Michigan lawmaker's past under fire after pushing new bill
LANSING — As a Senate committee approved a bill Wednesday to strip campaign finance authority from the incoming secretary of state, the Republican lawmaker who pushed the bill was in the spotlight for his own campaign finance problems.
Sen. Dave Robertson, R-Grand Blanc, has been repeatedly sanctioned for campaign finance violations since 2012, including filing late reports and omitting pertinent information from his reports. He has been fined more than $4,000 for those missteps since 2014 and still owes the state $1,681.33 in fines.
Genesee County Clerk John Gleason, a Flint Democrat, blasted Robertson for what he called a clear conflict of interest in introducing the bill that would shift campaign finance enforcement away from the secretary of state. The bill was introduced during the lame-duck legislative session, just weeks before Robertson will have to leave office because of term limits.
"The secretary of state is the right person to oversee campaign finance, which is why it's been that way in Michigan for decades,” said Gleason. “I'm glad to see that Jocelyn Benson (the incoming Democratic secretary of state) wants to clean up the cesspool of money in politics.... but Republicans like Dave Robertson in the Legislature don't like that. That's why they're trying to gut enforcement for their own benefit. That's about the most perfect example of the fox guarding the henhouse that I've ever seen.”
Read more: https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2018/12/04/michigan-legislature-bills-lame-duck-session/2162560002/