Norma Cusick has announced her candidacy for Lehigh County Commissioner for the four year term beginning January 2012.

She stated that she would be "A New Commissioner for a Better Lehigh County."Cusick, a currently elected Salisbury Township Commissioner, is in her fifth year of service. Prior to this she served as an elected Director in Salisbury Township School District for eight years. She also served on the Salisbury Township Planning Commission.In the past two decades Cusick has been very active in making Lehigh County a better place to live. She was a founding board member of the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival and the Lehigh County Sports Fields in South Whitehall Township for which she served as President. Cusick was a board member of the Child Advocacy Center of Lehigh County. She participated in the Girl Scouts of Eastern Pennsylvania and the Lehigh Valley Hospital Board of Associates.She currently serves on the boards of the Lehigh County Authority and the Allentown Public Library. Cusick has also been active in the Lehigh Valley Branch of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Eastern Pennsylvania Chapter.Norma was employed by the Allentown Downtown Improvement District and was Division Director for the American Heart Association.Norma holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from De Sales University and a Master of Arts degree from Kutztown University. She is also a certified paralegal.She is the mother of nine children all of whom are grown. Her physician husband, Dr. Richard Cusick, has been practicing medicine in the Lehigh Valley for over 37 years.Norma Cusick decided to run for County Commissioner after the county passed its budget with a 16 percent tax increase and property reassessment at the same time. As a Salisbury Township Commissioner, Cusick has not voted for any tax hike. She has been a fiscally conservative watchdog on the board, closely scrutinizing every item on each budget. She intends to take this approach of cost effective governance to the Lehigh County Board of Commissioners in January."Restructuring budgetary priorities with an eye toward more regionalization of services" is Cusick's approach to save taxpayers' money. "The common good of the people of Lehigh County is also best served by regional public health planning and implementation." Therefore, Cusick also supports the concept of an efficient and cost saving bi-county health department to serve all of the people of Lehigh and Northampton counties with its functions. Cusick also supports the Crime Data Center that will regionalize crime data. This will effectively create a virtual county-wide police department.