Senate is likely to pass bill that will mean smaller roy­alty pay­ments for peo­ple who have leased their land for oil and nat­ural gas drilling. A tax bill intro­duced by Sen­ate Repub­li­can Pat Browne last month requires energy com­pa­nies to auto­mat­i­cally with­hold the 3.07 per­cent of roy­alty pay­ments that landown­ers would owe in state taxes.

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