Top lawmaker wants to close Michigan ‘revolving door’ to lobbyist jobs

• Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall pushes plan to prevent elected officials from immediately becoming lobbyists in Lansing
• Advocates say a ‘cooling-off period’ could prevent conflicts of interests for departing lawmakers seeking their next jobs
• Past efforts to close the ‘revolving door’ in Lansing have faltered

LANSING — After years of failed attempts to slow the “revolving door” between Michigan policymakers and the professionals paid to influence them, a new proposal to block government leaders from immediately becoming lobbyists is gaining steam in the state Legislature. 

Bipartisan legislation backed by House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, would create a two-year “cooling-off period” before lawmakers who leave office can register as paid lobbyists to influence their former colleagues. 

“You have to wonder, when these people are in their last weeks, are they working for us, or are they working for the people that they've agreed to jobs (with)?” Hall said in a press conference last week.

The legislation has co-sponsors from opposite ends of the political spectrum, including Rep. Matt Maddock, a Milford Republican and staunch Trump ally, and Dylan Wegela, a self-described Democratic Socialist from Garden City. 

Another bill would extend the cooling off period to the governor, lieutenant governor and directors of executive branch departments, which would include the secretary of state and attorney general.

Michigan is one of eight states with no cooling-off period for politicians once they leave office. In Florida, a state with the most stringent requirements, lawmakers must wait six years after leaving office to register as lobbyists.

Advocates say such mandatory wait periods can reduce the potential for ethical conflicts in government, where officials are often sought after by interest groups because of their personal relationships with former colleagues.

Filler reported receiving his lobbying job offer Jan. 1, 2025, his last day in office as a legislator.

In recent years, new legislator-turned-lobbyists have included former Michigan House Speaker Jason Wentworth, Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof, Democratic floor leader Yusef Rabhi and former Rep. Graham Filler. 

Filler joined multiclient lobbying firm McAlvey Merchant and Associates last month — five days after his term technically ended — but told Bridge Michigan that his work in Lansing was not impacted by job prospects. 

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There was nothing “​​unethical about how I was taking votes and the things I was standing on,” the Duplain Township Republican said, saying he was proud to “give voice” to issues he cared about in the Legislature and considers his lobbying a continuation of that. 

“I've never thought twice about what my next step is,” Filler said. “I just wanted to do the right thing for my constituents.”

The state's new personal financial disclosure law requires departing lawmakers to notify the state of any future employment agreements within 10 days. Filler was the first to do so, reporting he was offered the job on Jan. 1 — the same day his term ended at noon. 

Institutional knowledge

Under current Michigan law, legislators that resign abruptly can’t become lobbyists until two years later, but that doesn’t apply to legislators who leave at the end of their term, or to other officials.

Michigan also has some of the strictest term limits in the nation, which means lawmakers are more frequently in search of work after public service — including lobbying jobs.

Before 2023, lawmakers had a lifetime limit of serving six years in the House and eight years in the Senate. Voters amended the limits to 12 years combined for both chambers in 2022, but not before decades of turnover and an erosion of policymaking experience.

There is “some value” in “keeping that institutional knowledge around the legislative process, state Rep. John Fitzgerald, D-Wyoming, said in a committee hearing last week. 

Fitzgerald was one of two lawmakers who abstained by voting “pass” rather than take a position on the cooling-off period legislation in committee. He also expressed concerns the proposal might encourage former officials to skirt Michigan’s relatively loose lobbyist registration requirements.

Hall, the GOP House Speaker, has made clear he does not intend to take up public records transparency legislation passed last month by the Democratic-led Senate. But he’s pushing his own set of ethics reforms, including the revolving-door legislation he has vowed to pass out of the House. 

Other officials have proposed similar reforms before: As a candidate in 2018, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer proposed a five-year cooling-off period before lawmakers could become lobbyists. Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson have also backed various proposals. 

Landing a job as a lobbyist soon after leaving office “creates the specter of impropriety,” Nessel told lawmakers last year as they considered a one-year cooling-off period. 

The two-year period backed by Hall would not apply to people like former Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs Director Shelly Edgerton, who left the department in January 2019 and registered as a lobbyist more than two years later, in October 2021.

But it would apply to others, like former House Speaker Rick Johnson, who led the chamber’s GOP majority from 2001 through 2004 and then quickly became a lobbyist. He is now serving a multi-year federal prison sentence for accepting bribes as the chair of a marijuana licensing board.

“With individual legislators, we’re all interested in our own reputations and our own credibility,” said Rep. Mark Tisdale, R-Rochester Hills. “It just takes one or two bad actors that can taint the image of all of us.”