In response to one of our many transparency lawsuits, The Associated Press recently said the Mackinac Center “often takes aggressive action to get public records.” If you’ve been following our legal work recently, you know that’s the case. Lawsuits against the cities of Flint and Warren have been featured in local outlets such as MLive, The Macomb Daily News, Fox 17 and C & G News. State news outlets such as The Detroit News, Lansing State Journal and Bridge Michigan have covered our work on transparency reforms. During Sunshine Week, Steve Delie was on a virtual Bridge panel with people across the political spectrum to talk about the importance of government transparency.
In addition to earning media coverage across the state, our lawsuit against the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services is getting national attention, with articles in the Washington Examiner, Fox News, The Associated Press, The Federalist, The Epoch Times and The Daily Wire. Our client Charlie LeDuff was interviewed on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and “The Story with Martha MacCallum.” Both LeDuff and Steve Delie appeared on “Fox and Friends,” and LeDuff and Delie co-authored an op-ed for USA Today that ran across the country.
We’re proud to be a part of diverse coalitions on a variety of issues. A coalition on bail reform has support from institutions as “ideologically diverse as the Free Press Editorial Board and the libertarian Mackinac Center,” according to a Detroit Free Press editorial. We partnered with eight other groups, including the Michigan Chamber and ABC Michigan, on a coalition letter that advised Michigan lawmakers on how to spend the additional $5.7 billion the state is collecting from the American Rescue Plan Act. In an op-ed in The Detroit News, James Hohman wrote that lawmakers should “look for ways to use these funds to improve the state’s long-run finances and competitiveness.” The recommendations were sent to lawmakers and were also covered by the Lansing insider publishers Gongwer and MIRS News.
Throughout the past year, we’ve seen the dangers of the growing administrative state. Unelected bureaucrats in the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration released a new set of rules that would make workplace COVID-19 rules permanent. Jarrett Skorup wrote about this problem in an op-ed for Reason, while Michael Van Beek was quoted on this issue in The Detroit News. Van Beek also discussed the issue on “The Guy Gordon Show” and “Michigan’s Big Show.”
