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.

There’s a simmering transparency crisis at the state Capitol, and the press is turning up the heat.

Late in January, the Detroit Free Press reported that high ranking members of the Michigan State Police were caught using a third party app on their state phones to automatically hide and delete public records related to personnel decisions on the force – and heaven-knows what else.

Wednesday evening, Governor Gretchen Whitmer took to the airwaves to deliver her third State of the State address. She lobbed a few talking points from the Biden administration, hyped the new President’s slogan, and talked a lot about bipartisanship.

We caught up with Lynn Afendoulis, press secretary for Speaker Wentworth, Beth DeShone, Executive Director of the Great Lakes Education Project and Tori Sachs, Executive Director of Michigan Rising Action for their reactions to Gov. Whitmer’s lackluster address. You can hear what they had to say in the latest edition of our podcast, “In the Trenches.”