COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE HEARING STATE CAPITOL MAIN BUILDING ROOM 140 HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2020 PRESENTATION FROM DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION BEFORE: HONORABLE STANLEY SAYLOR, MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HONORABLE MATT BRADFORD, MINORITY CHAIRMAN HONORABLE ROSEMARY BROWN HONORABLE SHERYL DELOZIER HONORABLE GEORGE DUNBAR HONORABLE JONATHAN FRITZ HONORABLE MATT GABLER HONORABLE KEITH GREINER HONORABLE SETH GROVE HONORABLE MARCIA HAHN HONORABLE DOYLE HEFFLEY HONORABLE JOHN LAWRENCE HONORABLE JASON ORTITAY HONORABLE CLINT OWLETT HONORABLE CHRIS QUINN HONORABLE GREG ROTHMAN HONORABLE JAMES STRUZZI HONORABLE JESSE TOPPER HONORABLE JEFF WHEELAND HONORABLE RYAN WARNER HONORABLE MARTINA WHITE ————————— JEAN DAVIS REPORTING POST OFFICE BOX 125 • HERSHEY, PA 17033 Phone (717)503-6568 1 BEFORE (cont.'d): 2 HONORABLE DONNA BULLOCK HONORABLE MORGAN CEPHAS 3 HONORABLE CAROLYN COMITTA HONORABLE AUSTIN DAVIS 4 HONORABLE ELIZABETH FIEDLER HONORABLE MARTY FLYNN 5 HONORABLE EDWARD GAINEY HONORABLE PATTY KIM 6 HONORABLE STEPHEN KINSEY HONORABLE LEANNE KRUEGER 7 HONORABLE STEPHEN McCARTER HONORABLE BENJAMIN SANCHEZ 8 HONORABLE PETER SCHWEYER 9 ALSO IN ATTENDANCE: 10 DAVID DONLEY, REPUBLICAN EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR 11 RITCHIE LaFAVER, REPUBLICAN EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ANN BALOGA, DEMOCRATIC EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR 12 TARA TREES, DEMOCRATIC CHIEF COUNSEL HONORABLE MARY JO DALEY 13 HONORABLE PAM DeLISSIO HONORABLE CRIS DUSH 14 HONORABLE DAN FRANKEL HONORABLE JOE HOHENSTEIN 15 HONORABLE MARY ISAACSON HONORABLE SARA INNAMORATO 16 HONORABLE DARYL METCALFE HONORABLE TOM MURT 17 HONORABLE KATHY RAPP HONORABLE GREG VITALI 18 HONORABLE DAVE ZIMMERMAN 19 20 21 JEAN M. DAVIS, REPORTER 22 NOTARY PUBLIC 23 24 25 2 1 I N D E X TESTIFIER 2 3 NAME PAGE 4 PATRICK McDONNELL, SECRETARY 7 DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 3 1 P R O C E E D I N G S 2 * * * 3 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: I call the 4 Appropriations Committee to order. 5 And I'm going to ask everybody to stand and we're 6 going to do the pledge. 7 (Pledge of Allegiance) 8 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Thank you. 9 Before we start and I swear you in, Mr. 10 Secretary, I'm going to ask every member to introduce 11 themselves. 12 Representative Bradford, do you want to start? 13 MINORITY CHAIRMAN BRADFORD: Thank you, Chairman 14 Saylor. 15 Matt Bradford, Central Montgomery County. 16 REPRESENTATIVE VITALI: Greg Vitali, Delaware and 17 Montgomery Counties. 18 REPRESENTATIVE DAVIS: Austin Davis, Allegheny 19 County, 35th District. 20 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Good morning. Stephen 21 Kinsey, Philadelphia County. 22 REPRESENTATIVE McCARTER: Good morning also. 23 Steve McCarter, 154th District, Eastern Montgomery County. 24 REPRESENTATIVE GAINEY: Good morning. 25 Ed Gainey, State Representative of the 24th 4 1 Legislative District. 2 REPRESENTATIVE BULLOCK: Good morning. 3 Representative Donna Bullock, 195th District, 4 parts of North and West Philadelphia. 5 REPRESENTATIVE FLYNN: State Representative Marty 6 Flynn, 113th District, Lackawanna County. 7 REPRESENTATIVE FIEDLER: Good morning. 8 State Representative Elizabeth Fiedler, 184th, 9 South Philadelphia. 10 REPRESENTATIVE KRUEGER: Leanne Krueger, 161st 11 District, Delaware County. 12 REPRESENTATIVE SANCHEZ: Good morning, all. 13 I'm Ben Sanchez from Eastern Montgomery County. 14 REPRESENTATIVE KIM: Patty Kim, 103rd District, 15 Dauphin County. 16 REPRESENTATIVE LAWRENCE: Good morning. 17 John Lawrence, 13th Legislative District, 18 Southwestern Chester County and a part of Lancaster County. 19 REPRESENTATIVE GABLER: Good morning. 20 Matt Gabler, 75th District, Elk and Clearfield 21 Counties. 22 REPRESENTATIVE ORTITAY: Good morning. 23 Jason Ortitay, 46th District, Allegheny and 24 Washington Counties. 25 REPRESENTATIVE WHEELAND: Jeff Wheeland, Lycoming 5 1 County, 83rd District. 2 REPRESENTATIVE BROWN: Good morning. 3 Rosemary Brown, 189th District, Monroe and Pike 4 Counties. 5 REPRESENTATIVE HAHN: Good morning. 6 Marcia Hahn, 138th, Northampton County. 7 REPRESENTATIVE TOPPER: Jesse Topper, 78th 8 District, Bedford, Fulton, and Franklin Counties. 9 REPRESENTATIVE OWLETT: Clint Owlett. I serve 10 the 68th District which is Tioga and parts of Bradford and 11 Potter Counties. 12 REPRESENTATIVE ROTHMAN: Good morning. 13 Greg Rothman, the 87th District, Cumberland 14 County. 15 REPRESENTATIVE GREINER: Good morning. 16 Keith Greiner, 43rd District, Eastern Lancaster 17 County. 18 REPRESENTATIVE STRUZZI: Jim Struzzi, 62nd 19 District, Indiana County. 20 REPRESENTATIVE FRITZ: Good morning, friends. 21 Jonathan Fritz proudly representing the 111th 22 District comprising Wayne and Susquehanna Counties. 23 REPRESENTATIVE GROVE: Seth Grove, 196th 24 District, York County. 