Candidates appear at the Marquette Township Hall during the League of Women Voters forum on Friday. From left, Melody Wagner, Randy Girard, Jenn Hill, Margaret Brumm and Burt Mason. (Journal photo by Alexandria Bournonville)

MARQUETTE — The Marquette County branch of the League of Women Voters recently held a voter’s forum for Michigan’s 109th District seat in the House of Representatives.

Those running for the office are incumbent Jenn Hill (D), Burt Mason (R), Randy Girard (D), Melody Wagner (R) and Margaret Brumm (D). Karl Bohnak (R) is also running but was not present at the LWV panel.

To watch the entire candidate forum for yourself, go to the League of Women Voters Marquette County YouTube page and watch the “Michigan House of Representatives 109th District Candidate Forum” under the “past live streams” section.

The following are brief summaries or quotes that represent each candidate’s views. Full answers are not provided to save space.

OUR DISTRICT’S MOST PRESSING ISSUE?

MASON: “We are not keeping up with the Lower Peninsula. The Lower Peninsula is getting the bulk of our funding, that’s the biggest problem. We are not well represented here in the Upper Peninsula … they’ve taken away our zoning rights.”

BRUMM: “The number one issue is affordable housing. … My proposal is that the government partner with a 501(c)(3) corporation, Habitat for Humanity, and provide funding to support the building of 10 new houses in each county in the state of Michigan. … Another opportunity is for the government to commit for each county to build what I call ‘villages of little homes.’ … And the third opportunity is we have to balance the wages paid with the rents paid.”

HILL, described the ways she’s helped housing through the Target Market Analysis via state funding, allocating millions (of dollars) to the Lake Superior Community Partnership and the Central Planning Agency. “We also need more workers and training workers through skilled training apprenticeships with our unions and high schools. Then finally, the zoning question, which is up to the local folks.”

WAGNER: “The number one complaint is inflation, inflation and inflation. Everything has gone up: groceries, gas, electric … car insurance twice the national average and our pay scales up here in the U.P. remain lower than downstate.”

GIRARD: “Economic freedom and viability. The question of whether or not you can operate a household, raise a family, on the current level of income that is available. Michigan is an extremely expensive state to live in. We rank 37th out of 50 in terms of cost.”

WHY HASN’T THE DARK STORE TAX SITUATION BEEN SOLVED?

BRUMM, said it’s due to the courts, which are designed to be slow. “There needs to be a concerted effort by more than one township that has lost an effort to bring into a class-action suit where you name stores that are routinely doing this sort of thing to townships and you go after them in a bunch because the rules are different for class actions.”

HILL, reasoned it’s due to the Supreme Court that decided that the action is legal. “I have filed jointly with representatives Brixie and Markkanen … we are changing the definitions of how assessing is done. We’re taking it out at the root.”

WAGNER: “It’s the corruption of Lansing. … I would like a federal investigation as to how and why the corruption took over.”

GIRARD: “You have legislators in Lansing that are career-oriented. They are lifetime legislators and the Michigan Chamber of Commerce wields a large club on them being re-elected. That is the problem with dark stores. It’s not illegal, it’s the Michigan Chamber of Commerce.”

MASON, largely agreed with Girard. “As a legislator for the 109th, I would certainly go after that, convincing other legislators to do the same would be my task and I’m kind of good at that.”

SUPPORTING GREEN ENERGY?

HILL: “We have passed a law this past year, we set a target, a goal that in 16 years, we’ll have green energy for all of our uses but that is a combination of different kinds of energy because you need to let the market lead and decide what technology we need. … There’s also property income tax, PACE, it’s called, property tax incremental financing that will allow you to put those (solar) panels up on your business and pay for it long-term on your property taxes.”

WAGNER: “Well, not the way they’re wanting to support it right now … Think about what’s been going on with what got passed, with the energy bill especially, taking the rights away from the local control there with solar and wind. They can’t even imagine seeing electric cars available.”

GIRARD: “You can’t abandon fossil fuels and move to total green energy. It’s a pipe dream. The bills that were passed were poorly planned and more poorly executed. We don’t have the infrastructure in place before you launch a project like that. You need input from voters. … It should have been a ballot question.”

MASON: “There’s no doubt that humans are not doing the environment any good but there is no panacea. You can have wind, you can have solar but you can’t have 100% wind and solar. … There’s cadmium contamination from the solar panels so let’s stop the war on fossil fuels. Let’s open up Line 5, put it in the tunnel, let’s go with nuclear.”

BRUMM: “I traveled on an ore boat two years ago, we were carrying coal from (Lake) Superior down to two coal power plants down in Detroit, whereas the borderline power is running on natural gas. We start in Michigan, instead of going 100% renewable, we go from coal to natural gas and we do it in steps.”

