LOWER MERION — Democrat Daylin Leach and Republican Lance Rogers locked horns during a League of Women Voters debate at Bryn Mawr College Tuesday, often veering off course to trade barbs and dispute each other’s allegations.

Included in the bevy of topics they were asked to address were health care, gun control, DUI laws, government reform, the environment, and funding for education.

Rogers, a Lower Merion commissioner, said he he’d look to streamline costs and enhance revenues for education by imposing “vice taxes” on alcohol, tobacco and polluters, and enlisting more federal funds. Rogers also advocated control at the local level.

Currently serving as State Representative in the 149th District, Leach said, “Property tax is a terrible way to pay for education,” fraught with injustices and problems. Leach advocated replacing the current system with a state-based tax, and pointed to new funding formulas he recently helped pass.

In response to a question on redistricting reform, Rogers said he supported it, then touted his program for general ethics reform in Harrisburg, which includes making all government records, including emails, “transparent and accessible” to the public.

Leach said the idea of making all e-mail public was “terrible.’

Referring to gerrymandering as “the most pernicious problem in state government,” Leach said a bill he sponsored would require a bipartisan commission to create district boundaries, with all discussions conducted in public. There’s also a provision for drawing a circle to enforce the “compact and contiguous” requirement.

A question on infrastructure repair and funding for SEPTA prompted Leach to say he supported Act 44, which called for a toll on I-80. In light of its defeat, Leach said he would revisit the idea of leasing the Pennsylvania Turnpike, though he originally opposed it.

Rogers advocated a three-point program that would make tolling “commensurate to other states,” employ “responsible borrowing” and public-private partnerships.

Both candidates said they favored a merit-selection system for choosing judges.

Leach identified the environment as “the single most important issue.” He touted a strong record sponsoring and cosponsoring environmental legislation, such as a bill requiring 25 percent of the state fleet to be hybrid cars by 2011, tax credits for buying energy-efficient appliances, a comprehensive solar power bill, bio-fuels bill, portfolio standards bill, and a conservation bill requiring smart meters. And Pennsylvania’s future “is in green technology,” Leach said.

Rogers said he’s worked pro bono as an attorney to save open space. “We need to offer tax incentives for research and development of new forms of energy,” Rogers added, stating his belief that Pennsylvania can be “the Silicon Valley of energy.”

A question on gun control led to an accusation from Rogers that Leach lied about his position in negative campaign mailings, to which Leach responded that “being called negative by Lance Rogers is like being called ugly by a frog.

Leach maintained that Rogers had, in fact, distorted his position on DUI laws in egregious flyers depicting bloody hypodermic needles.

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