joe scarnati.JPGView full sizeSenator Joe ScarnatiHARRISBURG, Pa. — Pennsylvania’s top-ranking state senator suggested Monday that privatizing state-controlled liquor and wine sales will be a bad deal for Pennsylvanians, and he challenged Gov. Tom Corbett and other fellow Republicans to show leadership on key issues involving transportation and the state’s booming natural gas industry.

Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, made his comments at the start of the Legislature’s three-month fall session, and acknowledged that Corbett, House leaders and he each have priorities that do not always cleanly line up.

But even while renewing an attack on support by Corbett and House Republican leaders to hand sales of wine and liquor to private licensees, he also suggested that he would go along with the effort if they help him accomplish his goals.

“Now, we can all stand at the sink this fall and look at each other, or we can help each other wash our hands and get some of these things done,” Scarnati told a Pennsylvania Press Club luncheon crowd in Harrisburg. “I think Pennsylvanians want some things done.”

In his speech and responses during a question-and-answer session afterward, he pressed Corbett and House GOP leaders to show leadership on his “common sense” priorities for the fall.

Those include increasing funding for the state’s highways, bridges and mass transit agencies, imposing an impact fee on companies drilling into Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale formation, regarded as the nation’s largest-known natural gas reservoir, and strengthening protection of water sources from the drilling.

“We need some real leaders,” Scarnati said. “We need some people to stand up and start taking stands and showing Pennsylvanians that we can lead, the Republicans can lead this state.”

Despite having reports in hand from commissions he appointed to study the subjects, Corbett has given few details

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