Thanks for joining us with Republican State Senator Ed McBroom.

We'll be talking about financial disclosure, which is our lead story, along with the problems with MSU on the Hill.

Our panel this week, Chad Livengood, Clara Hendrickson and Lauren Gibbons sit in with us as we get the inside out.

Off the record.

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And now this edition of Off the Record with Tim Skubick.

Thank you very much.

Welcome to Studio C. On this busy week in our town, the governor has two political hot potato, so she's juggling one in her own legislative backyard and the other one on the MSU campus.

Let's take a look.

Michigan voters adopted Proposal one last November, ordering the Michigan legislature to force politicians to disclose the sources of their income.

Since 2005, Democratic Senator Moss and Republican Senator McBroom have been trying to do just that, but have consistently failed.

But today, for the first time in the Senate, there was a committee debate on financial disclosure.

And Senator Moss was very upbeat about replacing the old system of relying on lawmakers to self disclose their finances.

This is objectively a huge step forward compared to the system that does not hold our elected officials accountable.

But not everybody in the room was overjoyed.

The legislation mandates that everyone from the governor on down through the House and Senate must disclose all sources of income over $1,000, along with their assets and debts and positions they may hold with other employers.

And while the proposed law orders the spouses to report their occupation, that's it.

There is no disclosure of their income, nor the incomes of other family members.

Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson says that omission makes the disclosure in this law relatively ineffective.

And this former lawmaker was even more blunt as it relates to what he thought the voters wanted.

You are making a hole in this legislation which will invalidate the.

Will of the.

People.

The intent of this.

Legislation and it will be a hole that you can drive the Titanic through.

Senator McBroom argues that if you make too many changes at this 11th hour, it could kill this first step toward financial disclosure.

And Senator Morse tries to reassure citizens this is not the last bite of the disclosure apple.

I hear the chorus of those lamenting that we didn't go far enough.

Our Prop one legislation is not an end, but a long overdue beginning to finally implementing transparency laws.

There were also gripes about how lawmakers do not have to disclose a lot of what lobbyists spend on them.

A committee vote on this package is expected next week.

Well, the governor, when we met with her yesterday, basically said that if they put the language in to have the spouses report their income, that she would sign it.

But she had reservations.

What did you make of the governor's comments, Maureen?

Yeah.

So she was talking about spousal disclosure and being a little uncomfortable with it and mentions that there was some concern about its impact on female candidates and their male spouses, which I thought was really interesting because I have studied a lot of different financial disclosure practices around the country, and most of them do have financial requirements for spouses in some capacity.

In fact, in Nevada, where the legislature is slightly majority women lawmakers.

Also has disclosure for spouses.

So I'm not sure that I've seen data that backs up any concerns about female candidates struggling with spousal financial disclosure.

That said, that seems to be one of the hang ups in the legislature as the financial disclosure package gets rolled out.

That and gift disclosure by a non lobbyist.

That was a big concern among transparency advocates as well, wondering, you know, whether travel or other non lobbying gifts provided by by individuals looking to get influence with the legislature were covered.

Yeah it's not the only hang up though.

There are now two competing proposals.

You have the package in the state Senate, a package that's identical in the state House, but also another alternative that's more expansive than what has been put forward.

It would go beyond what proposal one requires in terms of the list of politicians that would be subject to disclosure requirements.

It would include members of the state board of Education, the university governing boards and beyond, including a more expansive spousal reporting requirement.

It would increase the penalty for late filing and for filing inaccurate or incomplete report.

So it's sort of you hear this refrain that it's a new day in Lansing, but now they have two different directions.

Don't get too excited about that.

Let its last proposal because the speaker of the House apparently ain't signing off.

Well, yeah, and it's really interesting.

I mean, you've got Representative Angela Witwer to sponsor this and one of the lead sponsors and she's just recently been called into question about her ownership of a public relations firm with the Contra talks with a state agency, the Department of Education and other government agencies that require or will rely upon appropriations from the committee that she chairs.

This is the whole point of these these disclosures is to is to get open up the secrets here in town that have been there forever.

It's interesting about the governor's comments yesterday, four weeks ago to the day, a former speaker of the House, Rick Johnson, was sentenced to prison for 55 months in office, 35 months in prison because of taking bribes while he chaired the marijuana licensing board.

One of the bribes that they say that the prosecutors say take took was was was phony payments to his wife to be a consultant when it really was just just to basically pay off Rick Johnson that that if they had financial disclosures they would be someone be able to see that Jan Johnson was employed by such and such marijuana lobbyists.

And marijuana lobbyists have business before Rick Johnson.

This is the whole point of the of making spouses disclose this.

And so for the governor to kind of come out and kind of pour cold water on it is kind of a curious position because.

She was very clear.

She said this is nothing that I've asserted.

But she did see the question was, governor, should spouses be reporting their income?

