Michigan Plate Readers

Why Michigan

Michigan's Freedom of Information Act opens with its purpose: "all persons, except those persons incarcerated in state or local correctional facilities, are entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of those who represent them as public officials and public employees, consistent with this act", and "The people shall be informed so that they may fully participate in the democratic process" (MCL 15.231(2)).

The Act's fee rules were rewritten in 2015 (Public Act 563 of 2014, effective July 1, 2015). Fee demands reported before the change included one from the City of Westland: $1 per page and $45.61 an hour for staff time, over which the Mackinac Center for Public Policy sued the city; Westland settled in January 2014, dropping a $5 fee for opening a request and cutting copies to 10 cents a page (Michigan Capitol Confidential, a Mackinac Center publication, Sept. 20, 2013 and Jan. 15, 2014). An article in the Michigan Municipal League's magazine, The Review (May/June 2015), called the changes "unprecedented in FOIA's nearly 40-year history."

Before the rewrite the Act already capped labor at the hourly wage of the lowest-paid employee capable of retrieving the records. Under the rewritten rules a public body may charge labor at no more than the hourly wage of its "lowest-paid employee capable" of the work, plus up to 50 percent for fringe benefits if the multiplier is shown on the itemization; must present every fee on a standard itemization form that lists and explains each of six components; may not charge any fee until it has adopted and made publicly available its procedures and a written public summary; and must decide a fee appeal, where it offers one, within ten business days, with one extension of up to ten business days. A requester can take an excessive fee to court, where "the burden is on the public body to establish that the required fee complies" with the Act and the body's own guidelines. A court that finds a fee arbitrary and capricious must fine the body $500 and may award the requester $500. A wrongful denial found arbitrary and capricious carries a $1,000 fine and $1,000 in punitive damages, and a willful and intentional failure to comply, or bad faith, carries a fine of $2,500 to $7,500 for each occurrence. (MCL 15.234, 15.240, 15.240a, 15.240b.)

Those are the tools this project uses. Every request we file asks for an itemized fee estimate and for the public-interest fee waiver the Act allows, and the standard documents request cites the labor cap.

What the Act covers

The same Act, with the same fees and remedies, governs every request on this site. Cities, townships, counties and their police departments are public bodies under the Act, and so is every agency on this site. The Act's exemptions in section 13 (MCL 15.243) apply record by record, and this site publishes each agency's exemption claims as made.

The definition of "public body" covers state agencies "but does not include the governor or lieutenant governor, the executive office of the governor or lieutenant governor, or employees thereof" (MCL 15.232(h)(i)). For the legislative branch the whole entry reads "An agency, board, commission, or council in the legislative branch of the state government" (MCL 15.232(h)(ii)). The House, the Senate and individual legislators are not on the list.

Both exclusions date from the original act of 1976. As the Attorney General's 1986 opinion on the question recounts, the bill as introduced in March 1976 listed "[a] legislator" among public bodies, and a House substitute struck the phrase that September; the opinion concluded that "legislators are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act" (OAG No. 6390, Sept. 26, 1986). The Legislature's own guide to the Act says: "The Act does not apply to the judicial branch and it does not apply to legislators."

News organizations have reported Michigan as one of two states whose public-records law reaches neither the governor's office nor its legislature. The other is Massachusetts, where the statute excludes the legislature and a 1997 court decision excludes the governor (Bridge Michigan, Nov. 11, 2025; WCMU, Jan. 22, 2026).

Bills to extend the Act

Removing the exclusions takes a change to the Act, and the Legislature has voted on one in every session since 2015. Bills to open the Legislature and the governor's office to records requests have passed one chamber in each of the six sessions since 2015-16, including the current one, and as of September 28, 2026 have not passed both. In four sessions the House passed them and the Senate took no vote; in two the Senate passed them and the House took no floor vote.

