Want to see Detroit ethics disclosures? We got them — it wasn't easy

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and a slew of other local high-ranking officials are required to disclose information every year intended to deter misconduct and engender public trust.

But before now, if Detroiters wanted to see these disclosure documents, they’d need to wait. And pay.

After months of wrangling by the Free Press, the city recently released hundreds of these records. We're providing many of them here as a resource for readers, coinciding with the end of Sunshine Week, an initiative that aims to enhance governmental transparency.

The records Detroit released for 2021 and 2022 were the actual forms employees filled out. The city did not provide the original records for 2020 and 2023, instead opting to provide some of the contents from these documents in a complicated format. This creates records that are less digestible and at times missing information.

These disclosures are required annually for roughly 150 top Duggan officials under an executive order he issued in 2015. The deadline to file these disclosures for 2023 is today.

City officials must disclose their job title, sources of income, any issues of personal interest pending before a city body, property ownership, family members employed by the city, financial transactions between a family member and the city and any gifts valued at or above $250 received from someone who is or wants to do business with the city.

While many of the documents provide scant details and city lawyers blacked out address and contact information on many, citing privacy concerns, it's still one of the largest known releases and publications of these disclosures by the city.

The Free Press filed a request for the records in November under the Michigan Freedom of Information Act. Initially, city officials asked for more than $525 to release conflict of interest disclosure forms filed since 2020. That included fees for lawyers to review and potentially redact the documents for private details, like home addresses or phone numbers.

But to do that it required paying other employees for an estimated 20 hours of work printing thousands of the pages and rescanning them into a format lawyers could use for those redactions, according to a Jan. 12 response to the Free Press.

No one could explain why the department had to print and subsequently rescan this information in order to provide it to the public.

"Once the mayor became aware of the potential cost associated with producing these records, he instructed (the Civil Rights, Inclusion & Opportunity Department) to work with the IT department to develop a new and simpler process that is able to produce a master list without the need for a FOIA charge," said John Roach, Duggan spokesman, in a March 7 email.

The $525 price, though waived, and redactions create barriers to a basic level of government record created for the public to see, experts said.

“It’s wild that an ostensibly public financial disclosure program has all those barriers to the public actually accessing it,” said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, a government transparency expert with the Project on Government Oversight, a national nonprofit specializing in public ethics.

“We’ve seen plenty of scandals at all levels of government over the years around people not acting in the interest of the public, but rather acting in their own personal interest, their own financial interest, the interest of their friends and cronies.”

The disclosures

We've included disclosures filed for 2021 and 2022. While some information is redacted, additional information is available.

See anything that stands out to you? Or doesn't make sense? Let us know: email dboucher@freepress.com with any tips or ideas.

Having trouble seeing the disclosures? Click here.

Detroit still a leader in disclosures

Despite these hurdles, Detroit still outpaces peer Michigan cities in terms of requiring officials to disclose possible conflicts, according to a Free Press review.

The Free Press found a scattershot approach to local conflict of interest disclosure policies across Michigan. While some metro Detroit counties publicly post disclosures, only Detroit and Lansing among the state's largest cities require local leaders to file any documents.

"The Mayor’s order is far more extensive than the new disclosure requirements for the executive branch at the state, which applies only to the four statewide elected officials. We are unaware of any government in Michigan that requires disclosure by the top 150 management staff," Roach said.

Four other large cities — Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, Sterling Heights and Warren — have conflict of interest policies and broad ethical guidelines for officials. But they lack the required disclosures found in Detroit and Lansing.

Here’s where Lansing and Detroit differ: Lansing posts disclosures online, at no cost to residents. While they are not exactly easy to find on the city’s website, they are on the internet and free to access.

“We take our ethics ordinance pretty seriously here in the city of Lansing. We want our elected and appointed leadership to show high standards,” said City Clerk Chris Swope. “We think that transparency is of value to our residents.”

Representatives from the other cities pointed to ethics rules, largely guided by state law, that ban obvious conflicts. But they acknowledged local officials do not need to publicly disclose real or perceived conflicts regularly.

