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Lehigh Valley cigar businesses threatened to move if lawmakers imposed planned tax.
Jump to full article: Allentown (PA) Morning Call, 2010-07-05
Author: John L. Micek, CALL HARRISBURG BUREAU
Intro: -- Gov. Ed Rendell got some of what he was looking for in the $28.05 billion budget that lawmakers sent to him Wednesday: more money for public education and economic development and a promise from lawmakers to enact a tax on natural gas drillers this autumn.
But for the second year running, the Democratic governor was denied one of his key goals -- bringing Pennsylvania into the ranks of 49 other states that impose a tax on cigars and smokeless tobacco products. He will leave office in January without having obtained it.
"It's unfathomable," Rendell said recently of legislative opposition to the new taxes that, along with a planned dime-a-pack increase in cigarette taxes, would have been used to help close a $1.2 billion budget hole.
With two major cigar distributors in Northampton County, Lehigh Valley lawmakers played a role in helping to derail the tax this year.
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