Michigan's FOIA law exemptions one of many transparency challenges in the state
Here's a round-up:
Michigan's public records law stands out as a national outlier for exempting the governor and state lawmakers from its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Other public bodies in Michigan must comply with FOIA, from local law enforcement agencies to big state departments. Journalists and other government watchdogs routinely use FOIA requests to obtain records to investigate potential wrongdoing. For years, transparency advocates have called on Michigan lawmakers to take action to expand FOIA.
The Michigan Senate passed legislation in January to expand FOIA to the governor and state Legislature. House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, called it a "watered down" FOIA bill during a Jan. 30 press conference. "So we're not going to pass that bill," he said. Instead, Hall has pushed for his own transparency plan which proposes several measures such as barring politicians from working as lobbyists immediately after leaving office. But Hall's plan does not propose expanding Michigan's FOIA law.
Michigan voters elect the justices for the Michigan Supreme Court. The Michigan Constitution requires justices to be chosen in a nonpartisan election. Before Michigan Supreme Court candidates land on the general election ballot, political parties nominate their picks at a convention. Michigan's political parties also nominate candidates for other offices at political conventions, including Secretary of State, Attorney General and university boards.
But candidates to serve on the Michigan Supreme Court are the only ones chosen by loyal partisans whose names appear in the nonpartisan section of the ballot. That can leave voters unfamiliar with the convention selections without information about the party affiliation of Michigan Supreme Court candidates.
Michigan's system for electing justices is unique. In some states, judges seeking election to higher courts run with party labels during their first bid but then seek additional terms in a yes/no retention election while some states have nonpartisan primary and general elections, according to William Raftery, Senior Analyst at the National Center for State Courts. Ohio recently shifted its process to require candidates to serve on the Ohio Supreme Court selected in a partisan primary to also appear on the general election ballot with their party label.
The Michigan Supreme Court received considerable pushback to a proposal that would require local judges to disclose additional financial assets. While judges are required to release some financial information in annual reports, the details are sparse, coming far short of comparable disclosures from federal lawmakers or other elected officials.
The proposed change as introduced to Michigan's Code of Judicial Conduct garnered opposition from several large groups, including the Michigan Judges Association and Michigan District Judges Association. Most of the criticism centered on privacy and safety, suggesting a requirement to disclose properties could imperil judges.
National advocacy organization Fix the Court applauded the offered changes, saying thousands of federal officials and judges in more than two dozen states are already subject to comparable disclosure requirements.
Almost every speaker opposed multiple components of the changes during a Wednesday hearing before the high court on the proposal. The court took no action, but could move to change the proposal again.
Finding out which Michigan attorneys face allegations of misconduct and possible disciplinary action requires a bit of a lift. The Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission investigates potential wrongdoing in a confidential process meant to protect lawyers from frivolous accusations. But once the commission authorizes the Grievance Administrator to file a formal complaint against a lawyer with the Attorney Discipline Board, the complaint and the rest of the disciplinary process becomes public.
Anyone can email or call the Attorney Discipline Board for the complaint and other public pleadings in the case, said the board's Deputy Director John Burgess in an email. Case documents aren't available on the board's website except for orders and notices of discipline and opinions. Asked how someone would know to reach out to the board to seek a complaint filed against an attorney that emerges from a confidential process, Burgess responded, "At this time, that is a question with no particularly great answer." He recommended reaching out to the Attorney Grievance Commission with a standing request to receive a notice of any complaint filed against a specific attorney, saying if the board provides notice of a complaint filed without first receiving a request it "could create the appearance of bias."
Hearings in disciplinary proceedings are public, but there is no public calendar. Burgess said notices of any hearings can be requested.
Michigan Politics: Michigan House approves Republican road funding package
At their best, Michigan's 15 public universities are centers of enlightenment, though not necessarily transparency.
They have fought and won in courts to shield from public view some of their actions.
When the Free Press sued the University of Michigan, arguing all its board meetings should be public, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the school.
