Michigan House GOP leader on FOIA reform: ‘Don’t get your hopes up’

House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, didn’t close the door on public information request reform for the term but told reporters Thursday to not expect “fast action on the FOIA stuff from me in the House.” Photo courtesy of Mike Quillinan/Michigan House Republicans.

by Jordyn Hermani (Bridge Michigan)

LANSING — Michigan remains one of only two states that fully exempts the governor and lawmakers from public records requests, and new House leadership appears uninterested in immediately changing that.

House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, told reporters during a Thursday roundtable that expanding the state’s Freedom of Information Act is not a top priority for him as he begins the new two-year session.

“You’re not going to see fast action on the FOIA stuff from me in the House,” he said. “You’re just not.”

Hall’s comments came one day after bipartisan bills were reintroduced in the Democratic-led Senate to expand Michigan’s FOIA law — which already requires most other state and local officials to produce public records upon request — to the governor’s office and Legislature.

The same legislation passed the Senate last year with wide and bipartisan support but was not put up for a vote by then-House Speaker Joe Tate, D-Detroit, before the term ended.

Hall said he is focused on other transparency and good-government measures, including:

• Earmark reform: New House rules adopted under Hall will require lawmakers to disclose any earmarks they sponsor before votes on budget bills. Michigan lawmakers have loaded recent state budgets with billions of dollars in “enhancement grants” to support pet projects in their districts, including some controversial measures that have prompted criminal investigations.
• Cooling off: Hall said he believes in “ending this revolving door” of lawmakers who leave office and immediately become lobbyists. He noted a previous proposal for a two-year “cooling off” period.
• Lame-duck guardrails: Hall said he wants to make it harder to “just ram through unpopular votes without committee hearings in the middle of the night after an election.” He cited a previous proposal to require two-third majority support to pass bills in a lame-duck session.

“I think those are bigger issues than FOIA, because those are issues about billions of dollars of your tax dollars — the public,” Hall said, later adding: “I’m actually going to do these things.”

As for the public records legislation, Sens. Jeremy Moss and Ed McBroom — a Democrat and Republican, respectively — have been working on their bills for a decade, including earlier versions that Hall personally voted for in 2021 and 2022.

“For 10 years, these guys have come up with a sales pitch to you in the media that they’re going to do this, and you guys have bought it for 10 years,” Hall said.

“I would just encourage you guys don’t get your hopes up too much, OK? They’re all politicians.”

Hall spokesperson Greg Manz later clarified in a statement that Hall was not referring to Moss and McBroom, but rather politicians in general.

“Speaker Hall gives a lot of credit to the sponsors of FOIA reforms for making an honest effort — it’s the other Lansing politicians who tend to embrace it and declare it definitively will get done, simply for political cover, that are the problem,” Manz said.

During Thursday’s roundtable, Hall accused the media of “lobbying” for the public records legislation, but Senate sponsors have championed their bills as a means for the general public to learn more about how their government works.

“Michiganders deserve honest, ethical and transparent representation,” Moss, one of the sponsoring lawmakers, said Wednesday on social media after reintroducing the legislation. “Let’s finally get this done.”

Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat who has advocated for government transparency legislation, said earlier this week she thinks the best hope for reform may be a citizen-led ballot initiative.

This article is being republished through a syndication agreement with Bridge Michigan. Bridge Michigan is Michigan’s largest nonprofit news service and one of the nation’s leading and largest nonprofit civic news providers. Their coverage is nonpartisan, fact-based, and data-driven. Find them online at https://www.bridgemi.com/.

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by Sara Swanson

Sara Swanson is an editor, writer and founder of the Manchester Mirror.