Pennsylvania Speaker of the House Mike Turzai (R) is working diligently to advance pro-business legislation aimed at growing the Commonwealth’s economy to benefit its residents and businesses, the state lawmaker told Pennsylvania Business Report during an interview this week.
“We shouldn’t be growing the government, we should be growing the private sector in Pennsylvania,” he said on Aug. 22. “And that’s what I intend to do.”
Toward that goal, Turzai is promoting economic development, private-sector investment, specific tax breaks and regulatory reform, among other topics.
Unanimously elected Speaker of the House in January 2015 by his state House colleagues, Turzai currently is serving his eighth term in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, where he’s represented the state’s southwestern 28th district since 2001.
Turzai has prioritized legislative efforts to decrease the cost of doing business in the state by working to attract new businesses and help employers expand operations and create more jobs.
Such goals are imperative, he said, because Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate is higher than the national average, largely due to the state’s poor business climate. It’s a situation Turzai has called unacceptable and one he and his colleagues say is hampered by slow bureaucratic processes.
To provide a fix, Turzai this spring led House members in approving a package of bills to address the economic impact of delayed permit processing.
One of the proposals in the package, House Bill (HB) 1959, would create the Pennsylvania Permit Act directing all state agencies that issue permits, including the Department of Environmental Protection, to contract with a third party to review delayed permits and issue them within a designated timeframe following their submission. The state Senate is reviewing the House-approved bill.
Turzai said the measure stands to infuse the state with revenue as companies start doing business sooner. “The bureaucracy is just still taking too long,” he said. “We want a business-friendly environment, not a punitive approach.”
And there’s plenty of reason to make the bill a reality, particularly regarding permits related to natural gas, which is adding greatly to Pennsylvania’s economy and increasing investment in the state, according to the Institute for Energy Research (IER).
Pennsylvania increased its permits for natural gas drilling by 51 percent in 2017 and its rig count by 65 percent, resulting in a 3-percent annual increase in natural gas production, second only to Texas, IER reported in May.
Without passage of a bill like HB 1959, Turzai said there would be a prohibitive and chilling impact on drilling, distribution and petrochemical manufacturing, disrupting the state’s planned transformation into a global energy hub ripe with numerous high-paying jobs.
“Without a doubt, natural gas and the manufacturing at petrochemical factories that can come to Pennsylvania … is key to significant economic growth in the state,” said Turzai, who favors state policies to reduce taxes, cut regulatory barriers that inhibit job growth and force entrepreneurs to other states, and expand opportunities for new industry sectors.
For instance, Turzai supported action by Pennsylvania officials giving Shell Chemical Appalachia LLC a 25-year, $1.65 billion tax credit to build its $6-billion petrochemical complex in Beaver County. The 15-year tax amnesty will give Shell a $2.10 tax credit for every gallon of ethane it purchases from state natural gas drillers.
Shell’s massive complex is part of the nationwide boom in shale gas which has expanded the availability of ethane. Taken from Pennsylvania’s abundant supplies of Marcellus Shale, ethane gets processed into ethylene and then into polyethylene pellets that are used by the plastics industry.
The Shell facility is expected to produce 1.6 million metric tons of polyethylene per year and then utilized to make everything from food packaging to furniture to sports equipment, according to Shell.
“We want these manufacturing companies to come to Pennsylvania and make their products here,” said Turzai, adding that “there also would be exporting of natural gas but that could be turned into jobs as well.”
At its peak, the Shell project will require 6,000 construction workers and create 600 permanent jobs when the plant becomes fully operational.
Turzai noted that the development of such ethane facilities in Pennsylvania stands to bolster additional investments by chemical and plastics companies and spur related supply chain growth. Other chemical producers with natural gas dependency, such as fertilizer manufacturers, also intend to build new plants.
“We have harnessed the opportunities that natural gas development has opened up for Pennsylvania,” he said, pointing to benefits that will be realized not only at Shell’s petrochemical facility but at Sunoco Logistics’ natural gas liquids processing facility.
“These two projects alone represent billions of dollars in capital investment, along with thousands of good-paying local jobs,” Turzai said. “What’s more, projects like these create additional downstream manufacturing opportunities.”
There is still more work to do, but the positive impact on the state is already being seen, Turzai added, noting the 17 power plants being built across Pennsylvania for the use of natural gas, generating a never-before-seen roughly $1 billion capital investment in the state.
Pro-education, pro-workforce growth
Speaker Turzai also continues to champion education reform and workforce development, specifically via support for the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) program and the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) program.
The EITC program provides businesses with tax credits in exchange for voluntary contributions to organizations that fund various education opportunities – including scholarships and innovative programming – in both public and private schools.
“We have consistently said if we’re going to increase public education funding, which is now at $11 billion a year, we also must expand this tax credit,” Turzai told PBR.
The OSTC program provides businesses with tax credits in exchange for their contributions to organizations that provide scholarships to students who live within the attendance boundary of a low-achieving public school. The scholarships enable students to attend a participating public or nonpublic school that better meets their needs, Turzai said, including faith-based schools.
The speaker was among the legislators who fought for and secured a $10 million increase in EITC allocations in the current state budget, increasing the amount of tax credits available through the program from $125 million to $135 million, and providing up to $50 million in available tax credits through the OSTC program. But he wants to go further.
The state House in March 2017 approved HB 250, introduced by Turzai to increase the amount of available credits to $250 million through both the EITC and OSTC programs. Under Turzai’s bill, $175 million in tax credits would be available through the EITC program and $75 million would be available through the OSTC program.
“Families who want educational opportunities — to attend non-public schools or to participate in afterschool educational enhancement activities — but who cannot afford them have found the educational improvement and opportunity scholarships to be positively life-changing,” Turzai said.
HB 250 remains in the state Senate Education Committee awaiting consideration.