"The Constitution permits defendant to hold informal meetings in private; defendant is only required to hold its formal meetings in public," the 2016 ruling said, noting that the schools have broad discretion to decide formal versus informal.
The Michigan Supreme Court let the decision stand by declining to hear an appeal on it.
"It's almost a joke," said Free Press legal counsel Herschel Fink, who litigated the case. "You could have a pro-forma meeting and basically take care of all the business in secret."
The surest way to open the process would be to ask Michigan voters to approve a constitutional amendment requiring the meetings be public, Fink said.
Contact Clara Hendrickson at chendrickson@freepress.com or 313-296-5743. Reach Dave Boucher at dboucher@freepress.com and on X @Dave_Boucher1. Contact John Wisely: jwisely@freepress.com. On X: @jwisely
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan transparency challenges from FOIA and beyond
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Advocates, Gov. Tony Evers and Republican lawmakers have conflicting views about the Department of Corrections funding in the 2025-27 state budget. (Photo by) For criminal justice advocates in Wisconsin, the new state budget leaves much to be desired. Although the $111 billion two-year budget signed by Gov. Tony Evers earlier this month will help eventually close the beleaguered Lincoln Hills juvenile prison, some feel that it missed opportunities to reform the state's justice system. 'Wisconsin's elected officials, including Gov. Evers and state legislators, have once again failed to take meaningful action to overhaul the state's broken and inhumane carceral system,' Mark Rice, statewide coordinator for WISDOM's Transformative Justice Campaign, wrote in a statement released July 11. 'The recently passed state budget ignores the deep harm caused by mass incarceration and falls far short of what is needed to address the humanitarian crisis unfolding inside Wisconsin's prisons.' Evers' original budget proposal released in February contained a number of proposals that were removed or reduced by the Legislature's Republican-led Joint Finance Committee, including $8.9 million to support alternatives to revocation. Another pitch by Evers for $4 million to fund community reentry centers was cut in half by Joint Finance. His proposed $3.19 million in supportive housing service beds for people under DOC supervision was removed. Over $1 million in funding for six positions on the DOC's Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance team was also removed by JFC. Evers proposed a total increase of $519 million to the Department of Corrections budget over the next two years. The final budget deal instead increased the DOC budget by $461 million over the two-year period. The budget's capital projects plan, passed by the Legislature and signed by Evers, allocated $225 million to the Department of Corrections (DOC), as well as another $15 million towards construction planning for facilities, with the goal of closing the Green Bay Correctional Institution by 2029. Evers used his partial veto to strike the 2029 deadline for closing Green Bay. 'We need more compromise on that,' said Evers, who added that he supports closing the prison, one of Wisconsin's oldest, but called the timeline unrealistic: 'Saying we're going to do Green Bay by '29 doesn't mean a damn thing.' In his veto message, Evers said that he objected to the Legislature 'assigning a date' to close the Green Bay prison 'while providing virtually no real, meaningful, or concrete plan to do so.' 'I support closing Green Bay Correctional Institution,' Evers wrote. 'Indeed, my administration spent years working on a comprehensive corrections reform plan to be able to close Green Bay Correctional Institution quickly, safely, and cost efficiently, which was included in the biennial budget I introduced months ago. I proposed a 'domino' series of facility changes, improvements, and modernization efforts across Wisconsin's correctional institutions while improving public safety by expanding workforce training opportunities to reduce the likelihood that people might reoffend after they are released. Under that plan, Green Bay Correctional Institution would be closed in 2029. Instead, the Legislature sent this budget with the same deadline and no plan of which to speak.' Lincoln Hills, Wisconsin's notoriously troubled juvenile prison, which still houses 79 boys according to the DOC's most recent population report, blew years past its own closure deadline. Now, the budget provides $130.7 million to build a new Type 1 juvenile facility in Dane County to help facilitate the closure of Lincoln Hills. Plans for a second Type 1 facility in Milwaukee County ran into roadblocks from local resistance and political disagreements in the Capitol, though the facility's completion is still planned. Green Bay's prison was originally built in 1898. Plaques embedded in its outer wall commemorate that the wall was 'erected by inmates' in 1921. Over 