Oct 26, 2014 5 min read

First-term state Sen. Tim Solobay, D-Canonsburg, who previously spent 12 years in the state House, was put on the defensive this election season about his per diem expenses and a host of other issues by his Republican opponent, first-time candidate Camera Bartolotta of Carroll Township.

Voters in all of Greene County and all of Washington County except for Peters Township, which is part of the 37th District and not on the ballot this year, will decide the contest.

A recent mailing targets “self-serving Solobay” as “the top abuser of tax-free per diems in the Senate raking in over $32,000 in extra tax-free money a year.”

The flier cites an Observer-Reporter story published nearly two years ago, which reported, in August 2012, three legislators, including Solobay, and a former legislator transferred a house at 1616 Green St., Harrisburg, to Vandaleh Real Estate Associates LLC for $1. Vandaleh Industries was the name of a made-up company character George Costanza invented in an episode of the ’90s television sitcom “Seinfeld” in order to qualify for unemployment.

Solobay, who succeeded the retiring state senator Barry Stout in 2010, and an eastern Pennsylvania legislator said the property was handed down to their group of legislators from politicians who were the previous owners.

Taxpayers footed the bill for nearly $30,000 in per diem reimbursement payments to Solobay between December 2011 and December 2012, including travel and lodging expenses, as well as food stipend.

As to the per diem package, Solobay said, “I’m not getting anything anyone else isn’t getting. I live closer to the capital of Ohio than I live to the capital of Pennsylvania. I’ve been touted as a career politician, but I worked for 25 years in health care.”

Solobay said his state duties, including business of the Senate Transportation and Appropriations committees, require him to spend a great deal of time in Harrisburg beyond days when the Legislature is in session.

In 2005, as a member of the state House, Solobay voted in favor of a pay raise, then helped repeal it when incumbents faced taxpayer backlash.

Bartolotta said, if elected, “I will never vote myself a pay raise.”

In an area where the Marcellus Shale industry makes headlines weekly, if not daily, the candidates have remarkably similar views. Solobay touts “the mighty Marcellus” and he has been the recipient of major campaign contributions from the industry. He voted in favor of Act 13, the impact fee on the industry that is divvied up by counties and municipalities where natural gas is extracted through hydraulic fracturing.

“Act 13 is the law right now. I do not want to see the impact fee leave,” Bartolotta said.

“Let’s eat the golden eggs, not the goose,” said Solobay when asked about a severance tax on natural gas, noting municipal leaders told him they can’t imagine their budget processes without the money from the impact fee.” Add the local share of revenue from legalized gambling at The Meadows Racetrack & Casino, which Solobay helped enact, and $26 million has benefited communities and Washington County, the incumbent said.

Bartolotta said she is “incredibly grateful” for the infusion of cash on her behalf from the Reform PA Political Action Committee backed by state Sen. Scott Wagner of York County, president of Penn Waste Inc. and KBS Trucking, who describes himself on his website as a small business owner who “has been supporting conservative causes and campaigns for the past 30 years.” He was a successful Republican write-in candidate in March, filling a vacancy.

The Center for Public Integrity estimates Reform PA PAC spent $237,700 on placing advertisements targeting Solobay.

Solobay said there has been no personal animosity between him and Wagner, whom he introduced to a legislator who is also a recycler.

“I was as surprised as anybody else,” Solobay said of Wagner’s role in trying to have him voted out of office. “This guy’s a millionaire. It’s very Tea Partyish, if you would.”

Solobay, meanwhile, began the general election cycle with a campaign war chest of $548,567, according to Pennsylvania Department of State records online.

Bartolotta loaned her committee $1,448 for a campaign kickoff in February at the Doubletree Hotel, Meadow Lands. The committee had $5,012 available through early June, the last finance report available on the Department of State website.

Solobay joined the Canonsburg Volunteer Fire Department in 1978, and, after four years as chief, he is now assistant chief, but Bartolotta raised a public safety issue in her area.

“I like to say we’re being treated like the basement of the state,” Bartolotta said, claiming the transportation bill enacted last year failed to remedy a lane closure on Route 88 between Monongahela and Charleroi, a route to Mon Valley Hospital.

Solobay said the contract is in place to repair the road, but having to excavate, level and replace concrete did not allow the project to proceed as quickly as he’d like.

Both candidates would like to see a reduction in the size of the state Legislature; favor the legalization of medical marijuana prescribed by a physician, and support the privatization of state liquor stores. “Let’s transition them into the private market,” Bartolotta said. “The consumers are demanding it.”

Solobay noted liquor stores reap half-a-billion dollars in some years in revenue for the state and provide 4,000 employees and their families with wages and benefits. He said he would only favor privatization “if it ever got to a point that the system was costing us money.

“Big-box stores may not have the selection,” he continued.

In what some people have called “an October surprise,” nine search warrants in an unsolved 2011 Morris Township homicide case were unsealed by the Observer-Reporter. They showed police asserting Solobay was involved with in an “ongoing relationship” with Amy Durbin, the wife of the victim, James LeRoy Durbin.

Washington County District Attorney Eugene Vittone said Solobay is neither a suspect nor a person of interest in the homicide.

“That whole thing was an old story,” Solobay said recently, characterizing it as “very unjust and political.”