Mar 24, 2026 By Mike Jones 4 min read

GOP state Senate candidate Al Buchtan’s campaign sent a cease and desist letter Monday to the Republican Party of Pennsylvania demanding it stop sending inaccurate mailers about his time on the Carmichaels Area School Board and requesting the party offer a formal retraction.

The letter from Buchtan4PA’s attorney Matthew Haverstick addressed to state GOP Chairman Greg Rothman accuses the party of distributing attack mailers with “false and defamatory statements” that Buchtan voted to adopt a “new tax” in June 2024 while on the school board and doubled it the following year.

“As a direct and proximate result of your organization’s false and defamatory mailers, Mr. Buchtan has suffered and continues to suffer harm to his reputation, his standing in the community, and his candidacy for the 46th State Senate District seat,” Haverstick wrote in the three-page letter. “The repeated nature of these false publications – across multiple mailers – demonstrates a pattern of deliberate conduct that amplifies the resulting injury.”

Buchtan is running against state Sen. Camera Bartolotta in the Republican primary on May 19 to see which candidate will represent the GOP in the general election for the 46th state Senate District.

While the mailers do not specifically mention which new tax was supposedly created during Buchtan’s tenure on the school board from December 2023 to September 2025, it appears to allude to the district’s $5 occupancy privilege tax, which has been in effect since at least 2008.

The mailer asserts that Bucthan “voted to start a new tax” as a member of the Carmichaels Area School Board in June 2024 and then “raised the tax 100% the next year!” Another GOP mailer also claims Buchtan and the school board “raised our taxes … twice! Two years in a row.”

“Every one of these claims is false,” Haverstick wrote in the cease and desist letter.

The school board did not impose any new taxes in 2024 and has not raised the property tax millage rate since 2019, according to meeting minutes. The mailers also incorrectly claim that the tax doubled in June 2025 since the meeting minutes show the district’s occupational privilege tax listed the $10 total that year – as opposed to $5 in previous years – although school officials have said that was an error.

The cease and desist letter claims that the state GOP has “either deliberately or recklessly mischaracterized” the status of the $10 occupational privilege tax.

A state Department of Economic and Development database highlighting tax figures for school districts in Pennsylvania shows that Carmichaels Area is collecting only $5 from the $10 tax, with the other half going to Carmichaels Borough. People living in Cumberland Township pay the $52 Local Services Tax known as LST, with the district getting $5 and the municipality receiving $47.

A third mailer that arrived over the weekend made similarly inaccurate claims about the school district’s taxes, with the display split between Buchtan labeled as a “tax hiker” and a smiling photograph of Bartolotta with bullet points about her record as a three-term state senator.

In addition to no longer sending any more mailers with the incorrect information, the campaign is asking the state Republican Party to issue a written retraction, and then sending a “corrective mailer” to all the recipients of the previous mailers that began arriving in people’s mailboxes two weeks ago. The letter gives the party 10 days to respond explaining the steps it’s taken to rectify the situation, or the campaign “reserves all rights to pursue any and all legal remedies available” under state and federal law, including a possible defamation lawsuit.

A spokesman for the Republican Party of Pennsylvania defended the mailer in a statement released Friday, but did not immediately respond Monday afternoon to an email seeking comment about the cease and desist letter.

The mailers have created such an uproar in the Carmichaels area that numerous residents contacted the school board members and district officials asking about their taxes. That prompted the school board to address the issue at Thursday night’s meeting and formulate a response to the matter.

Carmichaels Area solicitor Michael Mays declined comment Monday, while district Superintendent Amy Todd said school officials have no plans to take legal action against the state GOP. However, a statement was posted on the district’s website Monday informing people of its tax structure with a link to the DCED’s school taxes database.

“The Carmichaels Area School District has not increased the Flat Occupation Tax,” the statement reads. “The Occupation Flat Tax is the LST tax which is split with Carmichaels Borough and Cumberland Township.”

Haverstick, who wrote the letter on behalf of the Buchtan campaign, could not be reached for comment Monday afternoon.