1,100 people are incarcerated in the prison, which is designed to hold only 749, according to the DOC's most recent weekly population report. In late June, prison reform advocates from JOSHUA, a local affiliate of WISDOM, held a monthly vigil and prayer service outside the prison, where people are held in 'disciplinary separation' for the longest periods in any of DOC's adult facilities. Protesters included people whose loved ones have died inside the prison, some by suicide due to a lack of mental health support. In late August, 19-year-old Michah Laureano died in the prison after he was attacked by his cell mate. Although the budget aims to close Green Bay, how that will be accomplished remains hazy. Rice wrote that the budget 'includes no plan' to close the prison, 'despite overwhelming evidence that the facility is beyond repair.' Instead, Rice wrote in a statement that 'some legislators continue to push for more studies and planning tactics that will only delay justice while people continue to suffer and die behind bars. This is unacceptable.' That sentiment was echoed by the Ladies of SCI, an advocacy group formed by women with loved ones at the Stanley Correctional Institution. Although the group appreciated that closing Green Bay was part of the budget discussion, 'we also agree that does not mean much without funding an actual plan,' the group wrote in an email to Wisconsin Examiner. 'The [Joint Finance Committee] committed that the plan presented by [DOC] Secretary [Jared] Hoy's team in the Governor's initial budget was 'just an idea' and yet, the JFC also just put an 'idea' in the budget. Yes, they put in dollars for a plan to be developed, but this has already been done several times over.' Studies for closing Green Bay, Waupun, and other old and blighted facilities have been recommended as far back as 1965, Ladies of SCI wrote in the statement. 'Here we are, 60 years later, STILL discussing it. The most recent study was done in 2020 and called out almost $1 billion in projects to increase capacity across our facilities to just handle that population level…We are well above that population level today.' The group asks, 'Is $15 million actually enough to finally get tangible actions to deal with our Corrections crisis? We'd like to know what the magic combination of dollars and opinions are needed to finally address issues that have been identified over and over.' Ladies of SCI said 'setting aside money for yet another study and plan development is rinse and repeat of history…The bottom line is our state's prison population is too big for what we currently have.' Rice concurred, writing in his own statement that prisons like Green Bay, Waupun (the state's oldest prison where multiple deaths have occurred in recent years), and the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility (MSDF) 'are notorious for inhumane conditions and should have been shut down years ago.' Rice added that 'there is no justification for continuing to pour hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into maintaining or expanding a failed prison system.' Instead, he believes that the state should commit to reducing the prison population by expanding treatment alternatives to incarceration, commuting 'excessive and unjust sentences,' granting 'fair access to parole and early release,' and stopping the practice of locking people up for 'technical or convictionless revocations.' When Evers wrote his message vetoing the deadline for closing Green Bay, there were 362 people working at the prison and more than 1,100 incarcerated adults. 'As of this writing, Wisconsin has the capacity to house 17,638 individuals at its correctional institutions but there are 23,275 people living in [DOC] institutions across Wisconsin;' Evers wrote, 'the Legislature provides no steps whatsoever to stabilize the state's skyrocketing prison population.' Referring to the saga of Lincoln Hills, Evers added, 'Wisconsin already has about a decade's worth of painful experience learning how well it works in practice to set unrealistic, artificial timelines and due dates for closing prison facilities without a complete and thorough plan for implementation. It would be foolish and dangerous to attempt to take a similar approach with a maximum-security institution like Green Bay Correctional Institution.' Just over one-third of the 2,727 new prison admissions statewide between January and April were people sent back to prison for issues like violating the rules of community supervision, and without a new crime committed or sentence issued, according to the DOC's dashboard. Over the same period of time, there were more than 63,435 people on community supervision, probation, or parole. Sean Wilson, senior director of organizing and partnerships at criticized the cuts to proposals to expand alternatives to incarceration, 'clean-slate' legislation and expungement reforms that were left out of the final budget deal. 