The antiquated state government system that allowed any public scrutiny, introduced 25 years ago, is now in the process of being replaced by a transparency website called “MiTN,” a cloud-based portal that stands for “Michigan Transparency Network.”
The Record-Eagle tried that new portal this week to gather specific financial data about two state representatives from the Grand Traverse County area: Betsy Coffia, D-Traverse City, and John Roth, R-Interlochen.
First launched in March 2024, MiTN is key part of the state’s effort to implement Proposal 1, which requires elected officials to file annual financial disclosure reports on their income, assets, liabilities, gifts from lobbyists, positions held in certain organizations, and agreements on future employment.
Proposal 1 received overwhelming support, garnering 66% of the ballots cast when it went to a vote in the 2022 election.
Overseeing the MiTN project is the state Bureau of Elections, a department of the Michigan Secretary of State’s office headed by Jocelyn Benson.
While the new transparency portal promises much greater access to politicians’ personal data, the software itself has been plagued by problems that make it difficult for officials to upload the required reports.
Software vendor Tyler Technologies recently agreed to refund $166,000 in credits to the state because of website failures and downtime. Further payments to the company have been suspended until the problems are fixed.
State Republicans have strongly criticized the $9 million project, lambasting Benson online and at a recent hearing of the House Oversight Committee.
Workarounds, such as e-mailing statements in PDF format or as photographs of hand-written reports, have led to further delays, officials said.
Much of the technical problem is rooted in the old MERTS system, which contained inconsistent data and missing information, according to Tyler Technologies and state IT officials. Transferring that data to a new cloud-based platform was far more difficult than they originally had envisioned, they said.
Another challenge is political in nature. State legislators had to decide what types of personal financial information should be disclosed. That created loopholes or “blind spots” that undermine transparency.
For example, “officials can transfer assets to their spouse to avoid disclosing them, and don’t have to report the free, lobbyist-paid travel that many elected officials have enjoyed,” Bridge Michigan reported.
For her part, Benson said she takes “full responsibility” for the website’s problems and has promised “rolling fixes” until they are resolved.
In a recent interview with the Record-Eagle, Benson said she will voluntarily release all relevant financial information as governor, and require all state department executives to do the same.
The ultimate goal, she said, is “to strengthen public trust in government and foster a more transparent and responsive democracy.”
A Look Under the Hood
Getting started with the MiTN transparency portal requires setting up a “MiLogin” account with the state at https://milogin.michigan.gov/. That multi-factor authentification process can take up to 15 minutes, if all goes well.
Once the account is established, users must agree to a long set of “terms and conditions” that use some dense legal terminology, then they must hunt through the menu of available state websites for the correct link.
A Record-Eagle reporter mistakenly clicked on a link designed for elected officials, which required a 20-minute journey back to the start. The 47-page user manual from Tyler Technologies is not designed for ease of use by elected officials, much less the public.
Once inside the correct portion of the still-unfinished MiTN portal, users can search by a number of variables, such as an elected official’s last name, campaign committee number and office held.
When the correct official’s “page” comes up in MiTN, users can dig into 14 different categories of information, including details about donations, late filing fees, campaign expenses, loan endorsements and debts.
The “fundraisers” category, for example, offers details about who hosted the event, where it took place, when it occurred and the gross receipts.
Data in most of these categories is sortable by date, name, amount and other common variables.
Coffia and Roth Data
Using MiTN on June 27, the Record-Eagle learned that Betsy Coffia held 41 fundraising events from June 17, 2014, to Oct. 28, 2024. Before winning a seat in the Michigan House, she also served on the Grand Traverse County Board of Commissioners.
The most successful fundraising event in that grouping raised $12,825 at a “meet and greet” on June 30, 2024.
In contrast, Coffia received a direct campaign contribution of $134,683.37 from the Michigan House Democratic Fund on Oct. 26, 2024 – more than 10 times the amount of the highest fundraising event that was held for her. The MHDF also donated about $218,000 in “in-kind” contributions that month, much of it likely in the form of advertising support.
MiTN lists 16,412 donations to various Coffia campaigns since 2012, the vast majority of them ranging from $10 to $250. The new portal enables users to find out exactly who donated and how many times they did so over the years.
No personal financial expenditures were yet available for Coffia, at least in a readily accessible section of the website. The filing deadline for that type of information is a moving target, critics say.
For state Rep. John Roth, for example, the website users can easily find out the name and address for his campaign committee treasurer, recordkeeper and depository (bank).
MiTN also shows that Roth paid three late filing fees from 2019 to 2021, with fees ranging from $10 to $2,000.
The website also has a list of Roth’s 52 campaign finance filing statements, including the amount of cash on hand for each major statement – opening balance and closing balance.
No public funding schedules were listed for Roth.
On the other hand, he did hold 20 fundraising events in the last four years. Most of them took place in Traverse City; a few were held in Lansing and one at Central Lake. The Park Place Hotel was often a venue for those events.
In terms of expenditures, Roth made numerous payments to consulting firms, such as Greenlee Consulting and Bright Spark Strategies, which helped organize golf outings.
A total of 327 campaign expenses are on the list.
In July 2024, Roth’s campaign committee send $5,000 to the Michigan House Republican Campaign Committee, an expense marked as “House Dues.”
On the income side, the same MHRC made eight “in-kind” contributions to Roth’s committee in 2020, totaling more than than $500,000.
Other big donors in 2020 included the Wentworth Majority Fund, Chatfield Majority Fund and Matt Hall Majority Fund.
Politicians in leadership roles often raise money for their fellow party members to help achieve a voting majority in the Michigan House or Senate.
Similar practices take place at the national level.
Roth also received campaign contributions from industry groups, such as the Priority Health PAC, Realtors PAC, Auto Dealers PAC and Michigan Oil & Gas Association. But, since 2019, the vast majority of Roth’s donations came from individuals.
As with Coffia, personal expenditure information for Roth is not yet available on MiTN, at least in the public search section.
© 2025 The Record-Eagle (Traverse City, Mich.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
