A liberal advocacy group argued Wednesday that the state Supreme Court should give it access to records from the state attorney general’s office.
It’s been over a year since Republican Bill Schuette stepped down as Michigan’s attorney general.
The group Progress Michigan still wants to find out if Schuette’s staff used private email addresses to do political work using public resources.
The state says those records don’t exist anymore, if they ever existed to begin with.
Lonnie Scott of Progress Michigan says there are ways to find out whether that’s true.
“We have a right to know how those records were handled, and that’s what’s at issue here,” says Scott.
Scott says he wants the Supreme Court to order the attorney general’s office to cooperate with its inquiry into Schuette’s use of the office. He says there’s a principle at stake.
“For us, this has always been about transparency, and we have fought this case all the way to this point because we don’t believe that the roadblocks that were erected by Attorney General Schuette should stand in the way of that transparency,” he says.
Scott says Progress Michigan has already found instances of private communications that appear to skirt the Freedom of Information Act.
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