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 — Environmental justice and cumulative pollution exposure The most pressing environmental issue is the disproportionate exposure of Black, Brown, low-income, and working-class communities to pollution. In and around Detroit, residents live near highways, industrial corridors, aging infrastructure, contaminated sites, and areas with poor air quality.
2. Water Affordability — Ility, safety, and infrastructure Detroiters need clean, safe, affordable water. Water shutoffs, aging infrastructure, lead service lines, flooding, stormwater challenges, and basement backups all affect health, housing stability, and quality of life.
3. Air Quality — Climate resilience, housing, and utility affordability Climate change is already affecting Detroit through extreme heat, flooding, poor air quality, and rising energy costs. Many older homes need weatherization, home repair, energy efficiency upgrades, and flood mitigation. At the same time, residents are paying high utility bills for unreliable service.
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 Michigan’s 100% clean energy by 2040 law and would oppose efforts to repeal, weaken, or delay it. This law is important for climate, public health, and long-term economic competitiveness. Transitioning to clean energy can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve air quality, create jobs, and protect communities that have historically carried the burden of pollution. The law’s ability to allow the Michigan Public Service Commission to consider health, equity, and environmental justice in utility planning is especially important. For me, clean energy is also connected to affordability. Implementation must ensure working families are not asked to shoulder unfair costs while utilities continue to receive rate increases without reliable service. I support strong utility accountability, expanded energy efficiency, weatherization, community solar, and investments that lower bills while improving health outcomes. I also believe it is important to recognize that this law was made possible because of fair maps and fair representation. As Chair of the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, I helped create the maps that made the Democratic trifecta possible for the first time in decades. That trifecta allowed Michigan to pass major climate, labor, and democracy reforms. Now we need legislators who will defend those gains and ensure implementation benefits residents, workers, and communities most impacted by pollution.
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?
State government should play a much stronger oversight role in large-scale data center development. Data centers may be part of Michigan’s future economy, but they cannot be approved without clear protections for residents, ratepayers, workers, water resources, and local infrastructure.
I would support a temporary pause or moratorium on large data centers until Michigan has a responsible statewide framework in place. These projects use enormous amounts of electricity and water, and without guardrails they can strain the grid, increase utility costs, and place new burdens on communities that may not share in the benefits.
The Legislature should require full transparency around projected energy use, water use, emissions, utility infrastructure needs, and long-term environmental impacts before approval. Developers should be required to pay their fair share for any new electric, water, sewer, or transmission infrastructure so costs are not shifted onto DTE, Consumers, municipal utility customers, or local taxpayers.
I also support requiring best available technology, including closed-loop cooling systems, water reuse, and strict limits on water withdrawals and discharge. Any project receiving public incentives should include strong labor standards, local hiring, apprenticeship pathways, and a real Community Benefits Agreement negotiated with the affected community.
Michigan can welcome innovation, but not by giving large corporations a blank check. Data center development must be transparent, accountable, environmentally responsible, and structured so communities benefit rather than bear the costs.
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?
Here’s the revised answer with your science background more prominent:
The single most important step is to fully fund a comprehensive PFAS response strategy that prioritizes prevention, testing, biomonitoring, and cleanup in impacted communities.
My background in science and medicine shapes how I approach PFAS. I was trained to look at exposure pathways, biological impacts, evidence, and long-term health outcomes. PFAS are persistent chemicals that accumulate in water, soil, fish, wildlife, and human tissue, which means this is not only an environmental issue, it is a public health issue.
As a legislator, I would prioritize appropriations and legislation to expand drinking water, groundwater, and surface water testing; accelerate cleanup of contaminated sites; support biomonitoring such as blood testing in affected communities; and hold polluters accountable for remediation costs. I would also support stronger source-control policies so we are not constantly cleaning up contamination after the fact.
The state must especially prioritize communities that have been waiting the longest and those with the highest exposure risk. PFAS policy should be guided by science, public health, and environmental justice.