WHAT IS YOUR POSITION ON ABORTION ACCESS?

WAGNER: “Folks voted for that in 2022 and it passed with 57% here in Michigan. I understand Florida’s is up for a vote and I served in law enforcement down there. Theirs has to be 60%, just to give you an idea. I have been endorsed as the only candidate from Right to Life of Michigan.”

GIRARD: “Reproductive rights is more than just abortion. Abortion has been addressed here in Michigan, as mentioned previously. It is the law of the land … if you are dissatisfied with the action, get it onto the next ballot for review.”

MASON: “I’m very pro-life but I do feel that there are exceptions to the rule. … It is settled law, as the others have said, and that settled law is not to my liking but it’s settled law. There’s not much we can do about it right now, except as Mr. Girard said, take it back to the voters.”

BRUMM: “Day in and day out, the most dangerous thing a woman does is become pregnant and carry a pregnancy to term and deliver a child. … We are literally talking life and death for a person in being and a potential person in being and I don’t think anybody would be as casual about saying who’s got the right to decide if, literally, their life was at stake. … I would prefer that the decision be left with the woman.”

HILL: “Prop 3 through a ballot referendum, with all of us across Michigan casting our votes, overwhelmingly chose, by majority, that we would have this right. Then we went further, in the Michigan Legislature … we made sure that it is codified into law.”

PROTECTING WATER FROM TOXIC CHEMICALS?

GIRARD: “I would definitely support the legislation that’s currently being discussed and further legislation of particularly PFAs. We have a fire department here in the township, we used it a lot in the early days. I had staff that were exposed and that needs to be addressed.”

MASON: “Yes, we all know that PFAs is a dangerous chemical used to put out fires and as we know that, fires in an electric vehicle are going to be devastating and so legislation needs to be put in place. … Fossil fuel energy, the nuclear energy and the wind and solar energy systems need to work together but we have to do it intelligently.

BRUMM: “The number one pollutant of inland lakes in the state of Michigan, including Iron County where I was yesterday, is, believe it or not, leaking septic tanks. There are no current legislation requirements that once a septic tank has been installed, it be inspected, pumped out or any attention be paid to it. I believe that warrants some attention at the state level. … I’m talking every five to 10 years, getting someone to look.”

HILL: “There’s also the need now, we’ve recognized, to remove all lead pipes in our systems. The state, in fact, just made a $300,000 grant just this past year to the city of Marquette to do a lead pipe analysis. The state’s also provided millions of dollars to Ishpeming to help improve its very old water system.”

WAGNER: “PFAs has been determined to be in numerous household items and items that we use.” Wagner continued to say she’s more concerned about the financial responsibility for septic tank issues since in Ohio, “they made the seller pay” and Wisconsin “had the buyer pay.”

BOOK BANNING?

MASON: “Too many books that we’ve seen in the libraries today are pornographic, OK? We’ve all seen it on the news. … if we look at what’s going on in our schools today, with some of the (diversity, equity and inclusion) stuff, it is unacceptable that we have pornographic books in our libraries. A nonpornographic book is fine.”

BRUMM: “I think it is sensationalist to say that in a school library, a child can go to a school librarian and ask for pornography and be handed pornography. … I am totally against any ban about books. A parent’s job is to keep bad books away from their kids, not a librarian.”

HILL: “The free public library is an American ideal. It started first in America, nowhere else in the world and it has allowed us to have access to education and access to resources … and I am very much in favor of continuing to let libraries work as they do.”

WAGNER: “As far as banning them, don’t put the inappropriate books at the grade level we don’t want them at. This is common sense.”

GIRARD: “Banning of books, banning of just about anything should not be on our radar. The issue of choice that we have in our constitution is just that. It’s an issue of choice.”

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING, RIGHT-TO-WORK LAWS AND PREVAILING WAGE?

BRUMM: “I am a strong supporter of collective bargaining. The balance in this country between the employer and the employee has gone so far in favor of the employer that employees are forced to work a ridiculous amount of time and effort for minimum wage.”

HILL: “I voted to restore the right to organize in Michigan that was taken away by a previous administration. I voted to expand prevailing wages just this week. … I strongly support collective bargaining. Making sure folks have the right to organize, it leads to a better product or service and it leads to better lives.”

WAGNER: “As far as the union goes, I think they’ve run their course in some areas with safety. I think we’ve got a lot of it, the dues, going to the bosses that have become corrupt. … I am not against unions.”

GIRARD: “Collective bargaining is always the way to go, in my opinion, and if you have a good working relationship between employer and employee, they form their own bargaining agreement.”

MASON: “I understand the importance of union work and I understand the importance of collective bargaining, it can be a very, very, very good thing, usually. I’ve also seen situations where it has not helped.”

