Corbett is Willing to Spend Big on Energy

Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Tom Cor­bett cer­tainly can’t be accused of being a big spender. The 2011 bud­get he signed into law cut more than $1 bil­lion in state spend­ing, reduc­ing fund­ing for nearly every state department.

This year’s bud­get, final­ized last month, kept fund­ing rel­a­tively level, but reduced spend­ing for county-level pub­lic health pro­grams, among other items.

There’s one excep­tion to this bare-bones phi­los­o­phy, though: the grants and tax breaks the Cor­bett Admin­is­tra­tion has directed to energy companies.

Here’s what Cor­bett has handed out since May:

• $30 mil­lion to Delta Air­lines, for tak­ing over Cono­coPhillips’ Philadel­phia refinery
• $25 mil­lion to Sunoco and the Car­lyle Group, for over­haul­ing and expand­ing Sunoco’s Philadel­phia refinery.
• $15 mil­lion to chem­i­cal pro­ducer Braskem, which is pur­chas­ing Sunoco’s idled Mar­cus Hook loca­tion, and turn­ing it into a nat­ural gas-processer.

Cor­bett said the grants — which come with job-creation and invest­ment con­di­tions — are worth it. “When you’re look­ing at the invest­ment you have to look at what it would have cost us had we done noth­ing, had we let these busi­nesses go,” he argued dur­ing a press con­fer­ence announc­ing the Mar­cus Hook deal. “But also, by grow­ing the busi­ness. Penn­syl­va­nia is, in my opin­ion, the energy state.”

Read more.