Detroit News. April 20, 2024.

Editorial: Lansing’s financial disclosure rules still lack teeth

Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson are right that Michigan’s transparency requirements of elected officials are a joke. Efforts by their fellow Democrats to strengthen them fall solidly into the lame category.

Until April, Michigan was one of two states that didn’t require financial disclosure from lawmakers and other politicians.

The Democratic-controlled Legislature attempted a fix with the passage of a disclosure bill that requires the bare minimum of actual disclosure.

The toothlessness of the new law was revealed last week when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer filed her report, four days after the law took effect. The governor disclosed more than $2.3 million in investment and retirement assets, as well as ownership interest in Super Deluxe LLC, a family office to manage her personal matters, according to her lawyer.

What she didn’t make public are spousal assets, which are shared property in Michigan. At Whitmer’s insistence, the law doesn’t require disclosure of assets held by a husband or wife of an elected official. So, it is impossible to know the true amount of a politician’s household wealth or where it is invested.

Benson and Nessel testified Thursday together before the House Ethics and Oversight Committee on the need for stronger disclosure requirements. Although they don’t disclose nearly as much as the governor does.

Benson previously raised concerns specifically about “loopholes” in leaving out spousal information, and Nessel called concerns about the absence of spousal disclosures “valid.”

Nessel also argued Michigan’s weak transparency requirements are enabling public corruption of the sort that led to charges last week against former Republican House Speaker Lee Chatfield and his wife, Stephanie. The pair are accused of embezzling funds from non-profits linked to Chatfield’s office.

Democrats introduced legislation in March to tighten controls on dark money funding and shed more light on lobbyists and financial disclosure.

The bills would require nonprofit 527 and 501(c)4 organizations to register with the Secretary of State with information about the group and its key office holders made public online — although none of these requirements would take effect until 2026.

The legislation would also prevent lawmakers from becoming lobbyists within a year of the end of their legislative term, with certain exceptions. That’s weaker than the two-year pause Republicans proposed last session.

And it would seek to close a longtime loophole by requiring lawmakers to disclose gifts from lobbyists to legislative staff.

These are important measures the Legislature should pass. But they still fall short of the gold standard for transparency and accountability rules.

Specifically, bills passed last session left out requirements that lawmakers disclose information about a spouse’s employer, income and exclusively held assets.

Without including spousal assets in disclosure requirements, a back door remains wide open for influence peddling and profiting from public office.

Voters in 2022 passed a ballot measure they were told would make Michigan among the leaders in demanding transparency from its officials. So far, the Legislature has not met those expectations in adopting the enabling legislation.

It should stop cutting corners and finally adopt laws that require real reporting and accounting of all the funds elected officials and candidates can access.

___

Traverse City Record-Eagle. April 14, 2024.

Editorial: Public court files need to remain public

A new rule in state court will require records to be deemed nonpublic after they’re bound over to circuit court.

Like some kind of game of switcheroo with felony files, the records will be closed in district court on bind-over to circuit court, then closed in circuit if the case is remanded back to district.

The Michigan Supreme Court amended the rules at the behest of the State Court Administrator’s Office to restrict access to public records. This change will ostensibly create a centralized sort of “one-stop shopping” for court records, they say.

We think not.

Fundamentally, what this change really means is that district court – often called “the people’s court”– will no longer provide the people with access to the records of more serious felony cases after those cases are bound over to circuit court.

Is there some sort of contagious thinking going on that spread from the Michigan State Police, who say their refusal to release names of victims of crashes is a service to the public? Now we have the state court administrator saying this change in handling court files will make it easier for the public to obtain them.

The underlying reason for amending this particular court rule was based on the expungement package put in place several years ago. Once convictions were set aside, the court records connected to those cases were supposed to be made nonpublic. The effort to make expungement cases nonpublic led to the idea that all case filings – even ones not affected by expungement – could be centralized.

Yet these rule changes we’re identifying seem to be chip, chip, chipping away at what was once considered part of the public purview.

In response to our objection about this change, court officials can say, “On the contrary, the file is still public, we’re just moving it to a different venue.” But what they fail to see is that they are removing a key access point and adding unnecessary complexity to a system that will only serve to discourage public engagement in the process.

That’s just what our democracy doesn’t need right now. Some people are intimidated by courts, the process and protocol. Some who ask for these documents may be victims of crimes. So, when they request files at the district court, they will be told those particular records are no longer public and, if they want to see them, they will have to go elsewhere.

We won’t even try to speculate about the impact this operational change will have on clerks or the handling of the files themselves.

Justice David Viviano, who disagreed with this amendment, said he opposed it “because it impedes access to court records and imposes an unnecessary burden on court clerks and staff. The new requirements will make it more difficult to obtain court records that have always been accessible to the public up until now. This Court has a duty to ensure that court records are easily accessible by members of the public.”

“For many Michiganders,” Viviano said, “local district or municipal courts may be the easiest place to access a court record. ... I see no good reason to force individuals wishing to access information about a felony case to obtain that information from the circuit court. If the case is public and the local court has the relevant records or information sought, the public should have a right to access it at that court.”

He’s got that right: These proceedings in “the people’s court” should be accessible to the people.

Here’s another part of the court’s rule change that will add to the difficulty: If that case in circuit court is remanded back to district court, then those records in the circuit court will become nonpublic. This will only serve to complicate access to files even further and, invariably, make more work for the clerks who have to keep tabs on them.

These changes were adopted by a majority of the state Supreme Court earlier this month and they’re supposed to take effect July 2.

Is this a change that will improve court operations and make them more accessible to people?

We think not.

But those officials who approved it appeared to think not at all.

END