Bills to expand FOIA to Michigan Legislature, governor’s office clear Senate panel

Legislation to expand Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act to include both the governor’s office and state Legislature is advancing, after members of the Senate Oversight Committee voted Wednesday to report bills to the full Senate floor for consideration.

Senate Bills 669 and 670 would add both the Legislature and the governor’s office to Michigan’s existing FOIA laws, which allow individuals to request records and other information from government organizations to gain a better understanding of how they’re operating. The bills were introduced by Sens. Jeremy Moss, D-Southfield, and Ed McBroom, R-Waucedah Township, respectively.

In February, the Senate Oversight Committee heard testimony on the bills for the first time. While speakers mostly applauded the bills, there were concerns over some exemptions to open records requests that are currently baked into them, like shielding the communications in the governor’s office for issuing pardons and criminal reprieves, and exemptions for communications between constituents and employees of the governor’s office or Legislature.

Moss and McBroom said after the initial hearing, they worked with advocates to tweak the bills, leading to a pair of substitute bills being adopted and reported Wednesday.

Under the substitute bills, communications between lawmakers and their own constituents remain exempt from open records requests, but communications between lawmakers and residents who don’t reside in their districts are no longer considered exempt.

“We did feel that this was the best route to capture the sensitivity around the communication that somebody engages with their lawmaker on,” Moss said.

Communications between lawmakers and an individual who is required to register as a lobbyist, is a public employee or is appointed to a public board would not be exempt, even if the individual lives in the lawmaker’s district, under the proposed legislation.

Additionally, Moss said the substitute bills now place the burden of explaining why a FOIA request is denied on the FOIA coordinator of the responding agency — the initial draft placed the burden of proving why certain records are of public interest on the individual submitting the FOIA request.

Exemptions for records possessed by majority and minority caucuses in the Legislature have also been peeled back slightly. Under the substitute bills, exemptions are limited to advice, opinions or recommendations about public policy or district work.

Bill sponsors said the substitutes adopted Wednesday are aimed at addressing some of the concerns transparency advocates presented at the initial hearing in February, among them the amount of discretion FOIA coordinators would have when responding to public records requests.

“I think that we have really worked very hard to create a system that’s as objective as possible,” McBroom said. “We’ve tried to create something that can just be more objectively determined. Does this person live in your district? Are they registered lobbyists or not? Is this personal communication? Those are just mostly very objective, easy-to-determine standards.”

Moss and McBroom were the only speakers to testify Wednesday. The committee voted 5-0 to send the substitute bills to the full Senate, with one member, Sen. Jonathan Lindsey, R-Coldwater, passing on both votes.

Michigan has long held a reputation for being one of the worst-ranking states when it comes to government transparency. In 2014, the Free Press reported Michigan was one of only two states in which both the governor and state lawmakers have blanket exemptions from public record laws, and despite efforts from some lawmakers to change that, no legislative expansions of government transparency have taken place in the decade since.

But longtime backers of shedding more sunlight on the governor’s office and Legislature in Michigan are hopeful the current effort to expand open record laws is successful.

“I think this is a historic moment at least for the Senate, because it has been the Senate who has been the block of making this law for the last couple of sessions,” said Sen. Sam Singh, D-East Lansing, who chairs the Oversight Committee. Singh also noted that March 11-15 is the so-called “Sunshine Week,” which aims to educate the public about government transparency and warn about issues arising from excessive secrecy for government operations.

Keeping with that theme, Michigan House Democrats were expected to unveil their own set of transparency legislation Wednesday afternoon — lawmakers had called a press conference to discuss a package of bills called the Bringing Reforms for Integrity, Transparency and Ethics, or BRITE Act, later in the day.

Contact Arpan Lobo: alobo@freepress.com. Follow him on X (Twitter) @arpanlobo. Contact Clara Hendrickson: chendrickson@freepress.com or 313-296-5743. Follow her on X, @clarajanehen.

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