BOSTON COURANT: Wilkerson and Opponent offer different solutions

By Alison Lapp | June 14, 2008

Two Democratic contenders for state Senate sought to set themselves apart with different solutions for health care, debt and crime challenges when they met for their first public forum last Tuesday night.

Challenger Sonia Chang-Diaz, a former public school teacher and political adviser, portrayed herself as an outsider offering fresh ideas for the 2nd Suffolk district, which includes the Back Bay, Beacon Hill, and South End, and peppered her opening and closing remarks with appeals for change.

Incumbent Dianne Wilkerson touted a record that includes helping pass anti-predatory lending, racial profiling and wrongful conviction compensation laws. "You name it, and you'll find that my name has been on it," said the 15-year senator, who held off Chang-Diaz's write-in campaign in 2006 to win an eighth term.

Chang-Diaz left a position at the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center early this year to run a traditional campaign, which started in earnest as the candidates made their initial joint public appearance at the Harriet Tubman House in the South End, for the forum sponsored by the Ward 4 Democratic Committee.

More than 50 people watched the two spar on topics like handling the state's $1.3 billion ongoing deficit, which Chang-Diaz said she would reduce by closing corporate tax loopholes, giving municipal governments more independence in raising revenue and stepping up Department of Revenue enforcement of existing laws.

Wilkerson countered that she had been involved in revising the tax code to prohibit big businesses from skirting the rules, and the new regulations should pass this year, before Chang-Diaz would start.

Wilkerson would address budgetary shortfalls by supporting city- or county-level sales taxes to fund local projects, lifting the exemption on taxing beer and wine sales, and educating people about working n the life sciences industry.

The candidates had three minutes to respond to questions from Ward 4 committee members and the public.

In response to a query about the best means to contain costs for Massachusetts' increasingly expensive mandatory health insurance, Chang-Diaz suggested "arming consumers with real data about the cost of care" so they could choose the least expensive policy. She also advocated using technology to streamline medical record-keeping and shifting the structure of doctor pay form rewarding costly specialists' procedures to employing more primary care physicians who would encourage preventative care and health lifestyle choices.

Wilkerson was blunter.

"The short answer is that we can't," she said. "We can't continue to expand coverage and absorb the costs."

She proposed increasing the employer-paid share of insurance costs to reduce the burden on the state.

The pair differed on solutions to crime in the 2nd Suffolk district, which includes parts of Jamaica Plain, Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan, Mission Hill, and Chinatown.

"We need to give young people a more hopeful, realistic vision of their future," through after-school and summer programs," Chang-Diaz said, so that "they just have too much ahead of them to risk picking up a gun."

She further supported indexing the minimum wage to inflation to allow low-income parents to work fewer hours and spend more time with their children, and advocated passing a law prohibiting citizens from purchasing ore than one gun a month.

"I don't know of a single person who has been killed by a legal gun," Wilkerson replied. "It's not about restricting the right of legal gun owners; they're not the ones shooting."

Wilkerson recommended community policing, increasing resources for parents and involving women in the process of planning for young people in a district where single mothers head 82 percent of households.

"Guys plan for the summer. They think if we get kids a summer job, they'll be fine," she said. "Women plan for a life-time."

The candidates will debate again on Wednesday, June 18 at Emerson College as they forge ahead on campaigns leading up to the state primary on Tuesday, September 16.

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