Candidates for 2nd Middlesex District Senate Seat Split on Legislative Transparency in First Forum

The five candidates running in the Democratic primary for the 2nd Middlesex District state Senate seat appeared at their first candidate forum Tuesday, splitting over the state’s legislative audit and whether transparency reforms on Beacon Hill have been effective.

The hopefuls — state Representative Christine P. Barber, state Representative Erika Uyterhoeven, Cambridge Vice Mayor Burhan Azeem, Somerville City Councilor Matthew C. McLaughlin, and Winchester School Committee member Tom Hopcroft — are competing for the open seat after longtime incumbent Senator Patricia D. Jehlen announced in Deceber that she would not seek reelection.

Co-hosted by the Cambridge Committee for Transparency and Accountability, Act on Mass, and the Coalition to Reform Our Legislature, the forum drew more than 50 attendees. Participants fielded questions on the legislative audit, stipends paid to legislative leaders and committee chairs, and the proposed expansion of public records law to the Legislature and governor’s office.

The candidates clashed over the legislative audit — a probe led by State Auditor Diana DiZoglio to examine the legislature’s finances and operations — and a June 3 House vote on a bill that would establish a framework for the audit while narrowing its scope.

Uyterhoeven and Barber, the two state representatives in the race, backed the measure, which Barber defended as a means to ensure the audit happens after legislative leaders have spent more than a year refusing to comply.

“I have been incredibly frustrated with the back and forth, and I’ve expressed that frustration to leadership,” Barber said.

“I did vote to support the bill that would, for the first time, put in statute that the legislature will be audited. That has never been done,” she added.

McLaughlin and Azeem took the opposite stance, saying they would not have supported the bill because it empowers lawmakers to dictate the parameters of the audit.

“I would have voted no,” McLaughlin said. “I know the auditor would have voted no, and the 72 percent of people who voted for the audit would have voted no.”

“I’m genuinely befuddled as to why people are claiming this is an accomplishment when the auditor and other people who supported the audit don’t think that we accomplished anything from this,” he added.

All five candidates supported changing the stipend system under which about three-quarters of legislators collect extra pay on top of their roughly $82,000 base salary — but split over how the reform should take shape.

Azeem tied the system to the criminal charges several past House speakers have faced, pointing out that the leaders who hand out committee assignments and their stipends have power over members’ pay.

“Three out of the four last speakers of the House were indicted on charges of corruption,” Azeem said. “That same leadership that was indicted for corruption is determining your pay.”

Uyterhoeven called for discarding the system entirely, saying it gives legislative leadership greater power by attaching a pay bonus for loyalty.

“The reason why we need this so badly is that the number of committees — and therefore the number of committee chairs and vice chairs — changes by the number of Democrats there are in office,” Uyterhoeven said. “So there is a literal cost to not following what leadership tells you to do.”

Each of the candidates said they backed a proposed November ballot question that would subject the Legislature and governor’s office to the state’s public records law. Massachusetts is the only state where the governor, legislature, and judiciary all claim exemptions from public records law.

Hopcroft said his support for the measure “comes down to a matter of trust,” as he believes officials on Beacon Hill should be open about their decisions.

“I feel like there’s a pattern developing here, where, over and over, the State House is making decisions that say ‘don’t look over here, there’s nothing to hide,’” Hopcroft said. “We ought to be able to see the internal workings, we ought to be able to see documents that are there,” he added.

For McLaughlin, his time as a city councilor has instilled in him that all elected offices should be subject to public records law.

“As a city councilor, I get public record requests for my emails all the time,” McLaughlin said. “I support it. It’s common sense,” he added.

The forum marked the first time that the five candidates appeared together on a public stage as they vie for a seat that has not been open for more than two decades ahead of the Sept. 1 Democratic primary.

—Staff writer Shawn A. Boehmer can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at shawnb.18. Follow him on X @ShawnBoehmer.