MEDC, facing embezzlement scandal, refuses to name fired staff

The Michigan Economic Development Corporation is refusing to release a list of employees it has fired in the last five years.

Michigan Capitol Confidential asked 11 state agencies for records about how many people they fired since 2020. Ten agencies provided the information immediately. The one agency that did not respond — the development corporation — is embroiled in an embezzlement scandal.

Legislators are considering several bills to dismantle the agency after a reporter revealed that it gave a $20 million grant to one of its board members who then spent that money on an $11,000 plane ticket and a $4,500 coffee maker.

Several times CapCon asked for the names and lists of employees the agency fired since 2020, sorted by year. Officials denied every request and claimed that they had no responsive records.

“Your request was denied because the list you requested does not exist, not for any other reason,” Danielle Emerson, MEDC public relations manager, told CapCon in an email. “If you'd like to send us a different request, our team will search for responsive records, but repeatedly re-submitting the same request will not yield a different response because there are no responsive records to that request.”

Other offices and departments responded, however.

1. The Michigan Attorney General’s office fired 229 people. It had 629 positions as of the 2026 budget. 

2. The Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential fired three people. It employs 354 as of 2026.

3. Treasury fired 20 employees. It employs 2,040.

4. The Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy fired five. It employs 1,786 people.

5. The Michigan Department of Education fired one person. It employs 587 people.

6. The Michigan Department of Transportation fired 53. It employs 3,235 people.

7. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services fired 58. It employs 16,364 people.

8. The Department of Natural Resources fired 25. It employs 2,635 people.

9. The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development did not fire any employee. It employs 589 people.

10. The Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs fired 10. It employs 1,857 people.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office isn’t subject to the state’s open records law, and neither are lawmakers. The state of Michigan employs about 50,000 people, according to state reports.

Mike LaFaive, senior director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, has scrutinized the economic development agency for more than 20 years. In 2005, he pressed the agency over one of its programs, the Michigan Economic Development Growth Authority.

“I’m not surprised,” LaFaive said after CapCon told him about the agency’s response. “The MEDC’s true bailiwick is not economic development, but obfuscation, stonewalling and self-serving spin. Why does this agency need to stymie and stonewall research? What are they trying to hide?

“The MEDC needs to be opened up to the disinfecting sunlight of transparency and its related accountability,” he concluded.

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy has sued the MEDC multiple times because it has withheld public documents. And others have sued the agency as well.

The agency is known for making big jobs announcements that rarely reach fruition. Only one of every 11 jobs promised by Michigan politicians and public officials actually gets created, according to a study by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. The study follows up on two decades of front-page news stories about government grants to private businesses, revealing that these deals rarely meet their job-creation goals.