News & Notes March 2008

PACD Disappointed with Governor's Proposed Budget

Governor Edward G. Rendell released his 2008-2009 proposed budget in early February. The proposal cuts soil and water conservation funding by $950,000 from last year's final appropriation.

Both the PA Department of Agriculture (PDA) and the PA Department of Environmental Protection budgets contain a soil and water line item. In both budgets, the Governor reverted back to his proposed funding levels from last year.

The nutrient management line item remained constant at $3.28 million and Resource Enhancement and Protection Program funding stayed at $10 million.

The Chesapeake Bay Agricultural Source Abatement funding is proposed as follows:

Proposed 2007-08	Actual budget 2007-08	Gov. proposed 2008-09
$3.271 million	$3.41 million	$3.41 million

In the coming months, PACD plans on talking to members of the PA General Assembly and requesting the formulation of a budget document more accurately reflecting the needs of conservation districts.

Susan Marquart, PACD executive director stated, "We will be working with members of the PA General Assembly not only to restore the funding for conservation districts, but to increase the state financial support so conservation districts can begin to assist landowners, renewable energy businesses, and the agricultural community who make the commitment to produce renewable energy in an environmentally safe manner."

In conjunction with increased funding for the conservation districts, PACD is advocating additional funding for the PDA's Nutrient Management Fund. The Governor's budget proposal does not increase the fund, currently at $3.28 million, even though PA is striving to meet the challenges of nutrient reductions in the Commonwealth's waters.

Larry Kehl, PACD president said, "The Nutrient Management Fund is vital to reducing nutrients in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed and all other PA waterways. Without increased appropriations to this fund, our abilities to reduce nutrients in PA surface water will be severely hindered."

For a copy of the entire budget proposal click on http://tinyurl.com/2pdvx4.

Special Conservation Partnership Forum on Information Technology and Information Exchange

The federal government plans to make additional changes to the federal computing network to ensure greater Homeland Security for the United States. This will impact any conservation district that accesses the federal computing network. Some conservation districts use the federal network as their only networking system and other conservation districts only access the federal computing network on a limited basis to enter data into the federal system. Some conservation districts do not access the federal system at all. In addition, the Commonwealth of PA continues to move forward on the E-Commerce reporting system developed for conservation districts. The Conservation Partnership would like to hold a special session in the afternoon of Capitol Day from 2-3:30 pm to brief conservation districts on some of the information technology changes that may be coming their way.

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