Did Corbett provide favoritism to fracking waste co. in return for free vacations and campaign $?

[JPZenger]

http://articles.philly.com/2013-01-16/news/36355296_1_corbett-administration-marcellus-shale-pennfuture

Phila. Inquirer article about how a fracking waste company owner was a major campaign contributor to Corbett and provided free trips to Corbett, including cruises on his yacht. The waste company was granted exceptions from needing state environmental permits.

Excerpts:

"...just a day before Gov. Corbett took the oath of office - when, without warning, trucks started rolling one after another into a once-abandoned industrial site in the Susquehanna River town of Sunbury, Pa. At the end of that day, stunned and angry neighbors counted 27 large dump trucks on their small residential street, filled with the debris from gas-drilling rigs in the Marcellus Shale. Some of the trucks were leaking liquids, said the neighbors, including Cora Campbell, who recalled that "it smelled like a combination of diesel fuel and dirt."

...But there was something else that Sunbury residents didn't find out until long after DEP sided with Moran Industries: Its subsidiary's contract with an interstate railroad, signed three months after the waste-transfer station opened, now meant that it was exempt from Pennsylvania permitting laws.

It turned out that the company's owner, John Moran Jr., wasn't just a major political donor who'd given more than $100,000 to Corbett's gubernatorial campaign, but he also had gifted more than $2,400 for Corbett's personal travel, including hosting the governor and his wife on a yacht off Rhode Island in July 2011. The trips weren't revealed until last fall, in an amendment to an earlier Corbett ethics-disclosure form.

"The broader issue is that during the period when Moran was traveling with the governor, his company had much to gain from favorable interpretation from the DEP of this facility," said Mark Szybist, a Wilkes-Barre-based lawyer ... Moran ...is something of an evangelist for fracking, calling gas drilling in Pennsylvania "a gift from God" ..."

------
http://casablancapa.blogspot.com/2014/02/hey-doj-why-not-corbett.html

"There were gifts exchanged in return for very exclusive access for Moran and favors to his business. That certainly rises to the level of graft outlined by the O'Donnell indictment. And, we're talking about toxic fracking waste from the shale gas extraction industry. That has to be as important an issue as tying up traffic headed onto the George Washington Bridge for a few days.

Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Will Bunch has done a fantastic job showing how within the span of a few months, Corbett received vacations and other gifts from Moran in exchange for a blind eye from the Corbett administration's Department of Environmental Protection. (Inquirer 1/16/13) In short, Corbett decided to allow millions of gallons of fracking waste to roll through dozens of Pennsylvania cities and counties in exchange for helicopter rides and a free vacation (State Impact 1/20/12)

Oh, Corbett tried to hide the gifts from the public, too. (Inquirer 1/20/12)"