Pa. property taxes could get slashed

HARRISBURG — State lawmakers are expected to debate a Republican-penned proposal to cut billions from local school property taxes and replace the money with higher sales and income taxes.

GOP leaders who control the House said they intend to take up the plan today.

Caucus spokesman Steve Miskin says the proposal would cut some $5 billion in property taxes.

The sales tax would increase from 6 percent to 7 percent in much of the state, and the personal income tax would go from 3.07 percent to 3.7 percent.

Drilling program clears major hurdle

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Royal Dutch Shell’s Arctic drilling program has cleared a major bureaucratic hurdle to begin drilling for oil and gas off Alaska’s northwestern coast this summer.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on Monday approved the multi-year exploration plan in the Chukchi Sea for Shell after reviewing thousands of comments from the public, Alaska Native organizations and state and federal agencies.

The approval came just days before a planned protest of the drilling program in Seattle.

Shell must still obtain other permits from state and federal agencies, including one to drill from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.

Complaints against airlines climb

DALLAS — Consumer complaints against airlines are rising even as the carriers get slightly better at staying on schedule.

The U.S. Department of Transportation said Monday it received more complaints from consumers in March than it did in either the previous month or March of 2014.

While the numbers are still very small — only about one in every 50,000 passengers complains — they vary greatly among carriers.

Passengers on Frontier Airlines were 34 times more likely to complain than passengers on Southwest Airlines, which has the lowest complaint rate.