LANSING — Two sets of government accountability proposals have passed through the Michigan House with strong bipartisan support.
The first set of bills would prohibit lawmakers and their staff from entering into non-disclosure agreements in their official capacity.
Lawmakers typically agree to non-disclosure agreements to receive private information about Michigan’s business-attraction efforts, which sometimes involve the distribution of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.
“Legislators have themselves reported feeling pressure to sign NDAs in order to get information about projects that then they are voting on,” said Kyle Zawacki, legislative director for the ACLU of Michigan.
NDAs have drawn criticism from transparency advocates who say they obscure information from the public and create potential ethical concerns for lawmakers.
“It gets pretty difficult to actually see where the money is going because the lawmakers who are voting on these bills are prohibited from telling to the point where there’s monetary fines if they do,” said Steve Delie, director of transparency for the Mackinac Center.
Some supporters of business-attraction efforts say that the agreements are needed for companies to protect trade secrets or nonpublic information — but transparency advocates say that businesses seeking public dollars should be more open with their proposals.
“A trade secret is fairly obvious when you see it,” Delie said. “Whether or not you’re getting money from the state of Michigan, isn’t a trade secret, and that’s got to be something the public needs to be able to know, because our constitution requires it.”
The bipartisan bills passed through the House Tuesday with support from about three quarters of the body.
Another set of bills would establish a two-year waiting period before lawmakers could become lobbyists after leaving office.
Lawmakers can currently become lobbyists immediately after their term ends, and some have done so within a week of leaving office.
“Our democracy can’t thrive if the public can’t trust their elected leaders to put the interests of the people first, and allowing lawmakers to leverage their office for future financial gain as lobbyists directly undermines that trust,” said Kim Murphy-Kovalick, senior director of policy with Voters Not Politicians.
Supporters of the proposals say that without a cooldown, lawmakers could base policy decisions off of future employment opportunities.
”At the end of the day, Michigan voters want an ethical, accountable and transparent government that they can trust to work for the people, not special interests,” Murphy-Kovalick said. “And it remains to be seen if this Legislature is going to deliver that for for Michigan.”