And she said they will put it quote, they will put it in and I will sign it.

Well, yeah, And just be clear, Senator Whitmer, a co-sponsor of legislation that would require spousal income to be disclosed.

And as a candidate, she said she was in favor of the federal system, which does require which does apply to female members of Congress.

Elissa Slotkin and and Debbie Stabenow and Debbie Dingell have all had to comply with this with their own spouses over the years.

And and so that's that's why, you know, it's kind of an interesting position to be taking out.

Senator Moore says, I will not let you basically rain on my parade.

Okay.

We've been trying for a thousand years to do this.

He didn't say shut up and go home, but he clearly was, I think, not overreacting to the reaction in town that this was it's described as a good first step.

Yeah.

I mean, it's what's required by the constitutional amendment that voters approved last year.

It was a ballot proposal that passed by a wider margin than any of the other constitutional amendments on the ballot.

But they've saved the most popular proposal for last.

They've, you know, passed legislation to implement proposal two and proposal three, and now they have this end of the year deadline to pass What proposal one requires.

We'll start with that.

Probably.

But they've left the door open to go back and expand it.

The question is the filing deadline for financial disclosures is April of next year.

It's a open question whether or not they add on to it before that first deadline.

I think the other question to consider here is momentum.

The legislature has to do it now.

This is a conversation that voters compelled them to have.

When will lawmakers be as compelled again to do this if they're going to do it, if they're going to go beyond?

Why not do it while you have all those bills in front of you while you're looking at the legislation?

I guess I just wonder if, you know, in future months and years if lawmakers will similarly want to go back and do this.

They have not wanted to do it before now.

We should also talk about the the non lobbyist loophole where a501c for that because going to an organization is going to educate you, not lobby.

You can essentially pay for your travel to go anywhere.

And I kind of raise the question of the example of what's the difference between Charles Coke's company lobbying you than Charles Coke funding ALEC to send you on a on a trip to the Bahamas?

That actually happens every term.

And it's not just Charles Coke.

We know that.

Like that.

Former House Speaker Lee Chatfield used a501c4 to travel all around the country in other parts of the hemisphere while he was speaker of the House and take other lawmakers with him on these junkets.

All of that would not get disclosed under these current bills.

Nobody is knows what it is.

Nobody's really going after that.

The governor also has weighed in very heavily, Lauren, on the situation at MSU, where there's been a call for the chairwoman to resign and she obviously has said she's done nothing wrong.

Take me take me down the road on what the governor is trying to accomplish here.

I think it's a pretty it's a pretty difficult road considering the way the trustees are elected right now is a statewide ballot.

Now, in a lot of other states, the governors appoint a lot of governors appoint university boards.

They're looking at whether that's feasible.

I think our guest has talked about her, has talked about the feasibility of that and has supported change in Michigan.

But, you know, Governor Whitmer is also an MSU grad.

You know, she's looking at this from the perspective that I think a lot of other Michigan State graduates are wondering.

You know, the question of accreditation has come up now.

You know, there's there's been a lot of drama with the board of trustees in recent years.

But these are some very serious questions now that not just the governor, but a lot of people around Michigan are really paying attention to.

Well, the point is, it come from a political convention.

And the idea is that we're going to the politicians say this is a nice way to reward your players, Give them a nice seat on a board.

You get to sit in the press box and stuff like that.

Your take on the governor involved.

As you mentioned, it's it's a weird system that we have in Michigan where political parties get to nominate candidates that goes to the ballot.

Those are some pretty low turnout elections and races.

Have no issues, people are.

Sure.

And Governor Whitmer said yesterday that she is supportive of changing that system, what that would look like.

And we'll see.

But it's sort of interesting that now there's this bipartisan call that's coming to a head because of this latest controversy at MSU.

This is all about power and and all politics is local.

And that and and for the governor to be kind of playing in the sandbox as.

If he's not in the sandbox, she' This is and so I mean the governor has clearly some allegiances with some people on that board, and they're part of the of one of the two warring factions.

There's somewhere in the middle, though.

Sandy Pierce, Huntington Bank executive who is not part of the two four person factions.

That's the person kind of watch here.

This is all going to come to a head when they this board tries to decide to hire a president in the next 30 days.

They've made it clear what the search committee said they want to make do this by Thanksgiving.

You had the interim president who clearly one of the job for months, and then out of nowhere, Teresa Woodruff said in August that she was she was dropping out.

And then three weeks later, the scandal hits the the football coach.

And then, of course, all hell has literally broken loose since then.

Well, the governor didn't have to put this line in her opening comment, but she did.

And she basically said there was no leadership on this board.

And this from top to bottom, and she didn't have to put that in.

So obviously, she feels very strongly about this.

I think that's true.

And I think that that really that really shows the gravity of the situation.

Right.

