Benson Website Investigation: Investigate the $9 million contract for Jocelyn Benson's botched campaign finance and lobbying disclosure website debacle.
Investigate the $9 million contract for Jocelyn Benson's campaign finance and lobbying disclosure website.
Occurrences
Evidence
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson testified before the House Committee on Oversight to update lawmakers on upgrades and improvements to the new Michigan Transparency Network (MiTN). MiTN is the state’s new consolidated online reporting system for personal financial disclosure, campaign finance, lobbying, casino interest, and legal defense fund information.
The contract we have with Tyler allocates $9 million over the entire five-year life of the contract... we've spent just over $3 million... we have suspended payment on additional invoices to Tyler until the critical issues have been resolved... We launched a new website to track progress on these fixes. Michigan.gov/MiTNInfo.
Congressman John James (MI-10) is continuing his long-standing effort to protect the integrity of America’s elections by authoring a letter with House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (KY-01) to the U.S. Department of Justice demanding answers and accountability following reports of non-citizens appearing in Michigan jury pools and voter registration systems.
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and Rep. John James (R-Mich.) are launching an investigation examining the integrity of the jury-pool selection and voter registration processes of the State of Michigan... request a briefing and information on if the Department of Justice has been made aware of non-citizen aliens in Michigan jury pools and voter registries and if there are any plans or efforts in place to address them.
Assessments
The available evidence confirms the existence of the roughly $9 million Michigan Transparency Network contract and shows that the state responded to problems by suspending some payments and publicly tracking fixes. However, the record provided does not show that John James himself successfully initiated or completed a specific investigation into Jocelyn Benson's campaign finance and lobbying disclosure website contract. The cited James-related evidence concerns a different Michigan election-administration probe about non-citizen voter registration and jury pools, not the MiTN contract. Because there is some related oversight activity in the same policy area and the contract issue was publicly scrutinized, but no clear proof that James delivered the specific promised investigation, the best judgment is partial rather than delivered or never.