LANSING, MI – For years, only two states have had no financial disclosure requirements whatsoever: Idaho, a small state with a part-time, poorly paid legislature, and Michigan.
Finally, following scandal after scandal, Michigan enacted some financial disclosure requirements earlier this month — but before you count that as a Thankgiving present, know they did so only because they were forced to by a new state constitutional amendment.
The new requirements are, most critics conceded, better than nothing. But some lawmakers in both parties feel the way State Sen. Ruth Johnson does:
“We intentionally left loopholes the size of Texas for current and future lawmakers and state officials to exploit,” Johnson, a former Michigan secretary of state, told the online publication Bridge. She went on to call the bills a “snow job” meant to “deceive the voters of Michigan that they are actually going to get some accountability from state government.”
For years, however, members of Johnson’s Republican Party blocked any attempt to enact any disclosure or ethics rules –even though the national Center for Public Integrity has ranked Michigan worst of all the states in terms of government accountability.
Former Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey said that if lawmakers were subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) rules, it would prevent them from talking with each other.
But two scandals this year alone have highlighted the need for accountability. Former Speaker of the House Lee Chatfield (R-Levering) has been under investigation for months for alleged bribery, campaign finance violations and embezzling; allegations that came to light when his sister-in-law accused him of repeatedly sexually assaulting her beginning when she was 15 or 16.
And another former speaker, Rick Johnson (no relation to Ruth) began serving a 55-month federal prison term for taking dozens of bribes from firms who wanted to start medical marijuana businesses; the bribes included the services of a high-priced prostitute provided by a Lamborghini-driving lobbyist.
“I am a corrupt politician,” he admitted in court. What’s still unclear is whether money was paid to state officials who got him the appointment as chair of the marijuana licensing board.
Despite such embarrassment, there still might not be any ethics laws if it hadn’t been for a proposal adopted overwhelmingly by voters last year. The proposal, which also changed term limits, required that the state enact financial disclosure laws by Dec. 31, 2023, and specified what they should cover.
That included sources of all the lawmakers’ income, assets, positions held and gifts, travel expenses and reimbursements from lobbyists.
The lawmakers had a powerful incentive to meet the deadline. Had they failed, the amendment specified that “any Michigan resident could sue the legislature and the governor in the Michigan Supreme Court to enforce those requirements.”
Nobody wanted that. But getting a package of bills a majority of the lawmakers would support and the governor would sign wasn’t easy. Early on, it was thought that the lawmakers might adopt the same financial disclosure requirements members of Congress have.
That didn’t fly. What was passed was vastly weaker. There was also discussion about whether spousal income and connections also should be subject to disclosure; if a lawmaker is married to someone who does business with the state, wouldn’t that be relevant? Initially, that wasn’t in the package, but two last-minute amendments at least require disclosure if the spouse is a registered vendor with the state, or has a majority in a company which is.
Finally, a package of bills made it through the state senate almost unanimously. But members of the state house battled into the wee hours of November 9, before passing the main bill, 59-49.
There was, for once, both bipartisan support, and opposition. Though Democrats were the driving force, 11 of them voted no, and 14 Republicans voted yes. Slight differences between the bills still had to be ironed out, but nobody doubted that they would be.
Still, there was a lot of dissatisfaction, some of it over the extremely weak penalties for violating the rules: A maximum of $1,000 for filing a report late, and no more than $2,000 for filing an inaccurate or incomplete report. These would be civil, not criminal penalties, and no way of enforcing the rules was prescribed.
Contrast that with the ethics rules governing Congress and congressional candidates: They can be fined $50,000 and get up to five years in prison for lying on their disclosure forms.
After both houses passed the bills, some legislators said they would come back next year and further improve them. But State Rep. Jason Morgan, (D-Ann Arbor) a 34-year-old freshman, sounded a more realistic note. “I’ve been told that anytime someone in Lansing tells you they are going to come back and revisit something, it means they absolutely will not revisit it,” he told the Gongwer news service.
He added, “I would love to be wrong.”
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(A version of this column appeared in the Toledo Blade)