25 REPRESENTATIVE METCALFE: Daryl Metcalfe, 6 1 Chairman of the Environmental Resource and Energy Committee. 2 REPRESENTATIVE DUNBAR: Good morning. 3 George Dunbar, Westmoreland County, 56th 4 District. 5 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: And I'm Representative 6 Stan Saylor, Chairman of the Appropriations Committee. 7 I wanted to also let you know that we have Dave 8 Donley to my left, who is the Executive Director of the 9 Committee, and Ann Baloga, who is the Executive Director for 10 the Democratic Appropriations Committee as well with us. 11 With that, Mr. Secretary, if you would rise and 12 raise your right hand and when I'm done say, I do. 13 Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are 14 about to give is true to the best of your knowledge, 15 information, and belief? If so, say, I do. 16 SECRETARY PATRICK McDONNELL: I do. 17 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Thank you. 18 And with that, we'll start our questions this 19 morning. I'm going to start off with Representative 20 Greiner. 21 REPRESENTATIVE GREINER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 22 Good morning, Mr. Secretary. Thank you for being 23 here. 24 SECRETARY PATRICK McDONNELL: Good morning. 25 REPRESENTATIVE GREINER: We're going to dive 7 1 right into this. This question comes up every year, the 2 permitting situation and the backlog. In reviewing the 3 Governor's Budget Book, each agency has performance measures 4 that they should meet or want to meet. Certainly with my 5 background -- I know Representative Dunbar has worked on 6 this. We want to see positive performance measures. And 7 under the DEP's General Operations, one of the performance 8 measures is to eliminate the historical permit application 9 backlog, something that we make decisions on here about 10 funding. 11 And in the Governor's 2019-'20 Budget Book, the 12 DEP estimated that the fiscal year, that there were 545 13 applications still pending, 545. That was last year when we 14 were here. But now when we look at the Budget Book, we find 15 the actual number that's in the book says 8,715. And in 16 addition to that, there's a letter that you had written to 17 Matt Knittle concerning this. And in this letter it talked 18 about that the backlog was 8,715. 19 First of all, I want to know, was there something 20 tremendously wrong in the estimation last year in the Budget 21 Book that we have to -- you know, we want good numbers 22 ourselves when we make these decisions. 23 SECRETARY PATRICK McDONNELL: Sure. 24 REPRESENTATIVE GREINER: The other thing I will 25 say, too, is that when we made the funding decision to do 8 1 your GOE, the General Operating Expenses, we pretty much 2 funded it at the number that you expected us or wanted us 3 to. 4 SECRETARY PATRICK McDONNELL: Correct. 5 REPRESENTATIVE GREINER: So maybe you can let us 6 know what -- is there something wrong with the estimation? 7 What's going on there? 8 SECRETARY PATRICK McDONNELL: I don't have the 9 performance measures from the Budget Book in front of me, 10 but I do know our 2016-'17 number was 8,715. And that was 11 the starting point for us to do a real focus on our backlog 12 management. Now, I know it is down to about 500. And to be 13 blunt, some of that reduction represents better data quality 14 where there were permits issued that weren't being reflected 15 within our system. Some of those are permits that have been 16 issued in the interim. And the 500 that remain, there's 17 either some things we're waiting on from applicants or some 18 litigation issues related to that. 19 REPRESENTATIVE GREINER: Being a CPA, you know 20 I'm very detail-oriented. 21 SECRETARY PATRICK McDONNELL: Right. 22 REPRESENTATIVE GREINER: Particularly when you 23 look at things like this, I guess one thing that I did want 24 to bring up in last year's Appropriation's hearings, when we 25 looked at this data, you know, I think there's an 9 1 expectation -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- that we're 2 hoping there would be -- that we'd get caught up, that it 3 would be zero. And then when we look at this year's, you 4 know, the Budget Book, the Executive Budget again, the 5 anticipation is that we will get caught up and be zero again 6 next year. 7 I mean, is that -- are we being realistic when we 8 look at that approach or what would your thought process be? 9 As you just said, it seems like at some point you're waiting 10 for more information. What are your thoughts on that? 11 SECRETARY PATRICK McDONNELL: I think some of 12 what we've been working through to put in place related to 13 our permitting is clear expectations if we just aren't 14 getting there. And I always point out it's not permits 15 issued, it's permits disposed. So if we're simply not 16 getting the information, one of the things we're having 17 conversations with -- and the applications remain woefully 18 delinquent, like it's okay to deny that application and 19 return it if we're not getting the information we need.