Cash Tank on Empty

Have you bought gas lately? You need to fill out a loan application just to fill up. Well dig in your change holder because Eddie Rendell wants to pinch another penny a gallon out of you.

Here is the kicker, just five years ago, the Underground Storage Tank Indemnification Fund (don't ask me what the heck that is) was so flush with cash that legislators and then-Gov. Mark Schweiker borrowed $100 million from it to plug a hole in the state budget. Less than a third of that amount has been repaid. But even if the loan is fully repaid, a state consultant says the obscure, state-administered insurance fund will be out of cash by 2015. In other words the state cash tank is on empty!

As a result, the fund's board, with backing by the administration of Gov. Ed Rendell, has proposed nearly doubling one of the fees that finances it to 2 cents a gallon, and asked for a speedy approval from a state regulatory panel. Senate Republicans accuse the administration of trying to mount a stealth tax increase and they are right. It's a tax. It goes up. That's a tax increase!!!!

We will be watching to see what the Harrisburg grinches do.