• Democratic governor candidate Jocelyn Benson pledges a far-reaching government and campaign transparency plan 
• Her plan, like those previously released by GOP candidates, would require buy-in from state legislators
• Recent Michigan governors made transparency-related proposals that weren’t fulfilled once they entered office. 

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LANSING — Michigan gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson on Friday unveiled a far-reaching plan to shine more light on the influence of money in politics and expand public access to government records. 

“If we enact new laws in Michigan to require greater disclosure and transparency in government, we can hold our leaders accountable and ensure they are working for the people, not the highest bidder,” Benson said in a statement. 

“It’s simple: no more dark money, no more backroom deals, no more undisclosed influence,” she added. 

Benson, a Democrat who currently serves as secretary of state, aims to “ban” so-called “dark money” in Michigan by requiring accounts that regularly spend millions to influence Michigan elections “to disclose the source of all contributions received that go towards any political spending.”

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She’s the latest gubernatorial candidate to propose transparency reforms in Michigan, which has consistently ranked near the bottom of US state rankings for transparency and anti-corruption laws. 

Lawmakers regularly become lobbyists immediately after leaving office. Financial disclosures reveal little about conflicts of interests a lawmaker might have, and campaign finance laws make it easy for ballot campaigns to hide the source of their donors. 

Michigan is the only state that does fully exempts the Legislature and governor’s office from its public records law, despite more than a decade of efforts by some lawmakers to change that.

Republican US Rep John James and former Republican House Speaker Tom Leonard have also released transparency plans. Benson’s plan — released as part of an annual “Sunshine Week” that ends Saturday — appears to be the most expansive to date. 

In addition to addressing dark money, Benson said she would also seek to expand Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act, campaign finance and lobbying laws.

Benson said she also wants to “strengthen” the disclosure requirements Michigan voters approved in 2022 which require state elected officials to provide some information about their finances. 

Democrats, during their trifecta control of state government, were tasked with implementing the disclosures, but chose to leave reports with close to the minimum amount of information required under the state constitutional amendment. The reports elected officials and candidates submit today are largely opaque, without many specifics.

She’d move to expand the state’s lobbying disclosure law too, requiring lobbyists to report “every dollar spent and who they are lobbying, how often, and on what.”

For this and other transparency reforms, Benson pledged to “work with lawmakers to enact these reforms in the first 100 days of my administration” — a tall order given some pro-transparency lawmakers have spent more than a decade trying to expand Michigan’s open records law without success. 

It remains to be seen whether she — or other candidates — could pull off proposed reforms. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and her predecessor Rick Snyder, did not follow through on many of the government transparency pledges they made as candidates. 

Scrutinizing state government

US Rep. John James has taken a broader approach to transparency, promising to scrutinize the government itself, not just the officials elected to run it.

His transparency plan, released in late January, calls for a series of investigations: auditing state spending from the past 10 years, scrutinizing voter rolls and rooting out so-called “ghost employees.”

Aspects of James’ plan touch on money in politics, too. He said he would ban all fundraising by state officials while the Legislature is in session, close loopholes allowing lawmakers to receive unreported gifts from lobbyists and tighten conflict of interest laws in the state Legislature.

The Michigan Department of State, under Benson, moved to modernize its campaign finance and lobbying portal, but it has suffered from bugs and in some aspects discloses less information to the public than the prior, decades-old system. 

Benson’s department has said the software firm behind the new Michigan Transparency Network, TylerTech, was the only qualified bidder on the project.

James said he would investigate that contract if elected governor.

He also wants to move to ban government entities from using taxpayer dollars to lobby the state. State government agencies have also taken flack in the past for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbyists to push their priorities in the Legislature. 

“Every public entity in Michigan is already represented by state legislators,” James’ campaign said in the plan. “Stop ripping off taxpayers by spending public funds on hiring multi-client lobbyists and on dues to special interest associations.”

Still, local governments and agencies jostle for grant funding and push for earmarks to fund their priorities. 

Expanding open records

After more than a decade of attempts, Michigan seems no closer to expanding the state’s open records law.

GOP House Speaker Matt Hall has said “we’re not doing FOIA,” even while touting a transparency award from a mysterious organization that does not appear to be publicly documented. Hall has trumpeted, however, his implementation of a plan that forces lawmakers to disclose the sponsorship and source of requested earmarks well before budgets pass. 

Still, FOIA expansion remains a popular transparency proposal on the campaign trail. 

Both Benson and Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Leonard said they would “voluntarily” expand FOIA to their offices even if the Legislature does not force them to do so. 

In an effort to get a FOIA expansion bill through the Legislature, sponsors of recent legislation made a number of concessions to soften proposed requirements for the Legislature and governor. 

But Benson said she’d move to “amend existing legislation to mandate the Legislature match that same level of disclosure.”

James’ campaign was less specific but said he would “support legislation to open the records of the governor’s office, the entire executive branch and the state Legislature to public scrutiny by ending the exemption from the Freedom of Information Act.”

Leonard has promised to create an “Office of Open Government” that he says would standardize and speed up the process of fulfilling FOIA requests. 

His plan does not explicitly call for expanding FOIA to the Legislature, but he said this week on social media that lawmakers should not leave for spring break until they advance legislation that would do so. 

“The people of Michigan no longer trust government to put their interests first,” Leonard said in a statement. “The way you rebuild trust isn’t with talking points about FOIA. It’s by putting forth a real proposal that can be implemented on day one.”

A familiar refrain

Michigan’s last two gubernatorial candidates made transparency promises that went unfulfilled. 

In 2010, Snyder pledged to “create a culture of ethics in Michigan government” by, among other reforms, tightening Michigan’s campaign finance laws by limiting the size of contributions. Three years later, Snyder signed a law that doubled them.

Whitmer’s 2018 “Michigan Sunshine Plan” made further campaign promises: expanding FOIA, making reforms to campaign finance and lobbying laws, requiring financial disclosure and more.

She too proposed subjecting her own office to public records requests if the Legislature did not make her. As she nears the end of her second and final term, she has not done so. 

Other aspects of her plan — ending partisan gerrymandering, and requiring personal financial disclosure by elected officials — became the law through popular ballot proposals, not executive action.

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