State Rep. Doyle Heffley and challenger Christian Bartulovich, a registered Republican on the Democratic ticket, split sharply Sunday night over data centers, property tax elimination and how much authority Harrisburg should leave local governments.

They debated for an hour at the Blue Ridge Cable TV13 studio, nine days before the Nov. 3 election. The 122nd District covers all of Carbon County.

Kim Bell, general manager of BRC 13, moderated. Times News editor Marta Gouger and BRC 13 reporter Kendall Thomas asked the questions.

Data centers draw sharpest exchanges

Heffley, the Republican incumbent since 2011, said more than 1,200 acres of open space and 2,300 acres of farmland have been preserved during his tenure. He then turned to a zoning overlay in Penn Forest Township, where Bartulovich is vice chairman of the Board of Supervisors.

“He voted for an overlay to allow 460 acres to be developed into a data center in Penn Forest Township. He could have said no,” Heffley said.

“When you look at my record on data centers, I’ve always been clear: I don’t support a data center project in Penn Forest Township, Lower Towamensing Township, or anywhere where it’s going to clear cut forests across this Commonwealth, and I’ll stand on that record,” Heffley said.

Bartulovich said the township had no legal choice.

“I’m consistently targeted on this by folks who have a fundamental misunderstanding of the law,” he said. “You simply can’t just put things in (the) industrial (zone). The law does not permit you to do that if your industrial areas are not sufficient.”

Penn Forest is the county’s largest municipality at about 46,000 acres, he said, and the overlay is roughly 1% of that under a case law standard called fair share.

“It’s not about giving away the house to a corporation or anything of that nature. It’s about upholding the law that we’re forced to uphold,” Bartulovich said.

Heffley said he supports a 100-day local moratorium on data center proposals and a ban on nondisclosure agreements between officials and developers. He said proposals pushed by Gov. Josh Shapiro would have shifted zoning authority to a state-controlled board.

“People are coming in and buying up large parcels of land and then suing and trying to change the zoning,” Heffley said. “There are rules in place. There are laws in place.”

Property taxes

Both want property taxes gone, but differ on who benefits

“I despise property taxes,” Heffley said. “It’s a terrible tax. It’s an inequitable tax. It was established years ago when we were an agrarian society. It’s far time to get rid of it.”

He said the only measure to clear the House was homestead relief. About $18 billion in property taxes is collected locally, he said, with $11.5 billion to $12 billion from residential owners. He said his opponent’s plan would tax pensions and lift property taxes off warehouses and data centers, shifting costs onto residents.

Bartulovich said the plan he supports does not tax Social Security, and that about 40% of Pennsylvania seniors rely on it alone.

“Tax elimination needs to be for everybody,” Bartulovich said. “Homestead tax elimination alone leaves renters to the wind, and that’s completely unfair and unsustainable.”

Cost of living

Heffley said he authored legislation putting $500 million into the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which he said would nearly double aid this winter. He cited an expanded property tax and rent rebate program reaching another 800 county residents and an earned income tax credit for 2,500 families.

Bartulovich questioned the timing.

“We struggle a bit when it comes to these bills that are introduced right around election time,” he said. “The House is not going to reconvene before the election.”

Asked about grocery and fuel prices, he called for relief at the pump.

“In the immediate term, the best thing to do would be to start discussing a gas tax holiday in the state of Pennsylvania,” Bartulovich said, adding that rainy day funds exist for one-time needs.

Heffley said he voted against the gas tax and later to repeal it, and called for more natural gas lines to homes. “People that are struggling to heat their homes could be saving money with Pennsylvania gas,” Heffley said.

A rewrite of state land use law

Bartulovich’s pitch centered on changing the Municipalities Planning Code.

“Most communities are small; they’re not wealthy, and they’re frequently targeted by large developers for that specific reason,” he said. “It’s part of their playbook. They know that they can outspend and outlast those little communities in court.”

He described what he called phased zoning, tied to infrastructure and emergency services.

“You can’t say no, but you should be able to say not right now,” he said.

Heffley said municipalities sometimes create their own obstacles to building.

“We need to streamline those processes, making sure that building code officials are there to enforce the code and not harass people,” he said.

He said his record in Harrisburg reflects support for local control.

“It is a matter of local elected officials standing up,” Heffley said.

Health care and jobs

Heffley called the opioid task force he started his biggest accomplishment.

“We created the prescription drug monitoring program,” he said. “We put in place prescription guidelines. We got Narcan, known as a Lazarus drug, out into the community. And over the last 10 years, we’ve seen a 50% reduction in overdose deaths in this Commonwealth.”

Bartulovich, who worked as a paramedic for nearly 10 years, said rural health care is the widest gap he sees. He called for expanding the role of what he called paraproviders, without the degree of physician contracting now required.

“We have telehealth parity, but we need a fiber or broadband backbone in order to be able to truly allow people to connect to those services,” Bartulovich said.

Heffley said he championed telehealth legislation and won Medicaid reimbursement for it, and credited the county’s two new hospitals, St. Luke’s University Health Network and Lehigh Valley Health Network, with hundreds of local health care jobs. “We see so many areas in our state that don’t have access to care. We have two brand new hospitals. We have access to care better than ever before,” Heffley said.

He said county unemployment has fallen from 11% when he took office to 4.2%. Bartulovich said the focus should shift to existing employers.

“It’s much more difficult to look at the balance sheet and say we helped our local mechanic open up a new shop in the borough next door, and it’s much easier to say we had a billion-dollar development come knocking,” Bartulovich said.

County borrowed $6 million during budget standoff

Carbon County borrowed $6 million to cover bills while state money was held up and lost $197,000 in interest, Gouger said in asking about late budgets.

Heffley blamed House leadership.

“It’s very frustrating when leadership won’t put a bill up on the House floor to vote,” he said, noting that as a member of the minority he cannot call up bills himself. He said he voted for the roughly $50.8 billion final budget after resisting a larger Shapiro proposal.

Bartulovich said Harrisburg should borrow a rule from local government. “Municipalities are forced by law to have a balanced budget, an on-time budget,” he said. “If we can’t agree, they should be receiving their prior year’s level of funding until we come to terms.”

The debate will air again at 8 tonight on BRC-TV13.