Gov. Tom Corbett campaigned in 2010 on a pledge not to raise taxes — a pledge, he said this week, that he has kept in spirit.

But in fact, taxes and fees are going up.

Corbett, in spite of his pledge, has approved several tax and fee increases since taking office. They include a $2.3 billion transportation funding bill with a wholesale fuel tax increase that conservative opponents call the second-largest tax increase in state history. Over the next four years, the transportation plan will gradually increase the cap on the wholesale price of fuel used to calculate the Oil Company Franchise Tax. The cap of $1.25 a gallon, created when the tax was created in 1981, increased to $1.87 in January and will be $2.49 in 2015. The tax is imposed on oil companies at the wholesale level, so they decide what gets passed on to consumers, but PennDOT estimates the average driver eventually will pay about $130 more per year.

Other fees have increased under Corbett’s administration on items ranging from birth certificates to court filings.

Now waging an uphill re-election campaign against Democratic challenger Tom Wolf, Corbett says he will not renew the no-new-taxes vow in his second term.

Speaking on Wednesday to Associated Press reporters and editors, Corbett said, “I’m living up to my pledge the best I can.”

He explained: “I think when you talk to taxpayers and, as a whole, you say, ‘Is Gov. Corbett keeping his promises on the issue of taxes?’ I think they’re going to say ‘yes’ because they’re not paying more taxes in the personal income tax. They’re not paying more taxes in the sales tax. They’re not paying more taxes in new taxes.”

The governor’s words might ring a little more true if he hadn’t stumbled over his pledge when considering an extraction tax on the Marcellus Shale gas companies. Pennsylvania is the only natural gas-producing state that does not have a so-called extraction tax on the amount of gas produced. Corbett abandoned any support for an extraction tax when The Marcellus Shale Coalition, a trade group representing gas developers in Pennsylvania, said the tax could threaten the industry’s rapid expansion, threaten job growth and entice the companies to drill in other states. The topic was revived briefly but failed to materialize during state budget negotiations in late June.

The argument could be made that an extraction tax is less of a burden on Pennsylvania taxpayers; symbolically, it amounts to outside companies paying for the extraction of a Pennsylvania natural resource from beneath state land — and paying for the privilege of exploring there.

It also might be argued that the governor is inconsistent in considering the extraction tax on natural gas is a true tax, while the increase on wholesale gas tax is not a true tax.

Corbett’s statements make it clear he regrets having signed a no-new-taxes pledge and will be relieved not to be bound by it in a potential second term.

His statements demand a full explanation from Corbett about what tax rates, if any, he intends to increase over the next four years, and by how much, and whether he intends to propose a severance tax.

Corbett also might explain why a no-tax pledge that was crucial to his first term no longer applies in his second.