Sunshine Week Lowlight: Jocelyn Benson

Lansing, MI – Continuing on the theme of Sunshine Week lowlights, next up is Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who, in her campaign for governor, has billed herself the “transparency and efficiency” candidate. Unfortunately, her record does not reflect that slogan. 

For starters, Benson certainly has not been transparent about her family taking millions in taxpayer dollars. In 2022, her husband, Ryan Friederichs, registered as a lobbyist for a group that accepted $100 million in state grants. It does not stop there. Last week, the Michigan Enjoyer revealed that a company owned by Benson’s father-in-law has been raking in millions of dollars from Michigan taxpayers. His company, which works on large-scale solar projects, has been paid by the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) to help carry out the Democrats’ Green New Deal.

Benson has also been in hot water over her department’s failure on the state’s transparency website. After spending almost $9 million to outsource the creation of a new campaign finance portal to an out-of-state firm, the portal was inoperable for weeks. In fact, the rollout was so bad that the Secretary of State’s department was stripped of its IT budget and responsibilities, and control of the website was delegated to the Department of Technology, Management, and Budget (DTMB).

Finally, the secretary has been anything but forthcoming on the complaints against her department from former employees. After paying out more than three-quarters of a million dollars to a former employee in a settlement over the Secretary of State’s office, creating a “racially hostile work environment,” four more Black employees filed suit alleging the same.

“Benson’s motto should be ‘opaque and inefficient,’” said Gabe Butzke, a spokesperson for Michigan Forward Network. “Her tenure as Secretary of State has been a non-stop series of failures when it comes to government accountability, and even now she refuses to answer for them.”