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All Pennsylvania citizens should be outraged at the latest no-bid contract by the Rendell
Administration http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2010/2010-05-12-092.html. On
May 12th Governor Ed Rendell announced that an agreement had been reached through
private negotiations with Anadarko Petroleum to lease 32,896 acres of State Forest lands
for natural gas development for a total of $120 million. The acreage was leased for a
substantially reduced cost of $3,650 per acre, which is significantly less than the $5,000
to more than $6,000 per acre that recent transactions for acreage have commanded. This
means that the state of Pennsylvania may have left as much as $44 million on the table by
failing to put the acreage up in a competitive bidding process.
To have settled for less than market value for our valuable State Forest leases at any time
would have been an outrage, but it is especially so at this time when the state faces severe
budgetary shortfalls. What backroom deals were cut between the purchaser and the
Rendell Administration? Is Anadarko now expected to trumpet the benefits of a natural
gas severance tax?
The lack of transparency in this deal is astounding and reeks of the same old corruption
and Philadelphia thug politics that has gone on for far too long in Harrisburg.
Gregory R. Wrightstone
President
Pennsylvania Coalition for Responsible Government