Session Lead bill Passed Vote In the other chamber
2015-16 House Bill 5469 House, Sept. 21, 2016 100-6 Senate committee; no vote
2017-18 House Bill 4148 House, March 16, 2017 108-0 Senate committee; no vote
2019-20 House Bills 4007, 4008 House, March 19, 2019 107-0 Senate committee; no vote
2021-22 House Bills 4383, 4386 House, March 18, 2021 109-0 Senate committee; no vote
2023-24 Senate Bills 669, 670 Senate, June 26, 2024 36-2 House committee reported them in December 2024; no House vote before the session ended
2025-26 Senate Bills 1, 2 Senate, Jan. 29, 2025 33-2 House Committee on Government Operations, same day; no recorded action as of Sept. 28, 2026

Some House packages ran to several bills; the lead bills are listed. Dates and vote counts are from the bill histories at legislature.mi.gov.

House Speaker Matt Hall has said the House will not take up the Senate bills and is advancing his own ethics and transparency package, which he calls HEAT. The day after the 2025 Senate vote he told reporters: "People tell me that [the Senate] passed a bill, a watered-down FOIA bill. And you know, we're not going to pass that" (Michigan Advance, Jan. 30, 2025). In November 2025 he said, "We're not doing FOIA," and that HEAT "will have much better benefit than FOIA" (Bridge Michigan, Nov. 11, 2025). The Senate bills would not take effect until 2027 (Bridge Michigan, Nov. 11, 2025). As of September 2026, none of these bills has become law.

Michigan's 2015 integrity grade

In 2015 the Center for Public Integrity and Global Integrity graded every state government on 245 indicators in 13 categories, from public access to information to ethics enforcement, measuring both what the law says and how it works in practice. Michigan ranked 50th of 50, with an F and a score of 51 out of 100, and failed 10 of the 13 categories. In public access to information it scored 33.8 and ranked 42nd; 44 states failed that category (category scores are from the project's data file). The study's Michigan report noted that "the state doesn't require officials to disclose their financial holdings and outside income."

The study graded state government; every agency on this site except the Michigan State Police is a local public body. It was also the study's last edition: the Center published no later one, closed in 2025, and its site is preserved as an archive.

Financial disclosure since 2024

Until 2024, Michigan did not require its legislators, governor or other top state officials to disclose their personal finances. Michigan and Idaho were reported to be the only two states without such a requirement (Bridge Michigan, Oct. 4, 2022; Citizens Research Council of Michigan, Dec. 1, 2023).

Voters changed that on November 8, 2022, approving Proposal 1 with 66 percent of the vote. The Legislature passed the implementing law in November 2023 and the governor signed it on December 7, 2023 (Public Act 281 of 2023); the first reports were due April 15, 2024. The law requires filers to list assets and sources of income, liabilities, positions held in organizations, future-employment agreements, and gifts and travel reported by lobbyists, with a fee for late filing. It does not require the value of the assets: "A public officer is not required to disclose the value of any disclosure under subsection (1)" (MCL 15.707(2), as amended by 2025 PA 3).

Enforcement

The Act names no agency to enforce it. If a public body denies a request or lets its deadline pass, the requester may appeal to the head of the body or sue in circuit court or, for a state public body, in the court of claims (MCL 15.235(3); 15.240(1)). If it charges a fee the Act does not allow, the requester may appeal to the head of the body where its procedures provide for fee appeals, and may sue within 45 days once the head has ruled or failed to rule, or if the body offers no appeal (MCL 15.240a(1)). Apart from the cut in labor charges the Act imposes for a late response to a request labeled as one (MCL 15.234(9)), nothing follows unless the requester does one of those. A requester who wins in court is awarded attorney fees and costs (MCL 15.240(6); in fee cases, at the court's discretion when the fee is cut by half or more, 15.240a(6)), but must bring the case first, and the Act's civil fines are paid to the state.

Why we are doing this

We live here. The Act says persons are entitled to full and complete information about the affairs of government. This site tests that for one kind of record. Agencies receive a standard request text, adapted where their circumstances call for it, and the text as sent is published with the agency's page. Every deadline, extension, fee estimate and appeal is dated and published with the documents, and the request log records every response in the same columns. How the pages are built, how an agency reviews a draft of its findings, and how errors are corrected are on Methods.

Sources