'I think that there continues to be a lack of re-entry investments, which should be pretty high on the list,' Wilson told Wisconsin Examiner. For years, criminal justice advocates have pushed for support for housing, access to mental health care and jobs, 'those things were not included in the budget.' With less than 3,000 people housed between Green Bay, Waupun, and MSDF, Rice feels that 'these prisons could be emptied and closed within months' and that 'doing so would not only alleviate human suffering but it would also free up critical resources' which 'must be reinvested in the communities most harmed by incarceration.' From providing living-wage jobs and stable housing to creating educational opportunities and violence prevention, Rice wrote in his statement, 'that is how we build true public safety.' The path forward is clear: Care, not cages. Communities, not prisons. – Mark Rice, statewide coordinator for WISDOM's Transformative Justice Campaign Wilson declared that 'the biggest elephant in the room' was that 'there's no real movement on closing outdated prisons or reducing the DOC's footprint.' He stressed that 'we are beyond design capacity…with 5,000 additional bodies [beyond the number] this system was designed for.' Without a concrete roadmap and deadline, he says the budget commitment to closing the Green Bay prison doesn't mean much. Over 20 years ago, Wilson spent time in the Green Bay prison, which he remembers as 'a dilapidated hellhole…It was a trauma pressure cooker in my opinion.' 'But the fact that they're talking about just studying it, that really made me livid as someone who spent time in that facility, and is currently in communication with many individuals who are still housed there today,' he added. Wilson said he doesn't see focused funding to reduce racial disparities in incarceration, nor is there funding to support people who have been directly impacted by the criminal justice system and are trying to lead a reform effort. 'I think if you look at the movement at large for the last 20 years, it's been led by directly impacted leadership,' said Wilson. 'Because we believe in the words of Glenn Martin that those closest to the problem are closest to the solution.' People with personal experience need to be brought to the table to offer both critiques and solutions, he said. Ladies of SCI called the building plans in the budget 'just one of the steps our lawmakers must take to address things,' and pointed to separate legislation introduced by Republican Senator Andre Jacque (R-DePere) and Rep. Paul Tittl (R-Manitowoc), which the group believed would have put needed investments into rehabilitation 'instead of warehousing people in our crumbling facilities.' Evers said the budget was an exercise of compromise and cooperation. 'We need to work together,' he said after signing the budget less than an hour after the Assembly passed it. 'Compare that to what's going on in Washington, D.C., and it's significantly different, so I'm very proud to sign it,' Evers said of the bipartisan compromise. In order to retain $1 billion per year in federal Medicaid matching funds, legislators on both sides of the aisle worked to finalize the bill before the federal reconciliation bill was signed by President Donald Trump. Another one of Evers' partial vetoes stirred discussion around juvenile incarceration. The Senate version of the budget specified that state juvenile correctional facilities would operate at a rate of $912,000 in 2025-26 per kid, per year, before increasing to over $1 million per kid per year for 2026-27. Evers' partial vetoes lowered the rates to $182,865 per kid in 2025-26, and $275,670 per kid in the following years. Over the last decade the cost of housing for each young person in youth corrections in Wisconsin has quadrupled from $303 per day in 2014 to $1,268 per day in 2024, largely due to a lower population of incarcerated youth and higher staffing needs. In his veto message, Evers objected to the Legislature's plan to continue expanding the costs of the existing youth incarceration system during a time of 'uncertainty,' and delays in closing youth prisons. Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) criticized Evers for using a veto to cut housing expenditures for juvenile offenders. 'Evers' veto of this provision is unsustainable and he knows it,' said Wanggaard. 'The statutory daily rate is not a number that we come up with out of thin air. It's simple math – the total cost to operate our juvenile facilities divided by the average population.' Wanggaard added that 'up until now, a county sending a juvenile to a state facility paid for those costs…Governor Evers just decided unilaterally to turn it on its head and have the state pick up the vast majority of costs. It flips the entire funding of juvenile corrections without debate or discussion. It's irresponsible.' Wanggaard also said that Evers' refusal to utilize the expansion of the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center to house more youth offenders is driving costs higher. Children can only be placed in Mendota when it's clinically appropriate, however. The