In 2007, the Lansing State Journal attempted to acquire the names and salaries of the political appointees working for the governor. The newspaper reported that the governor's office "would not disclose the salaries of her staff, nor would the governor's office disclose the number of employees serving on her or the lieutenant governor's staff." Last year, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy's "Show Michigan the Money" transparency project again asked the governor's office to regularly post on a state Web site both the names and salaries of state employees, but the governor's office asserted that "this level of detail provides little value to the taxpayer."

While the governor is the most powerful and highest profile state official to advocate greater sunlight on spending, and then demur when it came to her own staff, she is not alone. On Feb. 5, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox and the Republican caucus in the Michigan House of Representatives held a press conference to boast of their own transparency accomplishments and to call upon the governor to create a searchable database for all state spending.

House Minority Leader Kevin Elsenheimer, R-Bellaire, proclaimed himself the first lawmaker in state history to post his spending online. And yet, with an annual office budget of $482,000, the vast majority of which is spent on salaries for his staff, Rep. Elsenheimer's historic online report does not list a single staff name or salary. This oversight is replicated by nearly every member of his supposedly pro-transparency caucus (most of whom have an annual budget of $100,000 to both pay for staff and all other office expenses.) Just two legislators with two full-time employees each, Rep. Tom McMillin, R-Rochester Hills, and Rep. Justin Amash, R-Kentwood, provided a detailed picture of their spending by posting names and salaries. (It bears noting that both lawmakers are new, having just taken office in January.)

As with the governor's 2003 Executive Order, the attorney general provided an online database of his contracts last year. Since then, he has repeatedly called upon the governor to commit to a state spending Web site comparable to the Missouri Accountability Portal (http://mapyourtaxes.mo.gov/.) This is indeed a laudable goal for him to support, as the impressive Missouri Web site provides that state's spending data in a searchable format and in great detail... including the names and salaries of state employees. And yet, though the examples of Reps. McMillin and Amash show that providing names and salaries is possible for even the newest of state officials, the attorney general has not taken this step in his own office, even after a year of demanding a higher transparency standard for the rest of state government.

Likewise, while Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land currently provides the most complete expenditure report of any state official, even this laudable effort does not include employee names and salaries.

Tax dollars do not spend themselves. Ultimately, any champion of state spending transparency is effectively demanding more exposure of who is getting the dollars that have been taken from the hard-working people of Michigan. Public officials who seriously want to bring about this important goal should set an example and start the sunshine at home.

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(Cross posted at the Mackinac Center's website and Charlie Marlow's War.)

Kenneth M. Braun is a policy analyst specializing in fiscal and budgetary issues with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a research and educational institute headquartered in Midland, Mich. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author and the Center are properly cited.