When Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson announced a new financial transparency system last year, she promised it would be “a strong step forward toward more open and accessible leadership.”

Now that the Michigan Transparency Network is up and running, those trying to use it have a different assessment.

“The revamped campaign finance page is much more inefficient & cumbersome to navigate from what I can tell in the early attempts to do so,” Nick Smith, Senate reporter for Gongwer News Service, posted to X on Wednesday.

Smith’s comments came in response to another critical post from Gongwer reporter Elena Durnbaugh that was later deleted.

“The Department of State is now asking for a username and password to view campaign finance filings for elected officials. Previously, these were readily available through the site (if you knew what you were looking for),” the deleted post read. “Not the campaign finance transparency I’m looking for.”

“Deleted a previous post about the Department of State’s campaign finance page to clarify the department is working toward fixing a glitch that asks users to provide a user name and password to view filings,” Durnbaugh wrote in a follow-up post. “I am told the new website is a work in progress.”

Despite the struggles, Durnbaugh persisted in her efforts to access the public data on the system.

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“Now, I think this 41 page document might have instructions on how to create a username, but I don’t have time to read it right now, and I’m paid to be all up in the government’s business,” Durbauch wrote in another post with a link to the document. “Can’t imagine your average voter would have much time either.”

“Flagging here that I’ve found the new search option, but my colleagues and I aren’t having much luck getting it to populate correctly,” she wrote.

Last March, Benson announced a new Michigan Transparency Network (MiTN) “will be upgraded to a consolidated reporting system that will make personal financial disclosure, campaign finance, lobbying and legal defense fund information publicly available in one convenient, easy-to-sue web portal.”

In the months since, Benson has championed herself as a beacon of transparency as she campaigns to replace Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2026.

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“It’s time to act,” Benson posted to X in December. “Let’s make government more transparent for everyone.”

“Congratulations to Michigan’s newly sworn-in lawmakers,” she posted on Jan. 1. “I am looking forward to working with all of you to ensure Michigan’s government truly works for everyone.”

“I know how to make government work,” Benson posted days later.

The hypocrisy wasn’t lost on voters online.

“When words and deeds conflict, trust the deeds,” James David Dickson, a podcast host for Michigan Enjoyer, posted to X on Wednesday with a screenshot of Durnbaugh’s deleted post.

“Jocelyn Benson talks transparency,” he wrote. “Then she demands logins for campaign finance reports and asks the AG how little financial disclosure she can get away with. We’ve seen this movie before with Whitmer re: FOIA requests.”

The ordeal isn’t the first time Benson has said one thing and done another.

The former hate crimes investigator for the disgraced Southern Poverty Law Center has repeatedly blocked critical comments from her constituents on social media, despite her claim that “great leaders listen.”

In November, Benson shut down comments on her X feed when the vast majority of comments expressed outrage over a Chinese national who cast an illegal ballot during the 2024 election.

It was the same deal in February, when Benson weighed in on two homeless children who froze to death in Detroit just miles away from open shelter beds.

“Who can reply?” the familiar message read. “Accounts @JocelynBenson follows or mentions can reply.”

And it’s not just her constituents getting the cold shoulder, even lawmakers in Lansing struggle to get the Secretary of State to produce public records she doesn’t want them to see.

Earlier this month, House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. Jay DeBoyer, R-Clay Twp., was forced to send a letter to Benson threatening to subpoena records on the Bureau of Elections’ E-Learning Portal after her department stonewalled Speaker Pro Tem Rachelle Smit, R-Martin, for months.

“Secretary Benson repeatedly tells the public that her department is a paragon of transparency,” Smit said in a statement. “However, my four-month ordeal trying to obtain the most basic of records indicates otherwise. The way Secretary Benson operates her department is not transparency, it’s obfuscation.”