HARRISBURG — The state House of Representatives expects to vote today on a bill that could help clean up nine abandoned industrial sites in Bucks County and fund crews that mop up hazardous spills after train derailments and traffic crashes.
House leaders announced late Tuesday that they agreed to squeeze $17 million from legislative accounts and money left over from the Capitol's centennial commission to fund the Hazardous Sites Cleanup program through July.
A business tax known as the capital, stock and franchise tax will be tapped to provide about $40 million each year through July 2010.
The program was set to run out of money on Dec. 31 and could have forced the state to lay off nearly 150 workers.
Rep. Scott Petri, R-178, was one of the most vocal Republicans backing the cleanup plan conceived and passed by the state Senate last month.
Some House Democrats wanted to revise the proposal and send it back to the Senate.
But Petri and other Republicans said that was too risky because the Senate plans to start an extended Christmas break later today and might not have acted on the revised bill until next year.
If the House passes the bill today, it goes to Gov. Ed Rendell's desk. He has signaled support for the plan.
“What I think the Democrats intended to do is set up a crisis so we enact a new tax (to fund the program),” Petri said before the agreement was announced. “This bill gives you until 2011 (to find other funding). That's not a permanent solution. But up here (in Harrisburg) that's about as permanent as anything gets.”
Bucks has nine sites that are either being cleaned up or monitored for groundwater or air pollution, according to Harrisburg-based environmental watchdog PennEnvironment.
Those sites range from monitoring trichloroethylene — or TCE — in Morris Run to monitoring groundwater contamination near the Sellersville Landfill.
Rep. Chris King, D-142, said members of his caucus realized that there was nothing drastically wrong with what Petri proposed.
“It certainly seems to be a better alternative to laying people off a week before Christmas,” he said.
Rep. Marguerite Quinn, a Bucks County Republican, said the threats of layoffs and programs shutting down reminded her of this summer's budget stalemate.
She noted that an agreement on the hazardous sites funding couldn't be reached during the budget talks, but legislative leaders promised to take up the issue earlier this fall.
But other issues, such as open records, pushed the issue into the shadows until this week.
“Finally, at the midnight hour, we are going to get something that is not just a Band-Aid for the next six months,” Quinn said.
House Majority Leader Bill DeWeese, a Greene County Democrat who represents part of Fayette, issued a prepared statement blaming Republicans for forcing the Democrats' hand by dragging out debate Monday on revising the state's open records bill.
“Ideally we would have passed our House Democratic plan and worked to create a permanent funding solution for HSCA in the context of the 2008-2009 budget negotiations, but the stall tactics of the House Republicans last night (Monday night) took away the luxury of time,” DeWeese said. “We were forced to revert to the Senate's original proposal in order to get HSCA funding on the Governor's desk before the end of the year, so we reached across the aisle and took the bipartisan step of bringing the Senate's plan up on the floor.”
Petri's district includes Northampton, Wrightstown and Ivyland and portions of Upper Makefield, Upper Southampton and Warwick. King represents Hulmeville, Langhorne, Langhorne Manor, Penndel, all but two precincts in Lower Southampton and part of Middletown.
