Planet Detroit Candidate Survey
What are the three most pressing environmental issues facing the communities you seek to serve? Please rank them in order of priority and briefly explain why you chose each.
1. Air Quality — Access to Affordable Clean Energy The transition to clean energy must benefit everyone, not just those who can afford upfront investments. Too many families are facing rising utility costs while lacking access to energy-efficient homes, rooftop solar, community solar programs, and other clean energy technologies that can lower monthly bills.
2. Climate — Increasingly Severe Storms, Flooding, and Sewer Backups Communities across the district are experiencing stronger storms and more frequent heavy rainfall events. Aging stormwater and sewer infrastructure was not designed to handle the volume of water these storms now bring, resulting in flooded streets, damaged homes, sewer backups, and public health concerns.
3. Climate — Lack of Reliable Heating and Cooling During Extreme Weather As temperatures become more extreme, access to reliable heating and cooling is increasingly a public health issue.
Michigan law requires utilities to reach 100% clean energy by 2040. If elected, would you support maintaining this law, or would you support revising or repealing it? Please explain your position.
Maintain the current law and timeline
I support maintaining the current law and timeline requiring Michigan utilities to reach 100% clean energy by 2040. This statutory timeline serves as a standard public guarantee that holds utility monopolies accountable to our neighborhoods rather than allowing them to pass transition costs onto working families. In the State Senate, I will ensure this clean energy shift is built on a foundation of union-led labor and local hiring pipelines, modernizing our grid to lower utility cost-burdens while protecting homes from unpredictable outages.
More than two dozen Michigan communities are considering or have approved large-scale data center developments. These facilities can consume as much electricity as a small city and place significant demands on local water and energy infrastructure. What role should state government play in overseeing data center development, and what guardrails should the state legislature enact to protect communities where data centers are proposed?
The state government must establish clear safeguards for data center developments rather than letting a patchwork system leave individual municipalities to fend for themselves. The legislature should mandate that developers independently secure clean energy and completely subsidize their own connection costs to prevent straining our local power supply or passing upgrade expenses onto neighborhood utility customers. Furthermore, we must enforce strict water-use oversight to protect local resources through closed-loop recycling infrastructure. Finally, state tax incentives should be legally tied to standard public guarantees, ensuring large tech corporations directly invest in our public assets and utilize local hiring pipelines built on union labor.
PFAS contamination has been detected in drinking water, groundwater, and surface water across Michigan. Cleanup efforts are underway, but many affected communities are still waiting for action. What is the single most important step the officeholder in this position should take on PFAS in the next term?
The single most important step I will take is to aggressively advance "Polluter Pay" legislation that shifts the entire financial burden of PFAS testing, water treatment, and environmental remediation away from regular taxpayers and directly onto the corporate entities responsible for the contamination. By hiking administrative fines and civil penalties on these bad actors, we can secure a dedicated, self-sustaining revenue stream to immediately fund additional oversight personnel and scientists at EGLE. This ensures that every affected neighborhood receives rapid, no-barrier mitigation and clean drinking water without corporate foot-dragging. We must stop letting corporate entities treat our water infrastructure like a free dumping ground and instead force them to foot the bill for the machinery required to clean it up.
Michigan residents in some communities face disproportionate exposure to air pollution, contaminated water, and industrial waste. Do you support requiring Michigan regulators to assess cumulative environmental and health impacts on overburdened communities before approving new permits for polluting facilities?
Yes
Utility rate cases directly affect what Michigan residents pay for electricity and gas. DTE and Consumers Energy have requested frequent significant rate increases in recent years. Should elected officials play a greater role in holding utility companies accountable for rate hikes and rising energy costs?
Elected officials must play a decisive role in holding utility monopolies accountable, driving down energy costs, and forcing immediate reinvestment into our aging grid infrastructure. We must reform the Michigan Public Service Commission by strengthening public intervention mandates so consumer protection advocates always have a well-resourced seat at the table to block unfair rate hikes. Finally, we must legally tie utility revenues to strict performance metrics, ensuring these corporations face severe financial penalties if they prioritize excessive shareholder profits over updating legacy distribution lines and protecting homes from unpredictable outages.
Enbridge's Line 5 pipeline runs through the Straits of Mackinac and carries crude oil and natural gas liquids between Wisconsin and Ontario. A proposed tunnel beneath the lakebed to house a replacement pipeline has faced legal and regulatory challenges for years. What is your position on the future of Line 5?
I support the construction of a tunnel beneath the lakebed as the safest, most practical way to remove the potential harm of an open-water spill to our Great Lakes. This approach replaces an aging system with engineered, secure infrastructure that actively insulates our natural resources from environmental hazards. At the same time, this infrastructure project secures essential energy reliability for our state while creating a direct pipeline to high-paying jobs built on union labor. We must move beyond gridlock to design real, state-of-the-art protections that safeguard our public assets and our workforce simultaneously.
Drinking water is becoming increasingly unaffordable for Michiganders in both rural and urban areas, leading to water shutoffs. Would you support legislation that caps water bills for low-income Michiganders and adds shutoff protections?
Yes. While serving in the State Senate, I secured the initial state funding to establish water affordability programs in partnership with the Heat and Warmth Fund, proving that we can deliver real, practical relief. However, instead of simply implementing billing caps on a rigged market, we must redesign our approach by treating clean water exactly like food—as a guaranteed public necessity. Rather than forcing low-income families to navigate complex administrative paywalls, the state must build a baseline system that ensures every home simply has the water they need to live with dignity. We must establish robust, state-enforced shutoff protections, making it a statutory mandate that no household is disconnected from this vital resource.
Michigan is home to more than 18,000 contaminated sites. Do you support or oppose legislation to hold polluters accountable for cleaning up these sites?
Support