During a joint committee hearing on Tuesday presided over by State Rep. Jay DeBoyer (R-Clay Township), legislators heard testimony from the Chief of Staff from the Michigan Department of State (MDOS) and representatives of Tyler Technologies, the software company that has received portions of more than $9 million in taxpayer funding to develop the dysfunctional new campaign finance filing site, the Michigan Transparency Network (MiTN). During the committee meeting, DeBoyer discovered that a subsidiary of Tyler Technologies had purchased the company that operated MERTS, the campaign finance system that preceded the disastrous new system.

“Only our inept bureaucracy would pay the same technology company that ran our old financial disclosure system millions of taxpayers’ dollars for a new website, then shut down the old site before the new product is even finished,” DeBoyer said. “We’ve long known about our Secretary of State’s reckless decision to implement her new disclosure system despite a myriad of obvious problems. Now we learn that the software company she wasted so many tax dollars on literally owned the old site, and that she could’ve easily kept it running until her new project was ready. Jocelyn Benson’s negligence is an embarrassment to our state.”

Last week, in an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote, the Michigan House of Representatives passed a new financial disclosure policy to circumvent the Secretary of State’s system. MiTN has been plagued with a litany of technical issues since its launch which MDOS has documented on their website.

The site has prevented certain filers from submitting their 2025 disclosure reports, has routinely produced inaccurate public search results, and still has 40 ongoing, unresolved issues. Despite these issues, the MDOS Chief of Staff inexplicably testified on Tuesday that the system is working and serviceable.

“The Legislature moved in darn near unanimous fashion to remove this, so the statement that ‘this is working’ is not true,” DeBoyer said to the MDOS and Tyler Technologies representatives during the committee meeting. “Let’s just admit what the problem is. The problem is that Tyler Technologies is not able to get this running in the fashion that we expected it to be run. So, we’re not going to hedge anymore. We’re not going to use key words to make it sound good. It’s not working.”

Just before the committee meeting adjourned, DeBoyer asked that the Secretary of State’s office return for more questions and follow-up testimony on issues with their system on June 24^th. DeBoyer is preparing to send this request formally in writing as well.