(WHTM)– Stop at a travel plaza or rest stop in Pennsylvania and you’ll find brochures advertising vacation destinations, which is fine, except a state lawmaker says some of them advertise destinations out of state — and you’re paying for it.

Could State Rep. Natalie Mihalek (R- Allegheny and Washington counties) be right?

“I want to ask specifically about a $1.2 million contract between your department and getaways on display,” Mihalek said during PennDOT budget hearings. She is talking about travel brochures placed at highway rest stops. She’s collected several on the turnpike.

“Why are we spending taxpayer dollars promoting Ohio, and West Virginia and Cleveland and Delaware,” Mihalek said.

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“The contract you are highlighting I am not familiar with,” PennDOT Secretary Mike Carroll said. “I will be happy to get more information.”

“PennDOT pays us for the welcome center distribution,” James Morrison, who owns Lancaster-based Display Getaways On Display, said. He started working with the state nearly 20 years ago after various PA agencies failed to manage those pamphlets.

“They had a tiger by the tail and they really couldn’t make make it work,” Morrison said. “So someone finally said, ‘Hey, let’s get a professional brochure distribution company to fix this problem.'”

He also wants to fix Mihalek’s narrative. Yes there are out-of-state brochures on the turnpike, but there are 14 welcome centers and 35 rest areas run by PennDOT. Morrison gets paid to place the brochures but has to follow rules.

“Their rules are can’t be anything out-of-state,” Morrison said.

For example, if the Golden Nugget Casino came to Morrison and said, I’m going to give you a million bucks to put my brochures in your rest areas, he would have to tell them no, or he would send them to the turnpike.

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Which is where Mihalek got her brochures. The Turnpike Commission is not under PennDOT, and has a separate contract with a middleman to run those plazas. It hired getaways on display with no PA-only strings attached. They make money from the brochure venues, not taxpayers and not toll payers.

“I’m a Pennsylvania guy,” Morrison said. “It kind of hurts my feelings, too, when we’re advertising others here in the state. But I’m also a business owner, as is the company that has the lease for the Turnpike Plaza. And we all need to, you know, pay the mortgage.”

But the turnpike is owned by the state and though the separate contract thing makes sense, to Mihalek, the brochure policy doesn’t.

“They’re being used to promote other states and that’s just wrong,” Mihalek said.

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