This column was submitted to LebTown. Read our submission policy here.
To the Editor:
After traveling the Commonwealth selling RestorePA for months, the Governor is poised to ask for a severance tax to fund this program. Every year he has sought a severance tax to pay for one thing or another. This year it appears the severance tax is the answer to funding RestorePA. We must see through the Governor’s political agenda and understand the economic reality of such a request.
As a business owner and a township supervisor, I must live within a budget. I think that Governor Wolf needs to learn to live within the budget and stop proposing more borrowing and taxing to fund more programs. Governor Wolf is proposing that we borrow money and add a severance tax to fund his RestorePA program.
Governor Wolf believes you solve the funding of a program with more borrowing and more taxes that ultimately will impact consumers negatively. We all know that over taxation does not create economic growth or prosperity. In fact, over taxation can cause an industry to stagnate and shrink and surely it will increase consumer prices.
Pennsylvania has a severance tax known as the impact fee that has collected and distributed an unprecedented amount of money to all sixty-seven counties. This allows local control of these resources so that counties can best decide how and when to allocate these funds. The system works and we should not change it or add additional taxes.
Sincerely,
Faith Bucks
Faith Bucks is one of the doctors (and owner of) Bucks Family Chiropractic, established in 2003. In her fifth year on the South Londonderry Township Board of Supervisors, she currently serves as Chairwoman of the Board.