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.
Clean water access and PFAS contamination. The Saginaw Bay watershed runs through the heart of HD96. Families in Bay County have been waiting too long for cleanup resources to reach them. This is a public health emergency, not a policy debate. Affordability of clean energy. The clean energy transition has to work for working families. Too many people in Bay City are already struggling to pay their utility bills. We can't build a clean energy future on the backs of people who can't make ends meet. Brownfield and contaminated site cleanup. Bay City and communities like it have carried an outsized industrial burden for generations. Getting those sites cleaned up creates jobs, restores neighborhoods, and is long overdue.
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
Michigan made a commitment and we should keep it. This transition means good jobs for Michigan workers and less dependence on fossil fuels. Pulling back now would be a win for utility companies, not for the families paying their bills every month.
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?
Communities deserve a real voice before a facility that uses as much power as a small city moves in. The state should require full disclosure of water and energy demands upfront, guarantee meaningful community input before approval, and hold data centers to the same clean energy standards we expect of everyone else. Economic development can't come at the expense of the people already living there.
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?
Get resources to affected communities faster and make polluters pay for it. We know this problem firsthand in Bay City. We secured nearly a million dollars in federal funding to clean up PFOS contamination at Fire Station #2 from decades of firefighting foam use. That's one site. Families across Michigan are still waiting while cleanup timelines drag on. The next term has to be about execution, not more studies.
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
Communities that already carry a heavy pollution burden should not have to absorb more without a full accounting of the cumulative harm. I've seen this play out in Bay City. It comes down to basic fairness.
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, and it's overdue. Since 2020, the MPSC has approved nearly $800 million in rate increases for Consumers Energy alone. Less than three months after the last hike was approved, they filed for another $456 million. DTE is doing the same thing. These companies have a captive customer base and a broken oversight system that keeps rewarding them. Elected officials need to step in and demand real accountability, not just intervene case by case while the bills keep going up.
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?
Line 5 is not a simple issue and anyone who tells you it is hasn't thought it through. Michigan workers and families depend on the energy it delivers, and a shutdown without a real alternative in place would drive up costs and kill jobs. At the same time, a 73-year-old pipeline sitting on the lakebed at the Straits is a legitimate concern. The tunnel addresses both. It gets the pipe off the lakebed, protects the Great Lakes, puts Michigan construction workers to work, and keeps the energy supply stable. I support the tunnel moving forward.
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. Clean water is not a luxury. No family should lose access because they can't afford the bill. Capping costs for low-income residents and putting shutoff protections in place is the right call.
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
If you caused the contamination, you clean it up. Leaving communities to live with someone else's mess or pushing the cost onto taxpayers is wrong. Eighteen thousand contaminated sites in Michigan is not a statistic, it's a failure of accountability that has gone on too long.