Senator Camera Bartolotta and her political allies have recently been spreading the idea that she supports “local control” and that she values public input from our communities.
A few months ago, she wrote a LinkedIn post stating, “I have consistently maintained that municipalities should have the authority to make decisions.” On a Facebook post, her campaign manager claimed Bartolotta’s stance is that “local communities should have a say” and “BARTOLOTTA = LOCAL CONTROL.”
However, the legislation Senator Bartolotta has sponsored and her reaction to a local township making decisions for its residents tell a different story about her real stance on local control.
The Story of Cecil Township
There are five unconventional oil and gas well pads in Cecil Township, Washington County. Some of these pads are only 500 feet from homes (the state’s minimum setback) and have a history of affecting nearby residents. Residents in the township have complained for years about mental and physical health problems, which they attribute to being exposed to the noise, vibrations, and emissions from the wells. There have also been at least five cases of children in Cecil Township diagnosed with Ewing Sarcoma, a rare cancer with a normal incidence of just 1 case per 1 million people.
Following years of advocacy and demands for a health study by parents and advocates — including some from Cecil Township — Governor Wolf funded a PA Department of Health study which showed that fracking impacts public health, including cancer rates, even though it did not show a correlation to Ewing Sarcoma. (Prior to the results being released, Senator Bartolotta wrote a letter urging the Department of Health not to attend a community forum about the studies with impacted families.)
In response to the results of this study and the growing body of scientific evidence showing that fracking can put the health of those living nearby at risk, Cecil Township residents began organizing to demand increased setbacks from oil and gas. In 2024, after dozens of hearings and hundreds of public comments from concerned residents, the township finally changed its oil and gas ordinance to better protect residents: a 2,500-foot setback distance from homes and businesses, and a 5,000-foot setback from schools and hospitals.
SB 102: Bartolotta’s Punishment for Local Communities
Fracking operator Range Resources immediately challenged the new ordinance and is still fighting it in court, claiming that this update would restrict its access to future oil and gas drilling within the municipality. Range has also contributed at least $17,500 to Senator Bartolotta’s election campaigns since 2017, according to TransparencyUSA. Other oil and gas companies, including EQT, Marathon, Energy Transfer, Exxon and CNX, have collectively given more than $100,000 over the past decade. It’s not surprising, then, that instead of defending Cecil’s “authority to make decisions,” Senator Bartolotta’s next move was to punish localities that stand up to some of her biggest donors.
On December 2, 2024 — less than one month after Cecil Township passed its increased setback distance, Senator Bartolotta re-circulated a co-sponsorship memo in the Pennsylvania Senate titled “Impact Fee Withheld from Municipality in Certain Cases.”
Pennsylvania collects impact fees from operators of active oil and gas wells and distributes them to state and local governments to offset the impacts of hosting that infrastructure. Local governments are entitled to these funds if they have unconventional oil and gas development within their borders — regardless of how far they are permitted to be built from homes or schools. It is intended as repayment for the harms that oil and gas development may cause within their borders. These include damaged roads, increased stormwater runoff, air and water pollution, and more. Counties and municipalities use this money to repair those damages and to keep residents safe and informed.
Senator Bartolotta’s legislation, which was officially introduced as SB 102 in January 2025, prohibits municipalities from receiving the impact fees they are entitled to for the gas wells within their borders if they “unreasonably limit or prohibit future development of unconventional natural gas wells.”
“Unreasonable limitations” in a zoning ordinance are defined as any “standard[s] or condition[s] on well development that conflicts with or exceeds” state law. Under state law, well pads must be at least 500 feet from homes, businesses, schools, and hospitals. Thus, under Senator Bartolotta’s legislation, Cecil’s 2,500-foot setbacks would be considered unreasonable, and her own constituents living in the township would lose access to the Impact Fee funds owed to them for the five existing well pads within their borders. Senator Bartolotta sent a clear message with her bill: local communities that make decisions to protect their residents at the expense of the oil and gas companies bankrolling her election campaigns should be penalized.
When it came to oil and gas regulations, instead of acting as if “local communities should have a say” about residents’ health and futures, Senator Bartolotta sided with the interests of her campaign funders. Local control only started to matter to her when she thought it would help her win her campaign. But can you trust her to side with your community when you take measures that inconvenience big business? Or will she bend to campaign donors, as she did in Cecil Township?