The chief of staff for a Michigan congressman has a side hustle running a political consulting firm in Michigan, and his taxpayer-funded House pay is structured so that he has avoided having to disclose his business or what he’s made from the company since it began nearly five years ago.
The setup is highly unusual and appears to conflict with the intent behind U.S. House rules governing financial disclosure filing requirements and limits on outside income for senior congressional staff, according to experts who reviewed the arrangement for The Detroit News.
Tony Lis, chief of staff to Republican U.S. Rep. Jack Bergman, who represents northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, said he’s in compliance with all House rules and denied any wrongdoing.
“We’re not doing it to get rich,” Lis said of his consulting business.
His company, Right Way to Win LLC, has raked 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 assets, liabilities and outside earned income. 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 last year in total compensation from the House (that’s even more than Bergman, whose salary as a congressman is $174,000). The last financial disclosure Lis filed was for calendar year 2021.
That’s because the financial disclosure requirement in House rules is tied to a staffer’s base rate of pay, and Lis’ base salary was cut 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 since been supplemented by lump-sum payments ranging from $15,600 to $20,650 each quarter. The lump sum payments raised 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 base pay and another $77,000 in lump-sum payments labeled “other compensation” in House records, for a total of $221,242.
Burns had a similar setup involving lump-sum payments during 2024 and 2025, according to House records. She also hasn’t filed financial disclosures. She received about $193,300 last year in total compensation for her House position, including $149,000 in base pay and about $46,700 in lump-sum payments labeled “other” compensation. Burns didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Reached by phone, Lis told The News that the lump sums are monthly bonuses “to make up for the lower salary,” pointing to a different Bergman staffer in the district who had taken over as the office’s designated filer for financial disclosure purposes.
Later by email, Lis revised his explanation and said the lump-sum compensation actually wasn’t intended to offset his lower salary:
“It was part of a broader restructuring of how total compensation was administered,” Lis wrote. “The overall intent was to manage compensation in a way that worked better with internal budgeting and administrative considerations, rather than to backfill against any specific benchmark.”
A spokesman for Bergman declined to comment on Lis and Burns’ compensation structure.
Ethics panel warns against paying lump sums to staffers to ‘evade’ financial disclosures
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: A member who does so “will be subject to disciplinary action by the (Standards) Committee.”
The guidance said that “an intent to evade may be inferred when an employee’s regular salary rate is below the applicable thresholds, but that employee is regularly given a lump sum payment in an amount that, if it had been paid in the form of regular salary instead, would have subjected the employee to one or more of these requirements or restrictions.”
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 situation.
“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.
“It’s mainly fundraising. It’s not like a general consultant where you’re making $10,000 a month or anything like that. Just enough to cover costs.”
The Ethics Committee and House Office of Finance both declined to comment.
Ethics experts said Lis’ pay arrangement appears to tap a loophole in the rules allowing him to take home senior staff-level pay without having to file a financial disclosure report or become subject to the limits on outside earned income.
“You would think the spirit of the rule is your gross compensation for the year,” said Stanley Brand, an attorney who served as House general counsel under Speaker Tip O’Neill, D-Massachusetts, and is an expert in public and political ethics at Penn State University’s Dickinson Law School.
The loophole, Brand said, is being “used to limit disclosure in a way that seems to undercut its purpose ― full disclosure of potentially conflicting roles.”
Don Sherman, executive director of the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, used to lead House Ethics Committee investigations of members and staff. He said he had never seen anything like Lis’ pay structure before.
“It looks incredibly suspect,” Sherman said. “It seems like a way to avoid the spirit if not the letter of the rules.”
Lis insists his side job is ‘not abnormal’ on Capitol Hill
Lis insisted 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.
“I’ve been doing political work for 25 years ― countless campaigns across the state and country that I’ve been involved in, and, you know, I’m not abnormal here,” said Lis, who is based in Traverse City and has been with Bergman since his 2016 election to Congress.
Prior to that, Lis served as district director for former U.S. Rep. Kerry Bentivolio, R-Milford.
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 has gotten involved in state legislative races across Bergman’s district, with Bergman helping to campaign with some of Right Way to Win’s clients and endorsing most of them.
