Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration, which is using a new tax on marijuana to fund road projects, has refused to fully release an internal analysis of how additional taxes on pot would impact the cannabis industry and whether they would shift more purchases to the illegal market.
In November 2023 — about 14 months before Whitmer publicly proposed a wholesale tax on marijuana — the state’s Cannabis Regulatory Agency provided officials in the governor’s office a four-page memo on the potential repercussions of a similar tax.
Amid an ongoing legal fight over the new 24% wholesale tax, The Detroit News learned of the memo and attempted to obtain it under the state’s Freedom of Information Act, which states that the public is “entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government.”
But the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs has released only a heavily redacted version of the memo, specifically shielding all of the information about how the Cannabis Regulatory Agency expected new taxes to affect the marijuana industry.
In a letter Friday, Adam Sandoval, deputy director of the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, upheld the decision to hide the information, saying redactions were allowed because the interest in encouraging “frank communication between and among LARA employees clearly outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”
Yet, that “frank communications” exemption to the Freedom of Information Act is for messages between employees of public bodies. The memo was sent from LARA to the governor’s office. The governor’s office is not subject to FOIA and is not a public body, according to the state’s own official FOIA handbook.
The memo is significant because it would likely show whether Whitmer’s administration was warned of job losses or a shift of marijuana sales to the illegal market if taxes were hiked.
Likewise, an ongoing lawsuit from marijuana businesses about the new tax focuses on whether it goes against a ballot proposal that voters approved in 2018 to legalize recreational marijuana and set a 10% tax on retail sales.
The businesses have argued that voters purposefully selected the 10% excise tax on retail sales to keep retail prices reasonable and to diminish the illicit market. If Whitmer’s own team recognized that charging the wholesale tax would boost the black market, that could hurt her push to keep the tax and to keep the new money for the roads it’s generating.
Rose Tantraphol, spokeswoman for the Michigan Cannabis Industry Association, said her group believes “the memorandum is evidence that the state was well aware that such a tax would harm Michigan’s cannabis industry and send individual customers back to the illicit market.”
“The public deserves to know what issues the government considered before adopting this extraordinarily punitive tax, whether the analysis was shared with the Legislature before they voted … and whether the government even considered the impact it would have on the voters’ clearly expressed desire to remove marijuana from the illicit market,” Tantraphol said.
The nonpartisan Michigan House Fiscal Agency has projected the wholesale marijuana tax, approved last year, would generate about $420 million in additional annual revenue for roads.
On Wednesday, the Michigan Supreme Court issued a stay in the court case over the tax and sent it back to the Michigan Court of Appeals for expedited review. The stay effectively pauses discovery at the Court of Claims level while a Court of Appeals panel reviews the case.
Asked for a comment, David Harns, spokesman for the Cannabis Regulatory Agency, said the memo had been released in accordance with state law.
Jocelyn Benson served on Southern Poverty Law Center’s board during alleged informant scheme
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s past service on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s board of directors was in the crosshairs of Republicans last week after the U.S. Department of Justice secured a criminal indictment of the Montgomery, Ala.-based civil rights organization over its decade-long use of paid informants to infiltrate hate groups.
The 11-count indictment from an Alabama federal grand jury alleged that the SPLC, as an organization, committed wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering in its efforts to plant field sources, known as Fs, inside white supremacy groups like Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nation and the National Alliance. The DOJ alleges the SPLC used the informants to foment hatred inside the groups that the SPLC was publicly denouncing on its website.
The practice of paying informants dates back to 2014, according to the indictment.
During that time, Benson served as an unpaid director on SPLC’s board, from 2014 to 2018, according to the group’s tax records.
The records show Benson, a Democrat, was one of 25 board members in 2018, the year she was elected Michigan’s secretary of state.
Benson’s potential Republican rivals in the race for governor have targeted her connection to the SPLC since the DOJ announced the indictment against the organization, which does not name any of its leadership or board members.
“Jocelyn Benson knew and was complicit or was asleep at the wheel while the SPLC was allegedly artificially fueling the very hate they claim to be fighting. Evil stuff,” former Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox wrote Friday on X.
At a gubernatorial candidate forum Thursday in East Lansing, Republican businessman Perry Johnson used his time answering a question about whether he would open up the governor’s office to public records requests to talk about a “very interesting development” involving Benson’s time on the SPLC board.
