Bizarre Bill That Would Expand Government Secrecy Passes Michigan Senate

[XLFD]

Michigan State Senator Veronica Klinefelt (pictured below) has had to deal intimately with the Open Meetings Act (OMA) during a career which goes back to her stints as city councilor and county commissioner in Macomb County.  The OMA requires meetings of public bodies like those to be open to the public; to require notice, the keeping of minutes of meetings, and allow for comments from the general public.  As a Michigan senator, she wanted to "improve" on the OMA as early as 2023.

At that point Klinefelt introduced a notion to draft legislation in order to allow for any meeting to allow remote participation by up to a quorum of the members of the public body.  At that point, the COVID emergency was declared officially over by an act of congress signed by Joe Biden, and remote meetings was long out of vogue.  Conservative groups at the time shot it down as an unneeded novelty.  

“As Michiganders have returned to work in person, Democrats are finding ways for elected officials to stay home from work and vote from bed”, said Michigan Freedom Fund spokeswoman Mary Drabik in Michigan Capitol Confidential. “Those who hold public office should be held to the highest standard. Therefore, they are expected to show up to work, in person, like the rest of us, and face the public.”  The day prior to her letter, a Minnesota lawmaker embarrassed himself and the state by being at an official zoom meeting shirtless and in bed.

No reasons were offered to support why this would be a good idea, and as far as we can find, no bill was ever introduced.   Two years later In 2025, Senator Klinefelt is back again with a new attack on the OMA; this time she's trying to make it a lot easier to go into closed sessions.  She's actually sponsored a bill and had it pass through the senate with full Democrat support.

The current law provides exemptions for matters that are subject to attorney-client privilege and for conversations with a lawyer about strategy in connection with specific pending litigation (if it could financially affect the public body).  The new bill (SB 288 of 2025) would expand those exclusions, allowing for private consultation with an attorney about "notice of potential litigation" and for discussing a lawyer's "oral or written legal opinion," even if the lawyer isn't present for the closed-door session.  These new purposes are not defined in the law and could be broadly interpreted to apply to most any perceived controversy.

Beyond these modifications of permissible purposes for closed sessions it adds three more distinct ones that are also up for broad interpretation to cover almost any controversial issue:

These new purposes were actually the impetus of Klinefelt moving this bill forward.  According to the Union Bulletin, she was quoted in a hearing for the bill saying "boards were already going into closed session "all of the time" to discuss sensitive matters.  They have an attorney write a one-sentence piece of paper to get them into closed session to be able to have those discussions."  In a phone interview with that medium, she admitted some of the changes were inspired from talking with the Michigan Township Association, adding that she "personally can't stop boards and commissions from going into closed sessions in situations when they shouldn't.  They're going to happen anyway."

In another venue she said something similar:  "“I served at the local level, and I had to deal with corruption.  I found it extremely frustrating to try to find a reason to go in to closed session that was legitimate.”

The Ludington Torch cannot believe how bizarre and counter-intuitive her defense of this bill sounds.  Closed sessions are breeding grounds for corruption, as it precludes the public from their role of oversight and their role of adding insight to boards over controversial issues that the public should be involved in.  Senator Klinefelt wants to take just about every debatable topic out of the public realm and behind closed doors with her bill, keeping the public in the dark about what's going on, leading to ignorance and rewarding secrecy.  Her concession in saying that boards are currently going into closed session even when they shouldn't, is more an admission of her own past corruption, presuming she didn't call her council and commission out on violating the law when they did such an act of deceit.

Improvements made to the OMA would be to offer tougher sanctions against public bodies who illegally go into closed session, just what she admits happens all of the time.  Public bodies and officials can violate the OMA with impunity, and if they do get caught, they can usually avoid any sort of punishment or legal liability by reenactment of what they did wrong.  Those who take them to task for their violations are just left with legal bills because the law itself is insufficient in enforcement mechanisms.  Strengthen those and the citizens will be much better served.

  Klinefelt: "[This bill] gives [public bodies] the tools to …. safeguard the public’s trust and the public’s money."  No, it does the opposite.

Other open meeting advocates have also weighed in on this bill's attack on government transparency.  The proposal could “vastly expand secrecy in public bodies,” Lisa McGraw, public affairs manager with the Michigan Press Association, told lawmakers in a letter prior to the vote, urging them to oppose the bill.

She pointed to language allowing closed meetings to discuss "potential litigation" or litigation in which a member of the public body is "a potential party. That “could apply to virtually any issue before a public body, from a threat to sue over removal of a textbook to zoning changes to sexual harassment claims against a public body or individual,” McGraw wrote. “Further, a person who wishes to force an issue behind closed doors could merely threaten to sue and spark a public body to discuss it entirely in closed sessions."

When the bill came up for discussion on the Michigan Senate floor, nothing was said and the vote was 22-14, with four Republicans joining all Democrats.  The bill has now been shared with the Michigan House, controlled by Republicans, where it's future is uncertain.  Let your state representative know that this bill is a big step backwards for transparency at all levels in Michigan, and that they need to vote against it.