Corbett will have to wait on school vouchers, Marcellus impact fee

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett said he wanted to pass school vouchers and a Marcellus Shale impact fee this year.

Neither one of those is going to happen.

There were rallies. There were platform roll-outs.

There was the governor, who hesitated to rank his legislative priorities.

But he did say that topping his to-do list was passing a bill creating vouchers for the poorest students in the lowest-performing schools, as well as passing a Marcellus Shale impact fee.

Republican leaders say there aren’t enough votes for a vouchers bill, or even the less-divisive expansion of education tax credits.

And an impact fee remains undecided, too.

Majority Leader Mike Turzai shrugs off questions on whether the House has thwarted two of the governor’s highest legislative priorities.

“Marcellus has never been our issue. School reform has never been our issue. We didn’t campaign on it,” he said. “That’s the governor’s.”

The House is set to vote “no” on the Senate’s latest impact fee.

That will set up a joint conference committee, which will be charged with bridging the two chambers’ differences, on a Marcellus Shale bill.

As far as vouchers are concerned, it’s back to the drawing board.