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Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson denies botching rollout of new computer record system
For most of the year, Democrat Secretary of State and candidate for governor Jocelyn Benson has taken heat from House GOP Speaker Matt Hall and his colleagues.
LANSING, Mich. (FOX 2) - For most of the year, Democrat Secretary of State and candidate for governor Jocelyn Benson has taken heat from House GOP Speaker Matt Hall and colleagues.
The backstory:
The Republicans have blamed her for allegedly mishandling the creation of a new $9 million computer system to track political contributions to state officials.
The war of words came through press releases, until now.
The battle took center state at a House oversight committee hearing Tuesday where the lone witness was Secretary Benson, herself.
The GOP committee chair Jay DeBoyer has accused her of botching the request for proposal process where the state lays out the details on what it wants from would-be vendors.
"When you spend $9 million you better darn be sure that your RFP spells out everything that needs to be done," said DeBoyer "Mismanagement is a very strong word, but I would say at some level there certainly was some mismanagement with the roll out."
Tim Skubick: "Some of the mistakes were avoidable?"
"One hundred percent avoidable," DeBoyer said. "Absolutely."
Benson told the committee her challenge was to convert 24 million computer records from a 25-year-old system to a state of the art system that citizens could easily use to follow the campaign contributions flowing into the hands of state lawmakers.
She was asked if her department make any mistakes on the project?
"One of the things we should have done is at the outset, was make sure the people understood the challenges we were going to face," Bensons said.
Skubick: "There was no mismanagement?"
"There was no mismanagement," she said.
Benson, of course is running for governor. When asked if the GOP is using this issue to undercut her candidacy, she didn't say yes.
"It feels like there's been added scrutiny into our work," she said.
"You don't think they were out to get you"
"I'll let the people decide that," she said, smiling.
DeBoyer said he was not playing politics.
"Absolutely not. If that were a GOP secretary of state, I'd have the same attitude," he said.
The Source: Information for this report came from a committee hearing Tuesday in Lansing and interviews with Jocelyn Benson and Rep. Jay DeBoyer.