For months, Michigan House Democrats have used secret funding sources to pay an outside public relations firm to run communications while leaving key internal positions unfilled, an unusual arrangement that some say raises ethical red flags.
Under the Michigan Legislature’s current structure, each of the four legislative caucuses — the majority and minority parties in both chambers — has a publicly-funded budget for a central communications staff that answers to caucus leadership.
Leadership roles on the House Democrats’ communications team have remained unfilled for months. The caucus’ last press secretary left that role on Oct. 2, 2020.
In lieu of staffing those positions, House Democratic Leader Donna Lasinksi, D-Scio Township, has contracted out communications services using an outside funding source with Byrum & Fisk Advocacy Communications, a firm led by former Michigan House Democratic Leader and current Michigan State University Board of Trustees Chair Dianne Byrum and Mark Fisk, a former political and communications director for the Michigan House Democratic Caucus.
Under the current arrangement, Stephanie Cepak — a former Gongwer News Service reporter who returned to Byrum & Fisk last year after working as a communications manager for Michigan State University’s Honors College — is serving as Lasinski’s de facto spokesperson, setting up news conferences regarding legislation and policy issues with Lasinski and other Democratic lawmakers, fielding questions from journalists and sending out caucus press releases. She currently lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee, according to her Byrum & Fisk biography.
Cepak has also sent out news releases on behalf of other groups — some with pending interests in legislative issues — in recent months, including the Michigan League of Conservation Voters, the National Wildlife Federation, the Great Lakes Business Network, the Michigan Energy Innovation Business Council and others.
On Feb. 17, one such release included comments from business groups who testified in support of a bill before the House Energy Committee, House Bill 4236, that would eliminate a cap on rooftop solar. In March, Cepak sent releases on behalf of environmental and business groups criticizing how House and Senate hearings on the Line 5 pipeline were conducted.
Nearly a dozen sources with knowledge of Michigan legislative communications told MLive that while it’s common for lawmakers to work with public relations firms on their political campaigns or to consult on specific policy issues, the scope of Byrum & Fisk’s work with the House Democratic Caucus over the last several months is not the norm.
It’s also unclear how House Democrats have been paying for the contract, as it’s not coming from the House budget. In a response to a request from MLive, the Michigan House Business Office confirmed the funds did not come from the allotment available to the House Democratic Caucus to hire communications officials.
In a brief statement issued through Cepak in response to several questions about the nature of and funding sources behind the contract, Lasinksi declined to say how much it cost or where the money was coming from — only that it wasn’t paid for with taxpayer dollars.
Lasinksi said in the statement she believed the caucus “needed to hit the ground running to effectively advance our message” after staff turnover following the last election, and said the Byrum & Fisk contract has helped the caucus increase bandwidth, field media requests and advance the caucus message while they continue the hiring process. She said both Republican and Democratic caucuses have employed outside experts for decades.
But the lack of publicly available knowledge about the agreement between the caucus and an outside firm that also represents a number of special interest groups is cause for deep concern, said Simon Schuster, executive director of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network.
“What makes this situation unique is that these are communications being paid for on behalf of the caucus,” Schuster said. “We want to know who’s funding our politicians’ communications, especially if they’re coming out on an official level for a broad number of politicians.”
House Speaker Jason Wentworth, R-Clare, agreed, saying in a statement provided to MLive that “people deserve to know whether partisan activists and lobbyists are setting priorities for the House Democrats.”
“Everyone knows people are losing faith in government. This is a problem we all need to fix,” Wentworth said. “But secret deals like this take us in the wrong direction. The people deserve to know who their government answers to.”
As recently as last week, the House Democratic Caucus had job listings posted for openings for a communications director, press secretary and communications advisor, offering maximum annual salaries of $90,000, $65,000 and $48,000, respectively. As of this week, the press secretary position had been removed from the available job postings.
Lasinksi said in the statement provided to MLive that the caucus expects to make several new hire announcements in the coming days, adding, “I look forward to our continued partnership with Byrum & Fisk.”
“We have been intentional throughout our hiring process to ensure we have a talented and diverse group of candidates to interview,” Lasinski’s statement read.
A former House Democratic Caucus staffer with direct knowledge of the situation said the Byrum & Fisk contract was initially described to communications staff as a limited arrangement while caucus leadership conducted candidate searches for open positions.
