A date has now been set for a hearing on proposed rules to close a potential loophole around lobbyist gift laws in Michigan.
Michigan law bans lawmakers and other public officials from accepting gifts, like concert and sports tickets, from lobbyists if the value is above a certain amount determined each year.
For 2025, that amount is $79 per month.
The concern, however, is that officials have been accepting those gifts anyway with the promise of reimbursement for the difference between the actual gift value and the legal limit.
“If a public official wants to pay the Detroit Lions, Tigers, Pistons, Red Wings, or Fisher Theatre, etc., directly for a ticket out of the public official’s candidate committee by finding a way to categorize that payment as an incidental expense, maybe legal, however, the lobbyist or lobbyist agent shouldn’t be allowed to play Ticketmaster, by delivering the ticket to the public official and be the one reimbursed,” mid-Michigan attorney Bob LaBrant wrote in a request for the state to step in.
In August, state elections officials answered requests from LaBrant and the Michigan Association of Health Plans.
The interpretive statements moved to end the reimbursement practice and add more guidance to lobbying groups that seek to pay for officials to travel and attend conferences.
Christina Hildreth Anderson is chief of staff for Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.
“Allowing the cost of a gift to be allocated across multiple parties, be they lobbyists or public officials, cannot circumvent the gift ban and in doing so would frustrate the purposes of the Lobby Act,” Hildreth Anderson wrote in a response to LaBrant.
Now, the state is trying to codify that stance into an official administrative ruleset, to further cement it.
The next step in that process is a public hearing set for Tuesday, March 18.
