Sunshine Week Lowlight: Gretchen Whitmer
Lansing, MI – To kick off this year’s Sunshine Week, the annual effort to promote transparency in government, let’s take a look at how Governor Gretchen Whitmer has hampered transparency throughout her administration, from failed FOIA promises to her administration communicating in cryptic codes, to hiding who paid for her ticket to the Winter Olympics.
When Whitmer was first campaigning for governor in 2018, she ran on a “Sunshine Plan” that included opening the executive’s office up to FOIA. She even said she would do it unilaterally if the Legislature did not act:
“If the legislature won’t act, I will use the governor’s authority under the Michigan State Constitution to extend FOIA to the Lieutenant Governor and Governor’s Offices. Michiganders should know when and what their governor is working on.”
It has been eight years since she made that promise, and the governor’s office still is not open to FOIA requests. At some point, the governor decided that Michiganders do not deserve to know what she is working on.
As if to drive that point home, members of the governor’s team went as far as literally sending messages in code. A consultant for Whitmer’s energy department was swapping the English alphabet for the Greek to keep emails about the Benton Harbor water crisis out of public records requests.
And no one can forget that Gretchen Whitmer approved a $20 million grant to her friend and longtime donor, Fay Beydoun. The money was later spent on a $4,500 coffee maker and first-class flights to Europe, with Whitmer’s team telling legislators behind the scenes that they had no authority to claw the money back.
Unfortunately, Whitmer’s lack of transparency does not stop there. Even prominent voices in the media have called on the governor to follow through on her promises.
Here are just some of the examples of her efforts to hide her actions from Michiganders over the course of her term:
Whitmer’s hush money deal with former MDHHS Director Robert Gordon.
Whitmer’s claim that she was in Michigan for the entirety of COVID, despite taking a secret trip to Florida while advising Michigan residents not to travel.
Whitmer’s efforts to cut the public out of the budget process during the Democrat trifecta.
Whitmer’s administration securing contracts with a Democrat-affiliated consultant and firm using taxpayer dollars to collect health data for COVID contact tracing.
Whitmer’s MEDC and EGLE Departments’ failure to release environmental reports for the now-canceled Chinese Communist Party-linked Gotion facility in Big Rapids.
Whitmer’s underreporting of the total number of nursing home deaths, brought on by her executive orders that locked COVID-positive patients in facilities with our vulnerable elderly population.
“Gretchen Whitmer has broken promise after promise when it comes to transparency,” said Gabe Butzke, a spokesperson for Michigan Forward Network. “Not only has she failed to make any of the reforms she campaigned on, but she has deliberately hampered accountability and transparency at every possible moment.”