Clients include state Sen. John Damoose, R-Harbor Springs; state Reps. Parker Fairbairn, R-Harbor Springs; and Cam Cavitt, R-Cheboygan; former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers’ 2024 Senate campaign; former Detroit Police Chief James Craig’s gubernatorial campaign; former state House Speaker Tom Leonard when he was running for attorney general; and attorney Paul Hudson’s bid for the Michigan Supreme Court.
In congressional races, Right Way to Win represented Mark Lombardo, a former Marine and 2022 GOP U.S. House challenger to then-Rep. Matt Gaetz in Florida, as well as Matt DenOtter, a Republican candidate in Oakland County’s 11th Congressional District who is now running in the GOP primary against Bergman in northern Michigan.
Right Way to Win has also worked for the Make Michigan Great Again super political action committee and the 1st Congressional District Republican Committee.
Consulting firm blurs lines with Bergman’s office, experts contend
It’s common for chiefs or other congressional staffers to do some work on the side for their boss’ reelection campaigns.
But in interviews, a half dozen current and former House chiefs said Lis’ operating an outside consulting business for multiple candidates while running a congressional office is very unusual, especially one that plays in state legislative races in Bergman’s district.
The chiefs said it risks at least the appearance that Lis and his partner, Burns, are blurring the line between the official and campaign sides of Bergman’s operation or personally profiting off their official positions and contacts with the House ― a no-no under the ethics rules.
One former chief said that, whether intended or not, candidates might feel pressured to contract with Right Way to Win because of the outsized influence that Bergman’s endorsement can have in local races ― particularly in heavily Republican parts of northern Michigan where the GOP primary is the only competitive contest.
“All of that seems quite a bit incestuous and pretty shady if his staffers are working as political consultants and all of a sudden their clients are getting endorsed by a sitting member of Congress in their races,” said Sherman, the former House Ethics counsel.
GOP state Sen. Ed McBroom, who represents a district in the UP, raised a similar concern earlier this year when he claimed that Bergman has a history of endorsing the candidates who contract with Right Way to Win as a way to “help his employee’s personal business.”
Bergman’s team has strongly rejected that notion, with Lis pointing out that Bergman has endorsed dozens if not hundreds of other candidates in Michigan and around the country who never hired Right Way to Win, including state Rep. Karl Bohank, the former meteorologist, when he ran for the 109th District in the House and former state Rep. Beau LaFave, who is seeking to succeed McBroom in the Senate.
“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,” said Lis, referring to Bergman, who is a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general.
“You don’t have to choose us, but if you do choose to use us, great. Because we feel we’re going to win, and we protect the general’s brand that way. … We’ve had a handful of clients out of the 200 he’s endorsed.”
Lis acknowledged that Bergman’s endorsements have ruffled feathers at times, including when he backed Fairbairn over incumbent state Rep. Neil Friske in 2024. The endorsement came the day before Friske’s June 20 arrest on the south side of Lansing “for a felon-level offense,” leading to a lengthy state police probe.
Bergman created a storm in the UP in February when he backed LaFave over state Rep. Dave Prestin to succeed McBroom. McBroom, who supports Prestin, was furious because he said Bergman promised him not to get involved in the primary (a Bergman spokesman has disputed that). McBroom and two other state lawmakers abruptly rescinded their support for the five-term congressman, calling him a “liar.”
Bergman’s team said Prestin’s 1994 guilty plea to a domestic battery charge would be a liability in the general election. “The general went against the grain a little bit and, you know, pissed off some people,” Lis said.
“He endorsed who he thinks the best candidate is for northern Michigan.”
Candidates describe encounters with Bergman’s advisers
Some candidates have found themselves in the awkward position of either hiring the firm led by Bergman’s closest advisers or turning them down.
Former Grand Traverse County GOP Chair Lisa Trombley said she chose not to engage with Right Way to Win when she ran for a key state House district in 2024 in the Traverse City area represented by Democratic state Rep. Betsy Coffia.
Trombley and Lis couldn’t come to terms on a contract, she said. Bergman didn’t endorse in the GOP primary contest that year.