But the relationship quickly evolved into Byrum & Fisk acting in the capacity of communications director, the former staffer said, with the firm calling the shots on caucus messaging, requiring final approval on social media posts and sending government-paid staff press release templates to distribute. Staffers were also directed not to take press inquiries for lawmakers and pass any that came through to Byrum & Fisk, they said.
The former staffer said the arrangement, combined with the lack of progress on hiring internal communications staff, was part of the reason they left, calling the delay in hiring for those positions “really bizarre.”
“Byrum & Fisk started directing our own staff within our office, which I obviously had an issue with,” the former staffer said. “Things had to go through them for final approval before anything could be posted, which obviously was not terribly conducive to a smooth working operation.”
In previous sessions, another former House Democratic Caucus staffer said even in instances where lawmakers worked with Byrum & Fisk on messaging for issue-specific press events, the caucus press secretary was the point of contact for reporters and coordinated media requests that came through for lawmakers.
While it’s not unusual for Byrum & Fisk or other firms to work with lawmakers, it is unusual for a caucus to be so light on internal communications staff, said Adrian Hemond, CEO of the firm Grassroots Midwest and a former chief of staff for the House Democratic Caucus under then-Democratic Leader Tim Greimel. Those unfilled positions could make it harder for House Democrats to advance their message in competitive regions of the state, he said.
“Other than what individual members are doing, it doesn’t appear to be a sort of broad statewide strategy around elevating a message for the House Democrats right now,” he said. “It would be tough to do under the best of circumstances, considering the messaging environment right now with COVID, national politics and everything that’s going on, but being light on staff doesn’t help.”
One big distinction between internal legislative staff and an external vendor is the lack of rules about what political activities an outside firm can engage in while working for the Legislature, Schuster said. Hiring an outside firm to assist with communications isn’t inherently problematic — but using one instead of making internal hires for day-to-day communications on policy matters, particularly when they have other clients, is “troubling,” he said.
A lack of clarity about who or what is ultimately funding the arrangement adds additional ethical concerns and suggests “that the line between politics and policies is becoming increasingly porous,” he continued.
“If we don’t know who’s underwriting the operations of a public body, whether it’s for political or policy purposes, I think that that is a little bit unsettling, simply because we trust on a basic level of transparency that our politicians are working on a day-to-day basis in a public way,” Schuster said.
In the statement provided to MLive, Lasinski said “both partners have been transparent and forthright in disclosing other client work so we can remain focused on the task at hand,” but did not elaborate further on what steps were being taken to prevent conflicts of interest between the House Democratic Caucus and Byrum & Fisk’s other clients.
John Truscott, CEO of the firm Truscott Rossman and former communications director and press secretary for then-Gov. John Engler, said having a firm come in to be involved in consulting is perfectly appropriate, but said it’s unusual for an outside firm to be running day-to-day operations and assuming communications control for an indefinite amount of time.
He said caucus leaders should be concerned about the appearance of the current arrangement, adding that not revealing the source of the funding “raises a lot of unnecessary red flags.”
“I’ve seen it where caucuses would hire somebody to consult or assist or provide an outside viewpoint, but not to be, well, the eyes and ears and mouthpiece of a caucus,” he said. “I would think that there are some real ethical concerns with somebody acting as an employee, basically, but also working on the outside of the system.”
Greater government transparency has been a hot topic in the House of late, with the chamber voting unanimously to subject the governor, lieutenant governor and their staff to the state’s Freedom of Information Act and establish a separate Legislative Open Records Act for lawmakers — albeit with an array of broad exemptions on what types of documentation could be requested by the public.
Similar legislation is pending in the Senate, although previous proposals to change open records laws to include the governor and Legislature haven’t made it through the chamber.
Several House Democrats were lead sponsors on the package. Following the legislation’s passage, Lasinski and other House Democrats, in a Zoom press conference organized by Byrum & Fisk, urged Wentworth and House Republicans to consider amending House rules to subject their chamber to the proposed legislative open records rules immediately.
Even if lawmakers’ records and communications were currently included in open records laws, it’s possible internal Byrum & Fisk records regarding the House Democratic Caucus account would not be subject to them, as Byrum & Fisk is a private entity and the contract is not being funded by taxpayer dollars.
“Everybody these days talks about transparency — I guess it’s not really being practiced,” Truscott said.
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