted later, or refer it to another committee.

Here is the letter that was sent to Turzai and copied to other House leaders:

Letter calling for shale tax vote by PennLive on Scribd

*This post was updated to include House Democratic spokesman Bill Patton's comment.