By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Judy Truesdell, who wants to become the first female Democrat elected to the state Legislature from Berrien and Cass counties' 78th District, kicked off a round of community visits in Dowagiac Thursday.
At Caruso's, where the public was encouraged to meet with her, she bumped into state Rep. John Proos, R-St. Joseph, who was handing out campaign literature on behalf of his colleague, state Rep. Neal Nitz, R-Baroda.
Nitz faces challenges for the Republican nod from Bill Baber of Berrien Springs and Bruce Hipshear of Buchanan.
She would face the GOP nominee determined in the Aug. 8 primary in November.
She and Terry, her husband of 39 years, run IDI Design Group, a display design business in the Niles industrial park.
Truesdell also created along with their daughter Meg an online company called Cupcaketree.com that sells tiered cardboard displays around the world.
Meg and her husband, Steven Johnson, have a young daughter, Laura.
Truesdell is also secretary of the Lake Michigan College Board of Trustees, to which she was elected in 2000 and re-elected in 2004.
She said her first impression of the mood of the electorate after a stop at the Council on Aging in Cassopolis and lunch at Zeke's is that voters are angry about such issues as the war, the high cost of prescription drugs and health care and the economy, from escalating gas prices to stagnant wages.
One man who met with her at the candy kitchen apologized for venting to her about federal issues, then began to cry because he believes the country is headed so far in the wrong direction it may never rebound.
From Caruso's Truesdell was to drop by the fire station, Division Tire, Hale's, Imperial Furniture and, given her particular interest in recycling and the environment, Deerpath Recycling in the industrial park.
With "the quality of life for southwest Michigan families continuing to decline under mountains of out-of-state trash," she said, "Republican leaders are more interested in protecting the status quo and the powerful garbage industry than curbing massive trash imports, and that's unacceptable."
Truesdell's plan, unveiled July 13, attacks the root causes that make Michigan a trash magnet.
She proposes hiking the dumping charge from 21 cents a ton to $7.50 a ton and banning new landfills until 2011.
For more than a year, she says, House Republicans have repeatedly blocked Democrats' "tough anti-trash measures" to reduce Canadian and out-of-state trash.
"Out-of-state garbage keeps pouring into Michigan landfills, including our own Forest Lawn Landfill (near Three Oaks in Berrien County) because we're a cheap place for them to dump it," Truesdell said. "It's time for a change."
Michigan absorbed 6.2 million tons of Canadian and out-of-state trash in 2005 – a 100,000-ton increase from 2004, according to the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).
Berrien County is being buried in more than 1 million tons of trash a year from Illinois and Indiana, the candidate said.
Cass County has no active landfills.
Truesdell said her plan mirrors Pennsylvania's success in slashing trash imports.
The Keystone state cut trash imports four years in a row, thanks to higher dumping charges, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
Pennsylvania began reducing trash imports after upping its dumping charge to $7.25 a ton in 2004.
The amount of trash Pennsylvania imported decreased from 12.6 million tons to 9.6 million tons – a 25-percent decrease.
"A high dumping charge is working in Pennsylvania. It can work here in Berrien, too," said Truesdell, who positions her campaign as "your chance to vote for someone who puts YOU above special interests."
"Republicans must stop stonewalling and take real action now," she said.