Tom Corbett

HARRISBURG, Pa. - Pennsylvania House Republicans on Wednesday voted a measure out of committee that would impose a local impact fee on natural gas drilling and establish new state regulations on the growing industry. The 127-page bill, approved in the Finance Committee along party lines, was patterned closely on an approach favored by Republican Gov. Tom Corbett. It also would fund environmental programs. Committee Chairman Kerry Benninghoff, (R., Centre), said the bill was "a collection of what can be passed in both chambers," as the Senate is considering a separate bill.

BASEBALL has its Cy Young Award for best pitcher; football, the Vince Lombardi Trophy for the Super Bowl champs. There's a Bill Russell award for the NBA's most valuable player, and hockey has a Prince of Wales Trophy for whatever. So why not an award for political leadership? In this 24/7 scream-bite news cycle, in which bullying and divisiveness seem to have the upper hand and little gets done, let's recognize political leaders who speak softly but carry an effective stick. It would be passé to name it after Teddy Roosevelt.

Gov. Corbett is the most popular he's ever been - except when he was elected - getting a 50 percent approval rating from voters, according to a Quinnipiac poll released Thursday. Both female and male voters gave the first-term Republican better marks this time around, with women giving his popularity a significant surge. The majority of voters said they like the governor as a person - 53 to 12 percent - and Democrats were among them, saying they like him 39 to 19 percent, with 41 percent undecided.

IN YOUR Aug. 31 editorial "Perzel's Plea, and Ours," you wrote, "With six Bonusgate charges against him, State Rep. Bill DeWeese handily won re-election. " It's a factual inaccuracy - and a sad testament to the standing of the Fourth Estate - to say that former Republican attorney general (and now Gov.) Tom Corbett charged me in connection with legislative bonuses. The record shows he clearly did not. As Democratic majority leader, the extent of my involvement with Bonusgate was 35 months of cooperation with Corbett's investigation.

Tom Corbett has been governor for six months, and in many ways, if you agree with his agenda - provided you understand what his agenda is - he's been a success. For the first time in almost a decade, the budget passed on time. Facing a $4 billion gap, he reduced state spending. True to his word, and his signed pledge to Grover Norquist, he didn't raise taxes, although why he feels it necessary to be beholden to a Washington management strategist is beyond me. But Corbett has been terrible - flat-out awful - in meeting with the general public and in communicating his agenda, not only to voters but also to his party brethren.

Tom Corbett has his budget, and it's safe to say he is not going for the title of Education Governor. As we are painfully aware in Philadelphia, public education took the big hit in the new state budget, signed by Corbett Thursday night. Here's the scorecard: the basic-education subsidy down $422 million (minus 7.2 percent); a popular block-grant program used by many districts to have full-day kindergarten down $159 million (minus 61 percent); a fund that spent $224 million last year to reimburse local district for some of the costs of charter schools taken down to zero (minus 100 percent)

THE JUNE 29 opinion piece "How a Natural-gas Tycoon Tapped into Corbett" mischaracterizes the Republican State Leadership Committee and uses partial facts to draw incorrect conclusions. The RSLC is proud to have supported candidate Tom Corbett as part of our stated mission of electing Republicans to the office of attorney general, lieutenant governor, secretary of state and state legislator. With more than 100,000 donors from all 50 states, the RSLC is hardly "obscure. " The RSLC has maintained a presence in Pennsylvania and will continue to do so. During the last election cycle, we spent more than $31 million across the country, devoting nearly $1 million in Pennsylvania House races, including targeting and winning three of the toughest races in the state: Districts 39, 54 and 130. The RSLC will continue to focus on recruiting commonsense conservative candidates and providing them with research, financial support and other kinds of assistance, all within bounds of state law. Chris Jankowski President Republican State Leadership Committee Will Bunch's June 29 piece on Gov. Corbett's natural-gas connections represents the atrophying of our governance to an oligarchy of rich white men elected to preserve the interests of other rich white men. Endorsing this devolution is a Supreme Court that recently ruled that public money used to finance a non-gazillionaire-candidate running against a gazillionaire candidate...

IN THE REALITY-BASED world, there's not much confusion about how Gov. Corbett spent most of his time between the end of a fill-in gig as Pennsylvania attorney general in 1997 and his 2004 run for that job. For four years, Corbett worked as an attorney and spokesman for the nation's largest trash-hauling and disposal firm, Waste Management Inc., in which he advocated for his employer to dump massive amounts of out-of-state garbage in Pennsylvania....

IN THE OIL-AND-GAS business, it's called a wildcat well - when a prospector takes a big risk drilling deep in an unexplored area. In 2004, a flamboyant Oklahoma City multimillionaire took out his hefty checkbook for what you could call the political equivalent of a wildcat well - and he struck a gusher, right here in Pennsylvania. The $450,000 in campaign checks that energy mogul Aubrey McClendon wrote that fall helped elect a man he said he'd never even met - a relatively obscure GOP candidate for Pennsylvania attorney general, Tom Corbett.

Gov. Tom Corbett's office and the state Department of Agriculture today granted a "pardon," sparing a white cow that fled an Upper Darby slaughter market, a date with death. Elissa Katz, an animal advocate, said that after all-day negotiations and prodding from a council on American-Muslim relations, state officials approved the eventual release of the white bovine to a farm sanctuary in upstate New York. But the unnamed cow must first undergo a physical and serve a two-week quarantine in a horse barn before it can begin its new life.