Mar 29, 2015 3 min read

Excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers around Pennsylvania as compiled by the Associated Press:

Successive state administrations and state legislators eagerly embraced the natural gas industry while contending the government has well-regulated the enterprise in the public interest.

Unfortunately, as the industry matures, it continues to demonstrate the many ways in which the state government continues to play catch-up.

It is extraordinary, for example, the state government still is debating the merits of an extraction tax that is routine everywhere else in the United States that gas is drilled.

But that is one of the older arguments. Recently a panel discussion at Wilkes University revealed the state has yet to come up with a definitive regulatory regime for one of the most fundamental aspects of the thriving gas industry – pipeline transmission.

John Quigley, the new secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection, announced a pipeline task force to consider the various issues the transmission lines present, nearly a decade after the industry began laying them.

And the Legislature passed the Pipeline Act, outlining standards, only in 2011.

It’s apparent that as the industry matures, the only thing Pennsylvanians can count on is the public interest in the safe operation of the industry is a work in progress.

If the proposal Republican Sen. Pat Toomey introduced recently sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the same one he pitched last year.

The legislation aims to keep sexual predators away from school children by stepping up background checks and prohibiting schools from hiring anyone convicted of violent or sexual crimes. It also forbids school districts from recommending suspected abusers for positions in other states.

Senators who stonewalled the 2014 bill said Congress shouldn’t act as a school board and states already have their own rules about background checks. That’s precisely the problem. States vary wildly in what checks they require, and they don’t always communicate with each other.

Toomey, the father of three, notes while most teachers and other school employees are honorable, the abuse of children in school settings is “not an isolated event.” In 2014, 459 school workers were arrested in the United States for sexual misconduct, 26 of them in Pennsylvania.

“We’re going to vote on this, one way or the other,” Toomey said. Now attached to a controversial sex-trafficking bill, it may fail again, but Toomey is right to keep trying.

Pennsylvania entered into a public-private partnership to replace its decrepit bridges.

The Department of Transportation said that Plenary Walsh Keystone Partners will begin work in May to replace more than 500 spans in deplorable condition at a cost of $900 million.

The advantage is the contractor will use one basic design for bridges of similar size, saving taxpayers the added cost of engineering fees for each bridge. Plenary Walsh must complete work on 558 bridges in the next three years, and then will be responsible for maintaining the spans for another 25 years.

The drawback, according to Ellen Dannin, a former Penn State Law professor, could be cost overruns and legal squabbles if Plenary Walsh does not live up to its promises in the next three decades.

Rich Kirkpatrick, PennDOT press secretary, touted the project.

“The construction cost savings from bundling and building them now outweigh the long-term interest costs,” he said. “And we get the bridges replaced now instead of, in some cases, decades from now.”

Call us skeptical.