Editor’s note: The following was written by Mike Ross, president, Franklin County Area Development Corporation.
At the Franklin County Area Development Corporation, we believe in planned growth. We believe in infrastructure. We believe in investment that strengthens our economy, supports employers and improves quality of life for the people who live and work here.
But supporting growth does not mean saying yes to every project that comes through our county.
The reconstituted Transource proposal, now presented as the Rice-Ringgold Transmission Line Project, would ask Franklin County to absorb the long-term burden of a major high-voltage transmission corridor without making a convincing case that the people of this county would receive a fair share of the benefits.
According to Transource, the revived project is a 29-mile, 230-kV transmission line connecting a new Rice substation in Shippensburg to the Ringgold substation in Maryland, with a new Pennsylvania siting application expected in 2026.
That matters because this is not a new question for Franklin County.
In 2021, after years of litigation, testimony and public opposition, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission unanimously denied Transource’s applications for the Franklin and York County portions of the project. The PUC concluded that the company had not demonstrated the need required under Pennsylvania law and denied the requested approvals.
Franklin County residents were justified then in asking hard questions, and they are justified in asking them again now.
Yes, the legal posture has changed. In 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that the PUC’s denial was pre-empted by federal law because it conflicted with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission-approved regional planning framework used by PJM.
But that ruling addressed the boundary between state and federal authority. It was not a declaration that this project is good for Franklin County. It did not erase the local impacts on farms, landscapes, property owners or communities. And it did not relieve Transource of the obligation to explain, in plain terms, why Franklin County should accept a project of this scale.
That explanation still feels incomplete.
Beginning in 2018, the Franklin County Commissioners approved the use of county funds to fight the Transource project. For six years, the bulk of the litigation cost was borne by county taxpayers. In 2024, the same legal and technical experts the county and Stop Transource had relied on for years advised the commissioners that committing additional taxpayer funds would not alter the court’s final decision.
The county then discontinued the use of taxpayer funds and negotiated a penalty clause that would provide county taxpayers with $9 million should the line ever be built.
But Franklin County should not confuse mitigation money with public benefit. A payment intended to soften impacts is not the same as proving the project is in the county’s long-term interest. If anything, it reinforces the point that those impacts are real, substantial and expected.
For years, the public has heard shifting explanations for why this line is needed. PJM’s own public materials show that Project 9A was placed in suspension in 2021 because of siting risks. PJM’s January 2025 annual reevaluation said the project remained suspended and showed a benefit-cost ratio below PJM’s normal 1.25 benchmark in the then-feasible configuration. Later in 2025, PJM reported stronger economics for a narrowed western-only version and moved to eliminate the eastern segment.
That history should make every local official and resident cautious. When a project’s economics, footprint and justification keep evolving, the burden should remain on the developer to show why this specific version is necessary now.
As an economic development organization, FCADC supports projects that expand opportunity in a way that is durable, balanced and locally beneficial. Franklin County needs infrastructure that helps us compete. But we also need to be honest about what kind of investment actually moves our county forward.
A project that imposes permanent visual, land-use, and property impacts on local communities while offering benefits that are mostly regional, model-driven, and difficult for local residents to see is not an obvious win for Franklin County. Saying so is not anti-growth. It is responsible stewardship.
The question before us is not whether transmission matters. It does. The question is whether this project, in this location, in this form, is the right project for Franklin County.
Until that case is made clearly and convincingly, the answer should be no.
