Was the Boston Globe’s four part series this week was just the wake up call that elected leaders needed to seek a revamping of the debt collecting industry? In what appears to be a collective quest to do away with the wrongs cited in the reports, leaders including state attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Tom Reilly to Boston Mayor Thomas Menino are vowing to seek various changes in response to the report.

Too little, too late.

Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, the presumptive Republican nominee for governor, said Reilly "has failed to do enough to protect consumers in Massachusetts." But Healey also found fault with the state court system. It has been, she said in a statement, "too lax, loosening notification rules for debt collectors instead of enforcing them to protect average citizens."

Deval L. Patrick, one of two Democrats vying with Reilly for the Democratic nomination, was less direct in his criticism. But he said the lack of enforcement is stark evidence that, "at both the federal and state level, the government is on the side of the big players, and not the little guy."