At the final meeting of the Green Ribbon Commission this week, Rep. Bill Adolph (R-Delaware) and Sen. Mary Jo White (R-Venango), co-chairs of the Commission released recommendations to the General Assembly and Rendell Administration on funding future environmental initiatives.

"I am proud to report that over the course of the past couple of months, members of the Green Ribbon Commission were able to gather meaningful input on Pennsylvania's top environmental needs from the administration, the business community and several local environmental organizations," said Adolph. "After carefully reviewing all the testimony we obtained, members worked cooperatively to draft a list of recommendations that will help better focus our legislative efforts."

Democratic members of the Commission expressed concern that the recommendations did not resolve the funding issues and left out key parts of Gov. Rendell’s Growing Greener II spending plan.

The commission was charged with studying state programs affecting the environment and reviewing proposals aimed at possible program consolidation and improvements, as well as the appropriateness of various methodologies for enhanced funding to address environmental problems, including preservation of farmland and open space, reclamation of abandoned mines and cleanup of hazardous sites, and then present their recommendations to the General Assembly and administration.

The recommendations from the Green Ribbon Commission are:

· Develop additional short and long-term funding options for environmental initiatives.

· Environmental initiatives should recognize the diversity of needs across the entire Commonwealth.

· Pennsylvania's taxpayers should be asked, through a referendum, if they would support increased funding for environmental programs by issuing bonds in an amount up to $800 million.

· Open space preservation, farmland preservation, watershed protection, abandoned mine remediation, and acid mine drainage cleanup have been identified as key environmental programs that also offer strong associated economic development benefits. These programs should be targeted to receive specific financial assistance in any future environmental funding decisions.

· Consideration should be given to options for funding needed infrastructure improvements within the Commonwealth's fish hatcheries and for repairs to Commonwealth-owned dams. Funding options could include priority within the Commonwealth's capital budget process, the out-sourcing of all or a portion of the fish hatchery program, as part of possible environmental bond issue, or through user fee increases.

· Provide a long-term, stable source of funding to the Hazardous Site Cleanup Fund.

· Identify and implement standard methods to monitor, measure, and report on the state of the Commonwealth's environment on a regular basis. This would include measuring improvements to the quality of Pennsylvania's land, air and water and determining the effectiveness of the Commonwealth's environmental funding in relationship to overall improvements in environmental quality.

· Recognizing that deep philosophical divisions remain on the appropriateness of new fees or taxes to pay for expanded state spending, a variety of creative funding options should be explored.

2/18/2005