Washington ― Two retirees from the Traverse City area wrote Tuesday to the House Ethics Committee, asking the panel to investigate Republican U.S. Rep. Jack Bergman over his top aides running a political consulting firm on the side while evading financial disclosures about the business.
The complaint from a retired judge and a former Navy chaplain highlighted the findings of a Detroit News story published Friday about Bergman’s aides’ taxpayer-funded House pay being structured in such a way that they’ve avoided having to disclose the side business or the income they’ve made from the company since it began nearly five years ago.
Experts who reviewed the setup for the News said it was highly unusual and appears to use a loophole in the rules allowing the chief of staff and deputy chief to take home senior staff-level pay without having to file a financial disclosure report or become subject to the House’s limits on outside earned income.
Bergman’s chief of staff who co-owns the business, Tony Lis, has said he’s in compliance with House rules, including the limits on outside earned income.
The complaint claims he violated House rules and points to how Bergman’s influence could be tied to his top aides’ outside consulting work because he’s endorsed or campaigned for many of their clients in northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, the region that Bergman represents in Congress.
“As long-time residents of the First Congressional District, we were shocked to learn that Congressman Bergman would allow this situation to occur in violation of ethics rules and transparency,” wrote the Rev. Jeffrey Rhodes, a retired Navy chaplain, and Norman R. Hayes, a retired probate judge in Antrim County.
“We deserve confidence that public officials designed to serve the people of Upper and Northern Michigan operate with full transparency, accountability and adherence to ethical standards.”
The complaint, dated Tuesday, was addressed to the Republican chairman of the Ethics panel, Michael Guest of Mississippi, and its top Democrat, Mark DeSaulnier of California.
The committee declined to comment Tuesday evening. Bergman’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Hayes, who lives just north of Elk Rapids, is a former prosecutor and two-time Republican chair of Otsego County who spent 35 years in public service before retiring last year, he said.
“I’m getting rather tired of seeing and reading about people in positions of trust that violate that trust, and it’s all about the money,” Hayes said. “There needs to be an investigation.”
Hayes said it was “troubling” to him that candidates might feel pressured to hire the political consulting firm run by Bergman’s advisers the hopes of winning the congressman’s endorsement.
“To put a candidate in the position of having to purchase services from someone in order to get an endorsement, that’s not cool,” Hayes said. “That’s why I hope the committee will look into it and do something.”
Bergman’s team has rejected the suggestion that his endorsement comes with hiring Lis’ firm, with Lis pointing out that the congressman has endorsed other candidates in Michigan and around the country who never hired him.
“We have endorsed many people that we haven’t helped. That’s for sure. But if they choose to use us as a consulting company, that has nothing to do with the general’s endorsement by any means,” Lis said previously, referring to Bergman, who is a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general.
Lis’ consulting company, Right Way to Win LLC, has brought in more than $446,000 in consulting and other fees from various state-level campaigns and committees since 2021, and another $143,000 from federal candidates or committees, according to campaign finance filings.
Members of Congress and senior congressional aides who earn about $150,000 or more a year have to file annual reports on their personal finances, including any outside work. They’re also subject to a $33,285 annual cap on the income they can earn from outside work.
Lis doesn’t have to file a financial disclosure, even though he took home over $221,200 in total compensation from the House in 2025. That’s because the financial disclosure requirement in House rules is tied to a staffer’s base rate of pay.
Lis’ base salary was reduced to fall below the senior staff rate not long after he started the firm Right Way to Win LLC with Bergman’s now-deputy chief of staff, Amelia Burns, in 2021.
Lis’ lower base pay has been supplemented by lump-sum payments each quarter that take his total compensation from the House back to the senior staff-level that ― if counted as regular pay ― would normally trigger the disclosure requirement and limits on outside income.
For example, last year, Lis received nearly $144,200 in regular pay and about $77,000 in lump-sum payments labeled “other compensation” in House records, for a total of $221,242.
Guidance from the House Ethics Committee states that House members should not use lump sum payments as a means of enabling employees to “evade” financial disclosure requirements or the limitations on outside earned income.
Lis and Burns co-own Right Way to Win, and he said they’re not making more than the annual limit on outside earned income for House senior staff, which was $33,285 in 2025. Lis also said he had not consulted the House Ethics Committee about the setup.
“It’s not like a get-rich thing. It’s just doing it for the love of the party and doing it for the love of northern Michigan, where most of our clients are right now,” Lis said.
Lis also said he isn’t “abnormal” on Capitol Hill and that a lot of chiefs, district staff and other staffers have other jobs or businesses on the side.
Right Way to Win’s website advertises the firm as a “full-service political and advocacy company” with experience “working on political campaigns as well as in official government offices.” “You name it, we do it,” the website says, promising strategic planning, policy advocacy, grassroots, fundraising, messaging, digital and mail.
The firm’s clients include state Sen. John Damoose, R-Harbor Springs; state Reps. Parker Fairbairn, R-Harbor Springs; and Cam Cavitt, R-Cheboygan.
mburke@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Ethics complaint filed against Jack Bergman by 2 constituents
Reporting by Melissa Nann Burke, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
