A pair of major Republican donors and the former head of the Pennsylvania Lottery Commission got a big windfall last month: the chance to snag a medical marijuana permit valued at about $25 million.
It was tucked inside the temporary Pennsylvania state budget by an anonymous member of the state House, and worded in a way that doesn’t explicitly mention Bay LLC, the company poised to receive the lucrative permit. Bay LLC operates cannabis dispensaries in Philadelphia, Phoenixville, and Lancaster under the name Cure Pennsylvania.
Rocco and Robert Ortenzio are father-and-son founding members of the company. Silvan Lutkewitte III, Bay’s CEO, was appointed head of the Lottery Commission by then-Gov. Tom Corbett in 2014. A serial entrepreneur who made his fortune in gas stations and convenience stores, Lutkewitte was dismissed by Gov. Wolf, a Democrat, a year later.
Bay LLC applied to the state Department of Health to grow marijuana in southwest Pennsylvania three years ago. The company was unsuccessful, coming in third out of a field of dozens of applicants. The top two applicants — Agrimed and PurePenn — were awarded permits to grow and process cannabis. The Department of Health later refused to renew Agrimed’s permit after marijuana plants mysteriously disappeared from the facility.