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
Yes. I support requiring Michigan regulators to assess cumulative environmental and health impacts before approving new permits for polluting facilities in overburdened communities. Too often, permitting decisions look at one facility or one emission source in isolation, while residents experience the combined impact of highways, industrial sites, truck traffic, contaminated land, poor housing conditions, and aging infrastructure all at once. That approach fails communities that are already carrying a disproportionate environmental and health burden. My background in science and medicine shapes how I approach this. Pollution exposure is not just an environmental issue; it is a public health issue tied to asthma, cardiovascular disease, cancer risk, birth outcomes, and long-term community health. Through my work at CDAD, I was the principal writer of the New Administration Transition Playbook, which calls for using an environmental justice lens in land use and development decisions and addressing cumulative impacts on communities. I would support legislation requiring cumulative impact analysis, stronger community input, public health data review, and the ability for regulators to deny or condition permits when a community is already overburdened. Environmental justice means no community should be treated as a sacrifice zone.
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?
Yes. Elected officials should play a much stronger role in holding utility companies accountable for rate hikes, rising energy costs, and unreliable service.
Michigan residents should not be paying some of the highest rates in the region while experiencing frequent outages and poor reliability. I support reforms that tie utility profits and return on equity to actual performance, including outage frequency, outage duration, affordability, grid reliability, and customer service. Utilities should not be rewarded with repeated rate increases if they are not delivering reliable service.
We also need reform of the rate-setting process itself. The Michigan Public Service Commission is a three-member body appointed by the Governor, and while it plays an important role, residents need greater transparency, accountability, and stronger statutory standards guiding rate decisions. Rate cases should put consumers, reliability, affordability, health, and environmental justice at the center.
This is also why I support the Money Out of Politics initiative. The influence of utility money, corporate PACs, and dark money has distorted energy policy in Michigan for too long. Companies like DTE and Consumers should not be able to raise rates on working families while also spending heavily to influence the political system.
In Lansing, I will support utility accountability, rate-setting reform, outage compensation, shutoff protections, stronger consumer advocacy, and limits on political spending by regulated monopolies.
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 shutting down Line 5 and oppose moving forward with a tunnel project that continues to place the Great Lakes at risk.
The Straits of Mackinac are too important to Michigan’s identity, economy, drinking water, tourism, fishing, and tribal sovereignty to gamble with. A major spill in the Great Lakes would be catastrophic, and we should not continue relying on aging fossil fuel infrastructure in one of the most environmentally sensitive places in the state.
My position is also grounded in environmental justice and public health. Michigan must move toward cleaner, safer energy systems while ensuring that workers and communities are not left behind in the transition. That means planning for energy reliability, supporting affected workers, investing in clean energy and infrastructure, and making sure the transition is fair.
As someone with a science and public health background, I believe we have to weigh risk, long-term environmental impact, and public health consequences honestly. In this case, the risk to the Great Lakes is too high. Michigan should protect the water, honor tribal concerns, and move toward a future beyond Line 5.
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. I support legislation that caps water bills for low-income Michiganders and adds strong shutoff protections.
Access to clean, safe, affordable water is a basic public health necessity. No family should lose access to drinking water because they cannot afford rising bills. Through my work at COTS and CDAD, I have seen how water insecurity contributes to housing instability, health problems, and family crisis, especially for low-income residents, seniors, families with children, and people with medical needs.
I supported the 2023 water affordability package, SB 549–554, which passed the Senate but failed to get across the finish line in the House (even though it was a Dem house. Some of this had to do with my district as the former speaker was from it). That legislation would have helped create fair rate structures and provided local governments, utilities, and service organizations with the tools to implement water affordability programs.
If elected, I would work to revive and pass that legislation, including income-based water affordability, shutoff protections, sustainable funding, technical support for local governments, and protections that ensure residents can access safe water regardless of income or ZIP code.
Water affordability is housing policy, public health policy, and environmental justice policy.
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
Yes. I strongly support legislation to hold polluters accountable for cleaning up contaminated sites.
Michigan should restore and strengthen “Polluter Pay” laws so that the companies responsible for contamination are required to investigate, disclose, and remediate the harm they caused. Taxpayers should not be left paying the bill while polluters delay cleanup, avoid responsibility, or leave communities exposed to unsafe soil, groundwater, vapor intrusion, and other health risks.
I also believe any new Polluter Pay framework should include even stronger safeguards than the original law before it was weakened in the 1990s. That means strict liability, stronger financial assurance, long-term accountability, and the ability to hold responsible parties liable even years after contamination occurs.
Through my background in science and medicine, I understand how environmental exposure can affect long-term health. Through my work at CDAD and COTS, I also see how contaminated land harms neighborhood stability, housing, redevelopment, and public trust.
Cleaning up contaminated sites is environmental justice, public health policy, and community development policy. Polluters, not residents, should pay for the damage they cause.