HOW TO HELP FAMILIES ACCESS CHILD CARE?

HILL: “This week, we approved in the budget two more fire inspectors. We only have one in the whole state who is qualified to certify child care centers and now we’re going to triple that number. … We have an incredible program here again with the Lake Superior Community Partnership where folks can learn to run day care centers in their own home … a new one opening up with NMU through Trishare, where the employer pays a third, government pays a third and the caregiver pays a third.”

WAGNER: “We could bring back the monies that we should bring back that we aren’t bringing back. … I do not have an answer for the child care issue. I don’t have one. I’d like to ask the public more and see if anybody can come up with something that really works without burdening the taxpayer even more.”

GIRARD: “We also have a Michigan Lottery that is supposed to be funding schools. Does it make any sense to anybody in this room to give out a $485 million lottery prize to one person? Why would we not tap some of that money, pull it back into school systems and allow the schools to take on that responsibility for child care?”

MASON: “I do think that we could use that funding or use funding in the school system to support a program, however if you look at the recent bill that was just passed for our education system, they are freezing the funding to the schools for appropriate per-pupil payments.”

BRUMM: “My idea is that every high school have a child care option where a student would sign up for that and there would be a child care center at the school. They would be given classes and trained to work and paid to take care of children in that school system and when they’ve graduated they’d have a certificate that would enable them to make a living.”

DOES MICHIGAN HAVE FREE, FAIR ELECTIONS? CAN IT IMPROVE?

WAGNER, suggested a law that requires there to be an equal number of Republicans and Democrats working the polls for elections.

GIRARD: “I’m of the opinion that the early voting and the late voting don’t benefit anyone. I would be in favor of going back to the same system that I grew up with and that we’ve used ever since we’ve been voting and that was that you have Election Day. Election Day is where you go cast your ballot and if you can’t go on that day, you can do an absentee ballot.”

MASON: “The problem is in fact our voting rolls. I’ve actually ran into some noncitizens, one of them is my neighbor, she’s Canadian, she got a real ballot. Not only that, she just got recently sent a voter ID card. … I think something needs to be addressed and cleaned up.”

BRUMM: “We need to stop criticizing the election workers and start doing everything we can to get people voting so our votes count.”

HILL: “We have early voting because that’s what the residents of Michigan voted to make happen. … We changed and now there will be fewer voting locations so that we can allocate our dollars and our people more effectively.”

ADDRESSING GAPS IN RURAL MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES?

GIRARD: “Mental health is drastically underfunded and under-available throughout Michigan and not just in the Upper Peninsula. A concerted effort has to be made at the legislative level to get money back into mental health.”

MASON: “You’ve got issues with suicide. One child that we had in our hospital, it’s sad to say, but one child in our hospital, we could get him no help. There was absolutely no help in the entire Upper Peninsula. We ended up having to rely on people out of the state of Michigan to take care of this child. This is unacceptable. We need funding for it.”

BRUMM: “This is a problem that can be solved with a federal program to inspire people to go into the mental health fields to compensate them so they don’t have to graduate with horrific debt and to place them in under-served localities that require as much mental health treatment as anyplace else.”

HILL: “The problem is we don’t have the providers, the people, which goes back to the housing problem, which goes also to the transportation problem and the cost of education. To address that, there is increased funding for scholarships for people to get these degrees. Social work degrees are now almost completely covered by the state of Michigan.”

WAGNER: “A lot of people would like to see state hospitals brought back. I get told that regularly. Would they be run different? It’s 2024. … I push what I call ‘mental brain health’ on all my fliers. We should go into an office and we should examine both our whole mind, our body and everything. See if things are working right.”

THOUGHTS ON RECENT FIREARM LAWS?

MASON: “I fully support the Second Amendment and the protection of that Second Amendment. Many of the problems that exist in our society today are right back to what we just talked about and that’s mental health. … We need to solve the mental health issue.”

BRUMM: “We need age limits on the right to purchase a gun just like you have age limits on the right to buy pot or booze. You shouldn’t be 14 years old and be able to buy a weapon of mass destruction. And safety training should be mandatory the same way driver’s ed is.”

HILL: “Having these laws in place, I have been told personally we have already saved lives because of that extreme risk protection order and it is the role of the police and the prosecutors to implement that law and they are working diligently to make sure that is done in a fair and effective manner.”

WAGNER: “The red flag law takes your guns for a year. It’s not proper due process, violates our Second Amendment and they need to be overturned.”

GIRARD: “Prosecutors need to stop plea bargaining felonies and prosecute them. It may not show up well on their win column but we need more than win columns so there are a number of things that have to happen in mental health professionals doing their jobs and holding people accountable so they don’t get their hands on firearms.”