facility was never intended to replace Lincoln Hills, or augment bed space for incarcerated kids. In his veto message, Evers explained why he shifted the cost burden from local communities to the state, writing that he objected 'to establishing a daily rate that is unaffordable to counties.' He continued that, 'I have heard loud and clear from counties that the current daily rate is burdensome and will detrimentally impact public safety. Unbelievably, despite that clear message from the counties, the Legislature has chosen to increase that rate by over $1,000 per day. This increase and funding model is untenable, and counties have expressed that this unaffordable increase will have serious and detrimental effects on other county services.' Evers urged the Legislature to 'revisit this issue in separate legislation and appropriate those additional GPR funds to the department.' Criminal justice advocates around the state say viable solutions must go beyond incarceration. Lincoln Hills continues to be under a court-ordered monitor due to a successful lawsuit that brought attention to the harms done to both incarcerated youth and reports of abuse within the facility. Waupun's prison has yet to recover from a string of deaths which ultimately led to charges against the prison's warden and several staff. Green Bay is also notorious for inhumane conditions and deaths behind bars. 'We don't need more studies, we need action,' said Wilson. When he was incarcerated at Green Bay between the years 2000 and 2005, he added, 'I watched people get battered by each other. I saw individuals get beaten by staff. I see the paint peeling, the walls are sweating. The prison cells are outdated. You're talking about a facility that was built in the 1800's…And you're putting people in this facility in 2025 and you are expecting them to come home sane. You are expecting them to navigate this space in a rational way. You expect them to interact with one another in a humane way when you are housing them, or caging them, as if they were animals. Wisconsin should stop wasting taxpayer money by keeping people in cages that should've been shuttered decades ago!' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Solve the daily Crossword
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Whatever Evers decides, Wisconsin is heading into a high-stakes battle for democracy
No Kings Day protest march viewed from the Wisconsin State Capitol | Photo by Gregory Conniff for Wisconsin Examiner Early campaign reports this week goosed speculation that Gov. Tony Evers might not run for a third term. Evers, who hasn't declared his intentions, has only raised $757,214 this year and has $2 million in the bank, compared with the $5 million he raised during the same period in 2021, before his successful bid for a second term. Some progressives, most vocally Dan Shafer, creator of The Recombubulation Area blog, have been calling on Evers to step aside. Traumatized by former President Joe Biden's fumbling 2024 campaign, Shafer says Evers, who is 73 (a decade younger than Biden) should not make the mistake of hanging around too long and instead should 'pass the torch.' 'This is not ultimately an argument about ideological differences or policy disagreements,' Shafer writes. For him, it's about age. It's about the Biden trauma. And it's about the problem Democrats at both the state and national level seem to have nurturing the next generation of leaders. For some progressives, it's also about ideology and policy disagreements. Advocates for child care, public schools, criminal justice reform and protecting health care access were furious that Evers didn't drive a harder bargain with Republicans in the recently completed state budget deal. Still, if Evers announces his retirement, a large, non-MAGA portion of Wisconsin will experience a moment of fear. In our closely divided purple state, there is a real possibility a Republican could win the governor's office, just as new, fairer maps are finally giving Democrats a chance to compete for power in the state Legislature. The Republicans who have declared so far are wrapping themselves in the MAGA flag. Evers is popular across the state and has shown he can win. Devin Remiker, the state Democratic party chair, has said he is 'praying' Evers will run again. U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters recently that he couldn't think of a better governor for Wisconsin than Evers. If Evers doesn't run, Attorney General Josh Kaul, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, state Sen. Kelda Roys and Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski are all likely Democratic candidates. 