Governor Shapiro and Pennsylvania Lawmakers Betrayed Property Owners

In case you missed the recent late-night, weekend dealings in Harrisburg, lawmakers and the governor took away people’s private property rights.

That’s right, they abandoned one of the most fundamental constitutional protections by passing legislation on July 11-12 that retroactively strips families of mineral rights they have legally owned for generations.

Lawmakers passed Act 27 while most people were either asleep or focused on legislators finally voting on an overdue state budget. Governor Shapiro quickly signed it into law. There was no mention of Act 27, or the legislation that passed to create it, in any press release or other communication from the General Assembly or the governor.

This all happened a year after the state tried to litigate its way into ownership of the Proctor family’s property. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court saw through their tepid arguments and unanimously ruled that members of the Proctor family owned the subsurface property rights. The land came into the family in the 1890s after Thomas E. Proctor purchased it.

Somehow, lawmakers and the governor think it is ok to use legislation to overturn what they could not achieve in court, and they also think it is just fine to retroactively grab property. They are basing their taking on retroactively rewriting defunct tax laws from 1804-1847 to create an outcome that allows retroactive property seizure through illegal self-dealing. (This literally didn’t hold up in court.)

So, who are the big winners from this fast-tracked legislative passage and land grab? Big Pennsylvania government and oil and gas interests.

Sadly, this means more litigation at the taxpayers’ expense as the Proctors and other families work to take back what is rightfully, legally theirs. It also means everyone who owns property in Pennsylvania should be alarmed. It doesn’t matter if you have received land through deeds, leases, estates or business transactions, the government can come along, take it away, and just give it to someone else.