Six years ago, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ran for office on the promise that she would bring transparency and accountability to Michigan’s government. Instead, she has spent her days ensuring the public is completely disconnected from it. It wasn’t enough the state ranks near dead last nationally regarding government openness. Democrats rubberstamped their ability to shroud the government with even more secrecy in their $83 billion state budget for 2025.

In true political operative fashion, Democrats pushed the budget through around 5 a.m., when most Michiganians were home sleeping. That same budget removes severance pay reporting requirements from 18 state departments. This means that if the governor wants to fire the director of an agency, she can pay them an undisclosed sum of taxpayer dollars without having to let the public in on the details.

In 2021, reporting revealed that three separate severance packages totaling $253,000 were paid to high-level employees. Former Unemployment Insurance Agency director Steve Gray received $85,872, former deputy state health director Sarah Etsy was paid around $11,600, and former state health director Robert Gordon was paid $155,506.

Whitmer tried covering up these payments when it was still mandated that she had to report them.

This isn’t all to say that Republicans are perfect. Michigan had Republican leadership who could have adopted transparency measures. While past administrations may have made incremental steps in the right direction, these leaders could’ve done more. However, the key difference is that Republicans were moving forward, albeit slowly. Democratic leadership couldn’t help but get rid of anything that would allow the public to hold them accountable. Not even the baby steps of progress from past Republican administrations were safe.

It wasn’t just severance pay reporting measures. In this budget, they got rid of rules requiring agencies track key performance metrics and hold those metrics on a publicly accessible website.

The public expects better. Unfortunately, after six years of secrecy, this is exactly what the public has come to expect from Whitmer. Among all her other government openness promises, she’s also failed to expand the Freedom of Information Act to the governor’s office and the Legislature.

This legislative term has been a transparency nightmare. Democratic leadership rejected Republican efforts to include clawback requirements for failed corporate welfare projects. The House Ethics and Oversight Committee hasn’t voted on a single piece of legislation this session. The committee has had only two substantive meetings in more than 500 hundred days, while other committees meet and pass relevant legislation on a weekly basis.

Don’t let Democrats tell you transparency is now a priority. It never was.