This is this is serious now.

This drama has extended well beyond the university walls.

It is not just affecting all of the people at Michigan State, although it is affecting them quite a bit.

This is a national news story because of all the stuff with the with the football coach and everything since then has continued to ramp up the drama.

People are watching all around the country.

And so the governor does feel like she needs to be involved.

And the question is, if you're somebody pondering about taking the MSU presidency job, what kind of disclaimers or information would you want in your contract?

Seriously, I'm wondering why the university might not just consider putting that hiring process on pause for now.

I mean, who's going to want to take this job when the board that's supposed to supervise them is such a mess right now?

I wouldn't sign up for it.

Someone's going to negotiate themselves a golden parachute just in case.

Yeah.

By the way, I had a conversation with former Governor Engler, and he said he tried to get the governor as a point of power when he was in office and failed.

But he thinks the atmosphere might be now good to move on this thing.

And we're also.

One of the last five people who tried to be president of that university.

Yes, nobody has forgotten it.

Let's call him Senator and McBroom up north.

You got snow up there yet, Senator?

Fortunately, no.

Okay.

Yeah, well, stay tuned.

Okay.

You'll be here in our conversation here about the financial disclosure stuff.

Were you surprised at the negative reaction to what you folks are trying to do?

I'm not really.

I've been around long enough to know how you folks in the media are.

There's always a little bit bigger bite of the apple you'd like to have on some of these issues.

And so and understandably so.

Justifiably so.

So I wasn't surprised that the immediate feedback was this doesn't go far.

Enough, but you also think that the spousal reporting, somebody can get around that if they want to.

Yeah, I don't have a problem adding the spousal reporting.

I think that's fine.

But I also believe that those who are looking to skirt the law will find a different way to skirt the law.

If we close up this loophole, we'll be chasing loopholes forever.

That's the way laws work for people who want to want to break them.

Senator, do you feel as though there's appetite to, especially when you heard the the testimony from the secretary of state, former Representative Lou Grant, Is there appetite to make any tweaks at this point?

Is there time I know you mentioned it's October and, you know, a couple more weeks, the legislature.

I think there's for sure going to be some significant changes regarding the penalty, the levels of the penalty, the ability to say to someone who has failed to file these reports and pay their fines, that they can just go take their seat in the legislature.

We definitely, I think, have the appetite to mirror the current CTE affidavit that prevents somebody from taking their seats until that's completed.

And I think the spousal issue is probably got enough horsepower and and corporate support that that will happen as well.

What do you mean by corporate support?

Oh, not corporations targeted, targeted corporately amongst the body of legislators.

That.

Support a good clarification.

And thanks to both of you.

Clara Senator.

Have you had a chance to review the alternative proposal put forward by House Democrats earlier this week?

And if so, did you like what you saw?

I didn't bother to review it.

I heard it was dead in the water before it even got off of the shore.

But go ahead.

Good.

Well, I was going to say, but you all have left the door open for expanding what you've introduced.

So what could that look like when it looks something like what House Democrats put forward?

Well, some of the details that you're talking about that was in that package, I think those are some of the things I just referenced, higher penalties, the spousal disclosure.

I think that is one of the things that they wanted, I think, is to have a more specific detail on the numbers, you know, rather than just say where are your incomes coming from and it's over a thousand, I want to know precisely what that income is.

I think that that's not a really great road to go down.

This isn't a a program so we can measure everybody's individual wealth or poverty.

These are opportunities to see what are we disclosing and what conflicts do we potentially have regarding eventual legislative work that we're doing.

And so I kind of resistant towards the idea that we should make this into a a wealth measuring stick.

But ultimately, I've also suggested to the majority that they just let the whole legislative amendment process flow, that it not be the usual preordained what amendments are going in, what amendments aren't just hey, let members suggest and make their best case and let the members vote freely and see what happens at the end.

I'm comfortable with that.

I will be interested in.

The majority is comfortable with that.

But why are you keeping these non lobby groups out of the the the meal and trip travel disclosure requirements?

Well, I'm not keeping that out.

I don't feel like this legislation is the place that that belongs.

I'm very supportive of that.

You guys all heard me say that when the Chatfield scandal broke that we definitely need to start limiting the use of these nonprofit corporate accounts.

We need to have better reporting requirements on them.

I think we need to have much more restriction on how money flows into the leadership accounts and particularly into the caucus.

I, I think that's where the real influence happens.

Not so much in whether, you know, D.T.

takes me to a lunch or not, which they probably don't anymore.

But I think that's where we're really in need of more disclosure on these other items, and I'm supportive of that.

Senator, do you have the truth.

Or not in this book?

Excuse me, sir, do you have the two thirds vote in the Senate to change the Constitution, to allow the governor to appoint board members?