“Let’s take a look at what happened with the Southern Poverty Law Center. … They were funding the Ku Klux Klan, and at the same time, attacking the Ku Klux Klan,” Johnson said at the Michigan Press Association conference.
U.S. Rep. John James, who, along with Benson, skipped Thursday’s candidate forum, highlighted her ties to the SPLC on social media later in the week.
“Jocelyn Benson is not an outlier. She is the next generation of Democrat operatives, trained to divide, manufacture threats, suppress opposition, and acquire power,” James wrote on X.
Benson campaign spokeswoman Alyssa Bradley addressed the controversy in a statement that defended Benson’s past work in the South on civil rights causes.
“Jocelyn Benson has spent her career advancing the unfinished work of the civil rights movement and expanding economic opportunity, including helping dismantle white supremacist and neo-Nazi extremist networks responsible for hate crimes across the country,” Bradley said in a statement. “And while Donald Trump is trying to use his Justice Department to distract from his reckless economic policies that are driving up costs for Michiganders, Jocelyn remains focused on lowering costs, raising wages, and protecting the rights and freedoms of the people in this state.”
FEC complaint targets McMorrow
A complaint to the Federal Election Commission claims that state Sen. Mallory McMorrow’s campaign failed to report spending up to $773,900 on Facebook ads last quarter or debt owed for the digital ads. Her campaign reported just $100,000 in advertising expenses on its FEC report this month.
The group filing the complaint, Defend the Vote, has endorsed U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens of Birmingham in the Democratic Senate primary over McMorrow and Abdul El-Sayed. Defend the Vote asks the FEC to investigate the alleged violations and take “appropriate remedial measures.”
“This glaring error in her public reports raises serious questions about her compliance with the Act’s reporting requirements,” the complaint states. “Worse, it raises reason to believe a corporate vendor may have illegally fronted those advertising costs for her campaign to inflate her reported cash on hand on filing day.”
McMorrow’s campaign said the ad costs weren’t reported because they hadn’t paid the invoice yet.
“Just like any campaign, we pay our invoices as we receive them,” McMorrow spokeswoman Hannah Lindlow said. “This is a baseless attack from an organization supporting our opponent who is dropping like a rock in the polls.”
Redistricting commissioners running for districts they drew
Two members of the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission have filed to run for the state Legislature in districts they drew.
Rhonda Lange, a Reed City resident and former Republican member of the commission, will run in the GOP primary for the 4th Senate District against incumbent Republican Sen. Roger Hauck.
Anthony Eid, a Detroit resident and former “nonpartisan” member of the commission, will run in a crowded Democratic primary in the 9th House District. The seat is up for grabs after former House Speaker Joe Tate, D-Detroit, said he would not seek re-election.
Starting in 2020, the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission redrew the boundaries for Michigan’s 13 Congressional districts as well as the state’s 148 state House and Senate districts. Lange and Eid were among the inaugural group of commissioners to take up a task that, for decades, had been controlled by the party in power in the Legislature.
The commission is currently in a dormant status and will remain so unless there is a legal challenge to the maps or until the next group of commissioners is seated.
No ‘frontrunner’ in the gubernatorial race, Swanson says
Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson, a Democrat running for governor, maintained Thursday that there is no “frontrunner” in the gubernatorial race after other Republican candidates indicated they were likely to face Democratic candidate Jocelyn Benson in the general election.
Swanson cautioned “easy” during the Michigan Press Association’s gubernatorial forum Thursday in East Lansing when Republican businessman Perry Johnson said the Democratic secretary of state was “the likely candidate on the Democratic side.”
Benson was not in attendance at the debate and was a frequent target of the Republican candidates participating: Johnson, Senate Republican Leader Aric Nesbitt, former Attorney General Mike Cox and longtime Pastor Ralph Rebandt.
Swanson, later in the forum, repeated that there is no “frontrunner” in the race for governor.
“The people on Aug. 4 will determine who the frontrunner is,” Swanson said. “And if we have looked around the country, and have seen what the people around this country have said about candidates who think they are next up, the people spoke differently.”
He added: “Let these candidates running for governor show by their actions and where they show up and what they prioritize.”
Tlaib responds to KMR on Democratic convention behavior
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Detroit, last week shot back at her colleague Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet, D-Bay City, after McDonald Rivet called the behavior on the floor of the Democrats’ state party’s convention last weekend “deeply troubling.”