'There's plenty of people on the bench who would love to be governor,' Pocan said. '… that's not a concern. It's really, I want the best person to be governor, and I think the best person who could be governor on the Democratic side is Tony Evers.' Pocan calls Evers a 'responsible adult' in contrast to Republicans who are following President Donald Trump off a cliff, slashing health care and food aid and driving up prices and deficits, making life a lot worse for a lot of people, including a projected 276,000 in Wisconsin who will lose health insurance and 49,000 who will lose food assistance under the federal mega bill. There is an argument that Evers — 'the most quintessentially Wisconsin politician I've ever seen,' as Pocan put it — accomplished what most Wisconsin voters wanted him to do in the budget process, put politics aside and get the best deal he could for state residents. Working across the aisle to achieve shared goals with the other party — including a last-minute maneuver that mitigates the disastrous Medicaid cuts Trump and congressional Republicans pushed through, drawing down $1 billion per year in federal funds for Wisconsin, was, as Evers himself pointed out, 'significantly different' from the dynamic in Washington. 'How about that, compromise?' Evers said Wisconsin voters told him, happily, when they heard about the deal. If the definition of compromise is a bargain that makes everyone unhappy, Democrats and progressives are clearly the more unhappy parties to this bargain. Despite the glow of productive bipartisanship when the deal was struck, the details — and how the deal was done — are beginning to grate on some of Evers' biggest former backers. Big majorities of Republican legislators voted for the deal in both chambers. Five out of 15 Senate Democrats joined them, and there were only seven yes votes out of 45 Democrats in the state Assembly, where Speaker Robin Vos, who helped craft the budget, made it clear he didn't need or want Democratic votes. Arguably, the Democrats who gave impassioned floor speeches denouncing the budget have been in the minority in the Legislature for so long they never have to think about making the kinds of compromises involved in governing a divided state. If you look at it that way, it seems unfair of them to react angrily to Evers, a decent man who shares their goals and has worked diligently to accomplish what he can in the face of nasty opposition. Apart from Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein, who joined the budget negotiations behind closed doors after it became clear Republicans were going to need some Democratic votes in the Senate, Democrats were largely shut out of the whole process. And that's the real problem with the way Evers governs, according to Robert Kraig of Citizen Action. By not involving legislative Democrats from the beginning, he disempowered not just those individual legislators but their constituents, giving up the pressure he could have brought to bear on Republicans if he leveraged citizen outrage and demands for action on broadly popular priorities — funding public schools, expanding Medicaid, keeping child care centers open, and the whole list of progressive policies in Evers' original budget proposal. Instead, Evers was the kind of adult in the room who sends everyone else out when it's time to make a decision. This governing style, Kraig argues, is badly out of step with the political moment. As an increasingly dangerous, destructive administration sends masked agents to grab people off the street and throw them in detention centers or deport them without due process, liquidates safety net programs and deliberately destroys civil society, it's going to take a massive, popular movement to fight back. Maybe Shafer is right that a younger, dynamic Democratic candidate could emerge as a leader of that movement. Maybe the Democratic Party needs to stop praying for likeable, bipartisan father figures to deliver victory and instead open the doors to the somewhat chaotic, populist backlash that is brewing against the oligarchic, authoritarian kleptocracy led by Trump. It's a big risk. But we are in very risky times. Democrats, and the public at large, have not yet figured out how to defend against the unprecedented maliciousness of our current federal government and the MAGAfied Republican party. The whole idea of bipartisanship seems outdated in a world where one side is seeking to tear up the social contract, the Constitution, due process, the justice system, fair elections, and the most basic, longstanding protections against poverty, hunger and disease. These are the same conditions that gave rise to the Progressive Era. Fighting Bob LaFollette fought the leaders of his own party and founded a nationwide movement to wrest control of government from the wealthy timber barons and railroad monopolies who, through corrupt, captive politicians, fought to control all the resources of our state and nation. Now those same powerful interests are fighting to claw back everything, to destroy the reforms of the early 20th century protecting workers, the environment, and the public sphere. They are smashing public institutions and flouting legal constraints. Democrats need to make the case to the public that they will fight back. And they need the public to rise up behind them to help them do it. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
