This column originally appeared in The Detroit News.

She's spending your money to fund a cover-up — or two.  

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was rocked this month by the revelation she's spent hundreds of thousands of tax dollars on hush-money deals with high-ranking public officials whose jobs had them at the center of her administration's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Whitmer last week doubled down, issuing an executive directive making hush-money secrecy pacts not an opaque outlier, but the administration’s formal practice.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Top Ten Transparency FAILS, Part 2

Welcome back! Without further ado, here are Gov. Whitmer’s Top Five Transparency Fails!

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Top Ten Transparency FAILS, Part 1

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Gov. Whitmer Sticks Her Transparency Pledge Where the Sun Doesn’t Shine

Sunshine Week is an opportunity to celebrate open and transparent government. Knowing what is going on in our government is critical for helping the citizens hold their elected officials accountable.

It’s been a brutal year.

COVID-19 has carved a deadly path across the globe. Since the first two cases were identified in Michigan just over one year ago, thousands of our friends, family members, colleagues and neighbors have lost their lives to the virus.

Secret deals.

Hush money.

Six-figure paydays to buy the silence of failed senior administration officials.

And all on taxpayers’ dime.

Governor Whitmer made headlines last weekend declaring a propane energy emergency in the state of Michigan because of low temperatures that caused real energy problems in a lot of other states.

The problem with her order, though, is that according to the state’s propane advocates, there’s no crisis in Michigan. We have all the propane we need, and customers who use it to heat their homes or run their equipment at work have plenty of access to it, too.

Last June, my friends at the Honest Elections Project and I took Jocelyn Benson to court and this week we held her accountable.

Our federal lawsuit sought to force the Secretary of State to comply with the National Voter Registration Act.

This column originally appeared in The Detroit News.

“A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps both.” – James Madison, 1822.

One wonders what the father of our Constitution would have said reading Michigan newspaper reports about new evidence that high-ranking state employees were caught using technology that doesn’t merely withhold public records but is designed specifically to destroy them.

They’re the kind of revelations that should worry every Michigan resident and produce broad and meaningful reform from lawmakers and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

The bombshell exploded late Thursday.

An aide to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo admitted to lawmakers on a video conference call that the state covered up the number of nursing home deaths from COVID-19 in order to avoid prosecution over their disastrous policy.