Wayne and Macomb county governments also require public servants file disclosures. According to local law, the governments must post the documents to the county’s website. In Wayne, officials file them annually. In Macomb, the form is required when someone is hired and must be updated within 30 days of any change.

State lawmakers are not required to file any disclosure, but that's changing soon — as part of a constitutional amendment pushed by Duggan.

Duggan championed a constitutional amendment in 2022 that, in part, would require disclosures from the governor and other state leaders. Proposal 1, easily adopted by voters, also led to law changes that mandate making these filings available for free on the internet later this year.

The same year, Axios reported Duggan failed to file his required disclosure for 2021. Roach at the time said “it just got overlooked” during the pandemic and that the mayor had no conflicts.

While Detroit argued it needed to redact addresses associated with employees, in theory, property ownership could be the source of a conflict. Top Detroit city attorney Conrad Mallett, through a spokesperson, did not say how residents could determine whether such a conflict existed if this information was redacted.

Hedtler-Gaudette, the ethics expert, acknowledged there are times when hyperpersonal information can be redacted and understands elected officials face threats. But to include, then redact, such information on a form created to help local residents trust their government is bizarre.

Detroit elected leaders, high-ranking city employees, board members and others also need to file separate disclosures with the city Board of Ethics. But Board Executive Director Christal Phillips confirmed disclosures are filed as needed, determined at the discretion of the person who may have a conflict, not on any annual or other regular basis. These are also not available without filing a records request.

Why disclosures are needed?

Where rules do exist at the local level, they have at times flagged broader problems: Recently, months after a local Board of Ethics realized former Eastpointe Mayor Monique Owens failed to file multiple disclosures, she was indicted on fraud charges stemming from a separate ethics-related issue.

And in 2011, then-Wayne County Airport Authority Chairperson Renee Axt resigned days after amending mandatory disclosure forms, where she ultimately revealed lobbying for a client who received thousands of dollars in contracts approved by the same board.

In 2023, the Free Press found the Detroit board that decides on the pay for Duggan and other elected leaders was stacked with allies of the mayor. Ultimately, the city acknowledged reforms were needed; they now require members of this board and other appointees file the same conflict disclosures required of high-ranking city officials.

Michigan Senate Ethics Committee Chairman Jeremy Moss, D-Southfield, is leading the charge for transparency reform at the state level. While he did not commit to legislation that would eliminate the patchwork standard for municipal disclosures, he said he hoped local leaders would see changes at the Legislature as inspiration to enact comparable reforms.

“Certainly, at the state level, we set the tone, and for too long, it’s been a bad tone,” Moss, a former Southfield city council member, said in a recent interview.

“It’s about trust. When you don’t allow people to see the routine things, like conflict of interest disclosures, which should just be a standard practice, it leads to questions on: Are there other things of more consequence that government actors might be hiding?”

Lisa McGraw, public affairs manager for the Michigan Press Association, spoke with the Free Press before Detroit ultimately decided to release the records.

She said any fees and redactions felt inconsistent with the purpose of disclosures. There should be a way to craft these forms in a manner that both prevents disclosing deeply personal information and helps residents, she said.

“I’d say it goes against the spirit of what they’re purportedly trying to do,” McGraw said, after reviewing the facts of the Free Press request.

“Transparency is a wonderful issue when you’re running for office … it’s become an issue that politicians tout when they’re running. But once they get elected it seems to be a monkey on their back.”

Moss said, as a former city official, he understands that mandates from the state typically are not very popular for local leaders. However, anything that can be done to encourage public trust in government must be considered.

“The more information you put out there, the less lingering questions there are. The more information you volunteer, the less you’re creating doubts in people’s minds that you’re trying to hide something,” Moss said.

Free Press staff writer Christina Hall and Free Press columnist M.L. Elrick contributed to this report.

Contact Dave Boucher: dboucher@freepress.com and on X, previously called Twitter, @Dave_Boucher1.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Want to see Detroit ethics disclosures? We got them — it wasn't easy