House Democrats met in Lansing Tuesday to discuss their plans to reintroduce the Bringing Reforms for Integrity, Transparency, and Ethics, or BRITE, bill package.
The package of seven House bills aims to improve government accountability standards and was initially introduced in March 2024. The bills failed to pass through last year’s state Legislature before newly elected lawmakers took their seats in 2025.
Michigan has a yearslong history of letting government transparency legislation die, and and is considered to have some of the worst state government ethics laws in the country.
The proposed bills would make a variety of changes for elected officials. Those changes include requiring organizations to register with the secretary of state if they claim tax-exempt status and either employ or are directed by a candidate for state elective office, an elected official, or a family member of an elected official.
The bills would also define legislative staff as officials in the legislative branch. That definition change would make those staff members public officials, which would hold them accountable to requirements like reporting on gifts and expenditures made to lobby them.
State Representative Jason Morgan (D-Ann Arbor) is a sponsor of the bill package. He emphasized that modern technology would allow for tracking of gifts and expenditures relatively easily.
“If we can track our credit card transactions in real time, we should be able to track where money is being spent in our politics and hold bad actors accountable when they break the law.”
According to last year’s proposed package, the bills would also allow the secretary of state to file for injunctive relief with a circuit court if a complaint was filed alleging a violation of the Michigan Campaign Finance Act. The complaint would need to include a “reasonably complete statement of facts necessary for the ruling” for the secretary of state to file a lawsuit.
State Representative Erin Byrnes (D-Dearborn) said current law requires reporting of campaign finances to the state Bureau of Elections multiple times a year, but this leaves officials unaccountable in the interim periods.
“So if a violation were to occur today, but a report is not due for another couple of months, we want to make sure that if someone is reaching out to the Bureau of Elections and saying, ‘I have evidence, I have reason to believe that campaign finance law is being violated or abused in some way,’ we want to make sure that the bureau has the teeth, via this policy, to be able to address that in the moment,” Byrnes said.
Morgan said Tuesday that the package would improve transparency by requiring the disclosure of donors during political campaigns.
“The integrity of your vote is the bedrock of our society and the voice of our people, but it's under attack,” Morgan said. “Right now, the system is being abused by those who have the resources to manipulate it for their gain and by those willing to trade influence to receive them.”
Other bills would require state elected officials to disclose travel payments and event tickets, as well as certain financial information related to their immediate family members. They would also prohibit lobbying the governor, lieutenant governor, and other state official leadership from engaging in some lobbying activities up to one year following the end of their last term.
State Representative Julie Brixie (D-Okemos) also sponsored the package and spoke in support of the reintroduction of the BRITE package.
“Campaign finance reporting ensures trust and transparency between voters and elected officials. That is key to our democracy,” Brixie said.
