Mike Ball reports from a pair of debates at Boston English High - the first between incumbent state Rep. Willie Mae Allen and challenger Kathy Gabriel and the second between incumbent state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson and challenger Sonia Chang-Diaz.
Elsewhere in Debateland:
John Kerry vs. Edward O'Reilly.
Seems like the only time you ever hear of this guy, the august state rep from Hyde Park (and my small sliver of Roslindale) is when he manages to grind the legislature to a halt over some issue that doesn't involve his district at all (anybody remember how he tied up the disposition of the old Boston State Hospital for years?). This time: A liquor license for some supermarket in Westwood.
ParkwayBoston.com reports the West Roxbury incumbent will face off against Pamela Julian of Brookline in the Democratic primary. A second potential candidate, Matthew Benedetti of West Roxbury, failed to file enough signatures, the site reports.
State Rep. Carl Sciortino of Medford says a whole bunch of his nomination petitions have disappeared and he wants the police to investigate (speaking of Wilkerson, this time around, she filed 10 times the required number of signatures to make sure she's on the ballot).
The Outraged Liberal sums up that latest news on Richard Vitale, the strategist lobbyist pal of Sal DiMasi.
Sal DiMasi expresses his outrage at the calumnies of the Republican Party (Wait? We have one? Yes, seems we do) regarding his ethics, or alleged lack thereof, in a letter to fellow House members.
Jay Fitzgerald: I'm trying to figure out how Sal gets out of this mess.
Blue Mass. Group, of course, is all over the Sutton state rep announcing she'd been threatened on the floor of the House.
The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center takes a look at the House's proposed tax modifications (the ones that will give large companies a new loophole). Among other things:
... The amendment appears to take away from the Massachusetts Department of Revenue much of the standard authority that departments of revenue generally have to adopt regulations that implement the law. Reducing the regulatory authority of the department could strengthen the hand of companies with the capacity to design sophisticated tax avoidance strategies by weakening the capacity of the department of revenue to ensure that our tax laws are implemented in a fair, effective and efficient manner. ...
State Rep. Mike Rush could face opposition this fall because he never returned a constituent's phone call.
Pamela Julian of Brookline says she called Rush to try to enlist his support for a bill that would let high-school and college students register to vote right at their schools; she's director of Associated Students of Massachusetts, which is pushing the bill. Rush never called her back and she says she started getting upset and looking at Rush's voting record and so she was down in front of the Starbucks on Centre Street in West Roxbury on Saturday collecting signatures to get on the September Democratic primary ballot.
Julian says her main issue is that she'd pledge to be a full-time state rep; she says Rush has the second-worst record in the House for missing roll call votes. However, she would also be a more liberal rep than Rush. Rush opposes single-sex marriage; Julian supports it.
Although she lives in Brookline now, Julian says she's familiar with the West Roxbury end of the district - she used to live there (and even helped run David Finnegan's local effort in a mayoral run against Kevin White).
Rush has represented the 10th Suffolk district in the House of Representatives since 2003.
The House of Representatives figured it could save some money by cancelling a contract with WGBH and instead Webcasting its sessions. I'm trying to watch the same-sex-marriage vote and it's just not working. Honorable dudes - either give the contract back to WGBH or just give up the fiction you're providing public access to your proceedings.
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