Tlaib said it was “unfortunate” that McDonald Rivet’s statement had focused on Dearborn attorney Amir Makled, who got the nomination for the University of Michigan Board of Regents after representing several students who faced charges after protests calling on UM to divest from weapons manufacturing and Israel.
Makled defeated incumbent UM Regent Jordan Acker, a pro-Israel Democrat whose home and law office were vandalized during UM’s campus unrest.
McDonald Rivet had called Makled’s views extreme and pointed to his reference to Hezbollah leaders as “martyrs,” or amplifying Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian military commander who was killed by the U.S. in 2020. She said the convention decisions could hurt Democrats’ chances to win back power in the fall midterm elections.
Tlaib said Makled told her that he doesn’t know McDonald Rivet and has never spoken to the congresswoman.
“It’s unfortunate that the results of the election, for her, was about him, and not the fact that the base wasn’t being listened to,” Tlaib said.
“She failed to mention that she endorsed his opponent, who is now under investigation at the University of Michigan for improper messages that were really nasty,” Tlaib added in reference to Acker.
“You still haven’t responded to that, but you’re going to go after the Democratic nominee, who all he did was listen to the students, and they showed up for him?”
Acker was ousted after The Guardian reported that he appeared to have made obscene sexual comments about a Democratic Party strategist and lewd comments about a female UM student in Slack messages.
When asked about the messages by The News, Acker said the allegations were “ridiculous” and “fake.” UM has hired a New York law firm to investigate Acker’s purported messages.
Republican disqualified in 11th District U.S. House race
A Republican candidate for an Oakland County U.S. House seat in the 11th Congressional District has been disqualified from the ballot after failing to submit the required 1,000 valid signatures to the county clerk, according to the state Bureau of Elections.
Tony Prieto, of Farmington, had been mounting a long-shot GOP campaign for the safely Democratic seat. His campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
As of Saturday, he is the only congressional candidate in Michigan to have been disqualified in the current election cycle.
The campaign for Democratic candidate Don Ufford, of Bloomfield Township, previously filed a complaint about Prieto’s signatures
“This is about ensuring basic faith in our democratic process,” Ufford’s campaign manager Mark Goldenberg said in an April 21 statement. “Voters deserve to know that every candidate is playing by the same set of rules. If you want to serve in Congress, the first step is doing the work to qualify for the ballot and following the law.”
Prieto’s disqualification leaves Troy mayor Ethan Baker as the lone Republican on the ballot in Michigan’s 11th District, which current U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens won by 18.6 percentage points in 2024.
Six Democrats filed petitions to appear on the district’s primary ballot as they look to replace Stevens, who is running for U.S. Senate.
GM courts D.C. policymakers, journalists during correspondents’ weekend
Detroit-based automaker General Motors Co. on Saturday hosted an exclusive garden brunch in Washington, D.C., one of many events in town to celebrate the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
The brunch was held at the Beall-Washington House, the historic former home of the late Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham.
The event featured displays of a Cadillac Formula 1 Team replica race car and the all-electric LYRIQ-V, which gave journalists and policymakers in attendance “a high-octane look at American innovation, manufacturing, and performance,” according to the company.
Rival Michigan automaker Ford Motor Co. did not host an event this year, while Toyota Motor Corp. was a lead sponsor of the 2026 Washington Women in Journalism Awards celebration on Thursday.
Tweet of the Week
The Insider report’s “Tweet of the Week,” recognizing a social media post that was worthy of attention or, possibly, just a laugh, from the previous week goes to state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, D-Royal Oak.
This award recognizes both a post from McMorrow, a candidate for U.S. Senate, and the social media buzz generated by her participation in a drum line at the Michigan Democratic convention on April 19.
Some Republicans criticized McMorrow’s dance moves, including former attorney general candidate Matt DePerno, who claimed he dances “so much better than this.” A campaign account of President Donald Trump also shared the video and called McMorrow “a theater kid who thinks she has ‘McMentum.'”
McMorrow fired back, “Theater kid? Last week your guy was pretending to be Jesus Christ,” referring to an AI-generated image Trump posted that appeared to depict himself as Jesus. The Republican president has claimed the image was supposed to portray him as a doctor.
cmauger@detroitnews.com
clivengood@detroitnews.com
mburke@detroitnews.com
eleblanc@detroitnews.com
gschwab@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Insider: Whitmer administration shields secret memo on marijuana tax
Reporting by Craig Mauger, Chad Livengood, Melissa Nann Burke, Beth LeBlanc and Grant Schwab, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
