Michigan legislators vote despite conflicts of interest
Republican state Sen. Darwin Booher of Evart initially abstained from voting on a 2015 bill that proposed a $12,000 raise for circuit court judges, writing that it “could be perceived as providing a benefit to an individual to whom I am personally related” — his daughter, 49th Circuit Judge Kimberly Booher.
But a year later, the senator did vote on the raises when a House version came back to the Senate. The bill passed and became law, giving his daughter and her peers a salary boost.
Booher is not the only Michigan lawmaker who voted on bills that could potentially benefit them or their close relatives. A Center for Public Integrity analysis of more than 50,000 pages of official legislative journals logging each day’s actions found six other Michigan legislators who voted on bills even when they publicly noted their own conflicts of interest.
Currently, the penalties for voting when a conflict of interest exists are modest — and seemingly unused. Michigan’s Senate bans members from voting on bills in which they have a private or professional interest. Violators may be expelled by a committee of fellow legislators, though any actions taken would not amount to criminal charges, according to the chamber’s rule book. And not a single senator has been reprimanded under the rule in at least a decade, according to the Senate majority leader’s spokeswoman Amber McCann.
Read more: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2018/04/24/michigan-legislators-conflicts-interest/34220393/
