Onorato Reveals Plan to Illegally Extort Jobs from Marcellus Drillers

In a stunning development in the debate over Marcellus Shale exploration, Allegheny County Executive and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Dan Onorato suggested “he’d pressure natural gas drilling companies to hire Pennsylvania residents by threatening to withhold state drilling permits,” Scott Detrow of State House Sound Bites reported.

Elaborating on this strategy, Onorato said, “I think all governors apply pressure on every industry. The whole idea of being governor is you try to bring jobs and improve the economy of your state. We have a golden opportunity here, with the Marcellus Shale find. But we get one chance to get it right.”

Onorato’s approach to the handling of drilling permits is, simply put, a plan to extort jobs from natural gas drilling companies and his explanation of the Governor’s role in the economy reveals that he would, apparently, approach all businesses in this way if he is given the chance to do so. This approach is also, importantly, not legal and Governor Ed Rendell pointed this out when he said, “It’s not what we do. And you might be able to do that, but you’d probably have to change some regulations or get some legislation.”

Beyond the obvious issues of extortion and illegality, Onorato’s pronouncement raises a significant question: How would his understanding of the role of Governor impact Pennsylvania’s economy if he were elected?

Based on his extortionary approach to Marcellus Shale, it is necessary to point out that a state wherein the governor makes it a habit to “apply pressure on every industry” would not be an attractive state for companies to do business in and would actually slow job growth in Pennsylvania.

Companies, after all, prefer to work in stable regulatory markets characterized by the rule of law rather than in capricious economies where market forces and laws are routinely trumped by the willful actions of powerful politicians. Simply compare unemployment and foreign investment in a nation like Australia that is governed by the rule of law with that of a nation like Zimbabwe or Venezuela that is governed by the will of its executive and it becomes clear that businesses tend not to invest heavily where the rule of law is undermined by political forces.

But while forecasting the negative impacts of Onorato’s potentially disastrous economic policy as Governor is simple, it’s also necessary to recognize that his approach to business did not emerge in a vacuum and is instead most likely a product of what he has learned in Allegheny County. The same heavy-handed contempt for the market is obvious in Pittsburgh where politicians pursue confiscatory taxes on vulnerable businesses, apply pressure on nonprofits in order to generate millions of dollars in revenue and even tell employers who to hire and fire.

Clearly, bad economic policies and contempt for private industry trickles up from local governments and interest groups. While such assaults on liberty and private business must be resisted at the state and national level, it is only at the local level that this cycle can be broken.