Lawmakers release 18 departments from requirement to report severance payments

Michiganders will have difficulty holding the government accountable in the $83 billion 2025 budget as lawmakers slashed severance pay reporting requirements for 18 departments.

Lawmakers cut the reporting requirements for the following areas: the Michigan Department of Education; Environment, Energy, and Great Lakes; the general government; Insurance and Financial Services; Labor and Economic Opportunity; Licensing and Regulatory Affairs; and the Department of Natural Resources.

The budget also removed severance pay reporting from the Agriculture and Rural Development, Corrections, Health and Human Services, Military and Veterans Affairs, State Police, and Transportation.

Employers often pay severance to workers who are fired, laid off, or who retire, as a way to provide a brief financial runway for bills such as housing and food.

The change in the new budget will lead to more corruption and government waste, said Rep. Mike Harris, R-Waterford, who serves on the House Ethics and Oversight Committee.

”By keeping generous severance payments secret, Democrats are keeping corruption and incompetence under cover of darkness,” Harris told CapCon. “When Gov. Whitmer paid her top bureaucrats hundreds of thousands of dollars to go away and keep their mouths shut, Republicans exposed this corruption and held the governor accountable for hush-money agreements.”

In 2021, a reporter discovered Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration made nearly $253,000 in severance payments — undisclosed, at first — to government workers who abruptly left during the COVID pandemic.

In 2022, voters gave the Democratic Party a political trifecta, and the state’s new leaders cut the severance reporting requirement.

“Budgets required transparent reporting on severance deals to expose taxpayer-funded golden parachutes for the employees the governor fires,” Harris said. “But in their new budget, Democrats stripped out these and other key transparency measures, enabling government waste and mismanagement to fester.”

Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, D-Grand Rapids, hasn’t responded to a request for comment. The Legislature doesn’t return to work until late July.

Lawmakers cut another transparency measure, which applied to the Michigan Department of Corrections, the judicial budget and the Department of Education. This requirement compelled the agencies to track key performance metrics on a publicly accessible website.

Lawmakers also deleted a requirement that the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development maintain performance measures and key metrics on a publicly accessible website. They deleted a similar requirement for the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office hasn’t responded to a request for comment.

(Editor's note: This article has been updated to note that 18 departments have been released from reporting severance payments.)