“That was definitely surprising to be approached by someone working in the official capacity for the congressman,” said Trombley, who won the GOP primary but lost the general election to Coffia by 2,700 votes or 4 percentage points.
“It did seem surprising to me that that was allowable. But I didn’t research the rules.”
Former state Rep. Triston Cole thought he had Bergman’s support when running for the state Senate in 2022 until then-state Rep. Damoose jumped in the race for the 37th District, representing the northwest corner of the lower peninsula and the eastern UP. Damoose hired Right Way to Win.
“I was frozen out from the congressman from an endorsement perspective, and they flipped all of their campaign support to Damoose,” Cole recalled.
Cole said he considers it a conflict of interest for a congressman’s chief of staff to operate a fundraising business for campaigns at other levels of government.
“For folks that are new to and beginning to become active in politics, it looks shady when someone is doing the politics and fundraising side, while owning and operating a fundraising entity, and also doing the constituent relations and legislation and running day-to-day operations as congressional chief of staff,” Cole said.
“I’m not trying to paint the congressman in a negative light himself. I believe the congressman is doing a great job. I’ve never had a hard time getting a hold of him or his in-district team ever. They are very responsive to solving constituent issues.”
Marine Corps veteran Todd Smalenberg went up against Right Way to Win when he challenged incumbent state Rep. Cavitt in 2024. Smalenberg lost the primary by 18 percentage points to Cavitt, who has been a client of Right Way to Win for multiple cycles.
Smalenberg, who helps to lead a nonprofit that helps military personnel and veterans, was alarmed when Right Way to Win staff came after him “with both barrels.” He said the firm attacked both himself and his wife in “vile” posts and texts, though he did not provide any documentation to support his claim.
Bergman is “sitting up here and talking about veterans and everything else, and yet they’re going after combat veterans, and going at it in an ugly way,” Smalenberg said of Right Way to Win.
That sentiment was echoed by Iraq veteran Justin Michal, who lives outside Grayling and is running against Bergman for the Republican primary nomination in the 1st Congressional District. Lis has attacked Michal’s campaign and his supporters on social media, Michal said.
“No matter the situation, you should never talk poorly to people who are your constituents,” Michal said. “The lack of professionalism and the way they treat people in the district truly is unfathomable. That’s a sad thing.”
Right Way to Win client turns Bergman challenger
A former Right Way To Win client, DenOtter, caused confusion in northern Michigan after relocating from Oakland County to Boyne City in Charlevoix County and announcing in February he would challenge Bergman in the GOP primary this summer.
DenOtter used Right Way to Win to help run his 2022 campaign for U.S. House in Oakland County and still owes the firm nearly $97,000 in fees, according to DenOtter’s latest campaign finance filing. Bergman even headlined a fundraiser in Birmingham for DenOtter in March 2022 that was advertised by Right Way to Win.
Those connections have fueled speculation among political insiders that DenOtter got into the race to play spoiler in the GOP primary, helping Bergman to withstand the challenge from Michal, who has been campaigning county to county against Bergman for the last year.
DenOtter’s campaign manager, Mike Birely, said it’s a “ridiculous” rumor. DenOtter moved to northern Michigan last year with the expansion of his medical management company and decided to run for Congress again because he recognized critical issues of need in the region, Birely said.
“He separated from that Right Way to Win group. He wanted to do it differently this time,” Birely said. “That is who Jack Bergman employs so, given that he’s campaigning for Jack’s seat, that wasn’t something he was interested in doing.”
Lis said he knows nothing of why DenOtter decided to run against his boss this cycle. He and DenOtter went to high school together, but Lis said he hasn’t spoken to DenOtter since he lost the 11th District race in 2022.
“I thought it was weird, too. … You’re going to ask him why he’s running. Someone told me that God told him to do it?” Lis said.
“I’m not sure, but I do feel that the general is going to be successful.”
mburke@detroitnews.com
Staff Writer Grant Schwab contributed.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Michigan congressman’s top aide defends what critic calls ‘shady’ side gig
Reporting by Melissa Nann Burke, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