I don't know if they're quite to two thirds yet, but I think once people start to recognize that this isn't about saying the voters aren't doing a good job, this isn't about taking away the voter's ability to participate, but it's recognizing that the parties don't provide the voters good candidates.

The parties are picking people who just want free tickets to the game or throw the best tailgate party in the parking lot at homecoming.

We need a much better vetting process and the parties are not going to give that to us.

And here these three institutions are the outliers nationwide.

Nobody else does it this way and look at all the problems we're having.

So I do think we can make the arguments.

I think we can get there, particularly with the support of not just this governor, but bipartisan governors of the past.

I think we can move this forward.

And I even have board members currently sitting and ones in the past who are saying we should be making this change.

This this has gone on long enough.

Is Senator Engler or former Governor Engler said what they should have done back then was make it proactive, maybe five or ten years down the road so that the current sitting governor, he or she would not have that power.

Would you favor that kind of an amendment and adjustment to it?

Well, initially, and my current proposal allows those who are currently serving to finish out their terms and so it would be prospective.

But with all of the turmoil going on at MSU, I'm not so sure that we shouldn't make it much more quickly happen.

So it would be after next November, after the election.

Maybe.

Maybe we need to suggest removing the entire board right away and then staggering the terms maybe we use.

But we could do it the other way.

I've already proposed, which would be let them all finish their terms to whichever way we do it.

Let's get there.

I think that that that's just a detail to work out.

Do you feel that that's the best case scenario for Michigan State then is to just start over?

I think that's at present with the long run thing.

I mean, this is almost ten years of my time in service that there has been a plague of scandals at MSU and pop up scandals at U of M and Wayne State.

It's time to get this done and kind of tear the bandage off and move ahead.

To go back.

Hear your example about D.T.

for a second.

If he sets up a nonprofit organized nation to educate voters and lawmakers about energy issues and they they pay for your meal.

But that doesn't have to get disclosed under the under this this financial disclosure law.

But if he's a registered lobbyist, comes to you, Dave Powers rock and wants to lobby you on something, he has to Dave has to disclose that.

What's the difference?

I don't think there is a difference.

All I've said is that the law that we're proposing is not the place to do that.

We need to go into the Campaign Finance Act where the reporting you're referencing is already occurring for those who are registered lobbyists or we need to create another act.

This response to Proposal one is about us reporting personal holdings and personal participation in other groups, boards, employment.

And so I just don't see this being the right act for it.

It's not that I oppose that happening, and I think we saw this controversy come up just a couple of months ago when the attorney general had the situation where she had taken a trip.

It was paid for by somebody who wasn't a lobbyist.

Therefore it wasn't disclosed.

I think that that really clarifies that we should be disclosing these things.

And I support getting there.

Senator, who's your candidate for U.S. Senate and candidate for president?

I on.

Why are you laughing and why are you pausing?

Because I haven't decided yet.

I just met Mike Rogers a couple of weeks ago.

I had dinner with Nikki Snyder at the Lincoln Day dinner this past weekend.

I like both of them.

And so, you know, I'm I'm not prepared.

I don't generally do endorsements anyway, so I don't know yet.

Well, I assume you're not voting for President Trump.

I haven't made that decision yet either.

I'm prepared that he's probably going to be our candidates and I'll probably need to vote for him.

Senator, on the topic of political nominating conventions, do you think that Michigan should also do away with them for Secretary of State and attorney general?

It didn't seem to work out so well for your party last election.

Yeah, I think that the primary system for both of them would be far more efficient for everybody.

I think that there's really no reason why they haven't gone that direction and that it's very confusing to a lot of my voters.

Why hasn't I heard that numerous times in the last cycle when people are like, Why?

Why aren't we voting for these?

How did how did this person become candidate?

I don't remember this Well, it's because you didn't it was in the convention.

So I think that there's some good reason then to move this out of the convention setting.

How are you going to break what I would call the consultant class that that controls the conventions that make money off of the conventions, that they they get candidates and they line up votes and they make sure that people get nominated who pay them.

In other words, put John job out of work.

Thank you, Tim.

You're welcome.

Yeah, I you know, I don't know that I have the answer for how I can do that.

I don't have that power.

I'm just one vote.

But I certainly believe that it's a far more transparent system for the voters and it would be more efficient for everyone.

These convention races, they don't prove anything to the voters about whether or not you're really qualified for the job.

I think the parties usually do a better job vetting those particular persons than they do with the board members.

And, you know, I've introduced legislation to even change the way we nominate the state Board of Education so that they would get representation around the state rather than isolated to southeast Michigan and Grand Rapids, as it usually does.

Senator, thank you very much for joining us on our program.

Now you've got to go out and take care of the dairy cattle right?

That's next on the agenda.

Yeah, there's a Segway there somewhere.

Thank you all, sir.

Thanks for a great panel.

So you guys right here For more Off the record next week.

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