Transparent as Dirt: Local and State Open Government Hypocrites

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The Ludington Police Department offered up a survey last year on their Facebook page suggesting in their preface without any sense of irony:  "Your honest responses will contribute to our ongoing efforts to improve transparency, communication, and community relations." 

Chief Christopher Jones with the help of the rest of city hall administrative officials and a rubber-stamp city council have systematically destroyed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) as it applies to police records both before and after these high-minded statements, offering up police reports of what appears to be routine arrests redacted to the point that one cannot read anything about what led up to the arrest, asking hundreds of dollars for a couple of minutes of body cam footage with similar illegal redactions.  The citizens pay plenty for those body cams expecting to have the added accountability, but the chief's actions against communications and community relations indicate that it is wasted money.  

Nor is such non-transparency with the hypocritical statement to the contrary limited to Ludington City Hall and the LPD.  In another recent article in the local paper, Transparency Rejected by LASD Committee, we see the old guard of the school board being reluctant to change, and during this same time, the latter days of Superintendent Kyle Corlett and the interim who followed, being reluctant to share what was happening with the people while donning a mantel of transparency in their rhetoric.  

These local examples are instructive, but the utter hypocrisy of Michigan Secretary of State (MI SOS) Jocelyn Benson, a Democratic candidate for governor facing a primary in nine days, is perhaps more maddening because most media covering such races ignore the hypocrisy.  If one's position on a topic keeps coming up while their actions on the topic show they don't actually practice what they bloviate about, then what do any of your other words mean?

The FOIA hasn't been something that Benson has concentrated on over her eight years of being the MI SOS, but now that she is running for governor, she suggests that if she was governor that she would be responding to FOIA requests, even though the law doesn't mandate that the governor has any duty to do so.  Gretchen Whitmer promised during her 2018 gubernatorial campaign to expand FOIA to cover the governor's office and the state Legislature. She vowed to act unilaterally if lawmakers did not, but she has done nothing to fulfill either promise.  

Unlike Whitmer, Benson has had a job for eight years prior to her run in a department that does have to respond to FOIA, and her history is quite horrible in that regard.  Before looking at that record, let's hear what she said on this campaign trail.  

Just last week, she stated quite plainly on tape that as governor:  "I will voluntarily comply with FOIA on day one... I think that transparency is key to building trust with the communities being left out..."  This isn't new, in an Instagram post in May 2025, shortly after announcing her candidacy, she indicated she would voluntarily subject herself to FOIA requests if elected governor.  

Then last November, she reiterated that sentiment to news agencies.  Indicated that again just after Sunshine Week this March.  Her words sound so inspiring, just like LPD Chief Jones' rhetoric, but the record of responding to FOIA requests show that neither believe nor practice in what they preach.  Benson's record is there for anybody to research.

In October 2021, A judge ruled Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson must release more internal records about campaign finance violations of a group backing Gretchen Whitmer for governor in 2018.  The prevailing party's lawyer would say: “Benson has spent the last two years hiding documents from Michigan voters and using taxpayer dollars to defend the secrecy in court. The Secretary of State has been hiding public records about her handling of campaign finance violations committed by Whitmer’s campaign allies but she won’t get away with it". 

Benson would appeal that ruling unsuccessfully:  The prevailers would say in July 2022: "We’ve now won twice in court, unanimously, seeking the documents Jocelyn Benson is hiding that we believe detail her efforts to let Governor Whitmer and her political allies off the hook for breaking the law in the 2018 election.”

In March 2025, the Michigan House Speaker issued a release saying: “Secretary Benson repeatedly tells the public that her department is a paragon of transparency,” said Smit, R-Martin. “However, my four-month ordeal trying to obtain the most basic of records indicates otherwise. The way Secretary Benson operates her department is not transparency, it’s obfuscation.”

After first denying the records, Benson' decided that she'd use a paywall in a hope to block the request.  “There is no scenario in which the documents I requested could take 140 man-hours to generate,” Smit said. “I am willing to believe that Secretary Benson’s office is slow, even painfully slow, but 140 man-hours is a ridiculous amount of time to gather documents that would take any competent person, at most, 2 or 3 hours.”  Another FOIA request was repeatedly ignored by Benson even after repeated follow-ups.  

Jocelyn Benson served as a member of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Board of Directors from 2014 through 2018. She also worked for the group as a volunteer researcher early in her career.  Recent revelations about the SPLC indicate that they have engaged in less than ethical activity (allegations of wire fraud, bank fraud, money laundering, and paying informants to infiltrate white supremacist groups) in trying to portray conservative groups in a bad light.  Mike Cox filed a FOIA lawsuit against Jocelyn Benson in July 2026, alleging that her office failed to fulfill a FOIA request in April regarding her past ties to the SPLC.  

The US Department of Justice has unsuccessfully petitioned Benson since 2025 to provide voter roll information.  A July 7 letter to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, says federal law requires state and local election officials to maintain election records and take steps to ensure that only eligible U.S. citizens vote in federal elections. Signed by Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, the letter gives Michigan five days to explain how it will ensure compliance with federal law at both the state and local levels.

“State election officers, including the chief election officer of the state, could be criminally prosecuted for aiding and abetting” violations of federal laws barring noncitizens from voting, the letter says. It adds that “knowingly retaining noncitizens” on Michigan’s statewide voter-registration list, sending them ballots, and counting those ballots would constitute the “procurement, casting, or tabulation” of ballots known to be false.  President Biden's team thought her actions were worthy of a Presidential Citizens Medal for some reason, however.

If she won’t follow the law and provide basic transparency as Secretary of State and would hide behind specious exemptions to thwart a USDOJ investigation into voter roll improprieties, what makes anyone think she’ll suddenly become transparent once she has even more power?