Michigan lawmaker seeks information on administration officials’ severance payments, aims to prevent future instances
(The Center Square) – Michigan state Rep. Annette Glenn, responding to recent revelations that former high-ranking officials in the Whitmer administration received secret payments totaling more than $250,000 upon their resignations, on Thursday announced a plan to ensure more transparency in state government.
Details of the payments and the circumstances of two of the employees’ departure are protected by confidentiality agreements. Former Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Director Robert Gordon received nearly nine months’ severance, or $155,506, after he resigned Jan. 22. Former Unemployment Insurance Agency Director Steve Gray resigned in November and received a severance package that included $76,626 and another $9,246 for his attorneys.
Glenn, R-Midland, is also seeking information on the departures of former DHHS Deputy Director Sarah Esty and former Gordon chief of staff Jonathan Warsh. Neither of those departures included confidentiality agreements.
“The people of Michigan have every right to full disclosure and transparency from their state government,” Glenn said in a statement. “When the governor makes deals to buy the silence of her departing department heads, it raises a lot of troubling questions – particularly in departments like DHHS and UIA, particularly in a time like the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Glenn questioned the administration officials’ departures during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially given the number of nursing home deaths that some have tied to a pandemic order from the MDHHS. The UIA also struggled with providing unemployment benefits to Michigan workers in a timely fashion.
“And we all have questions about why restaurants and other businesses remained closed or at limited capacity here compared to other states,” Glenn said. “When the governor pays off high-ranking officials to keep them quiet, she’s hiding the very information that has affected the lives and livelihoods of people across Michigan for the past year. It isn’t right, and it’s got to stop.”
Glenn, chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, is advocating for specific language to be included in all subcommittee proposals to expose and prevent what she terms “hush money” contracts.
Glenn’s plan would:
Prohibit agreements with departing department officials for the purposes of keeping them quiet about what prompted their departure. Glenn noted this may include legislation in addition to budget boilerplate.Require disclosure of severance packages for department directors, deputy directors and other high-ranking administration officials within 14 days of the agreements being signed. The name of the official and the amount of money received must be disclosed.Require public posting of any severance agreement in excess of $5,000, regardless of position held by the department employee.Require annual reports to the Legislature on how much severance money was paid out, and to how many employees.
Glenn said exposing and curtailing contracts are of paramount importance in part because Michigan is one of only two states in which the governor’s office is not subject to Freedom of Information Act requirements to make all official records, communications and deliberations available to the public.
Glenn reintroduced legislation designed to protect state whistleblowers and to subject the governor and Legislature to freedom of information laws.
“The governor should reverse her attempt to buy Director Gordon’s silence,” Glenn said. “Moving forward, I will fight to prevent something like this from happening again. People deserve better from their state government.”
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