Michigan is one of just two states that don’t require elected officials to disclose how much money they earn or where it comes from. That omission makes it difficult to know when public servants are enriching their own families or business partners at taxpayers’ expense. It also explains why the Center for Public Integrity ranks Michigan 50th out of 50 states when it comes to promoting governmental transparency and accountability.

Wednesday, the state House of Representatives approved a package of ethics bills Republican legislative leaders say will assure that Michigan lawmakers come clean with their constituents.

It’s a fraudulent claim. The bills the House adopted on a mostly party-line vote would require lawmakers to disclose how they make their money, all right — but only to a secretive ethics committee of fellow lawmakers whose members could be removed at will by the House Speaker or the Senate Majority Leader. A bill sonsored by first-term Reps. Andrew Fink (R-Adams Twp.) and John Roth (R-Traverse City) would empower the new committee to investigate suspected conflicts of interest and recommend discipline for House members it deems guilty of unethical behavior. But four committee members hand-picked by legislative leaders would conduct their business behind closed doors, and the committee’s work product would be exempt from Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act.

That’s not public disclosure; it’s a formula for legislative leaders to pressure members by threatening to reveal (or promising to overlook) conflicts of interest invisible to the public.

The secret and cumbersome process House Speaker Jason Wentworth brought to the floor Wednesday, is a diluted perversion of the ethics legislation a bipartisan group of lawmakers has championed in each of the Legislature’s last three sessions.

A bill sponsored by Rep. David LaGrand (D-Grand Rapids) and co-sponsored by more than half his House colleagues, including 12 Republicans, would require state lawmakers to report any significant source of household income in periodic public filings, just as members of the U.S. House and Senate file are required to. If a lawmaker abused his or her office to further a personal financial interest, the conflict of interest would be in the public record for any voter, law enforcement agency or political opponent to discover.

Under the Fink/Roth legislation, by contrast, financial information that might expose a lawmaker’s private interest in pending legislation would remain concealed from the public, the press and all but a handful of legislators. Details of a legislator’s financial dealings would be made public only if a majority of ethics committee members voted to sanction him or her for unethical conduct, or after the legislator had left office.

As in two previous legislative sessions, LaGrand’s bill is stranded in the House Elections and Ethics Committee, currently chaired by Rep. Ann Bollin (R-Brighton). The obvious motive for rushing the weaker Fink/Roth bills through the House was to provide political cover for lawmakers who want to appear supportive of greater transparency without exposing their own business dealings to public scrutiny.

Republicans who support the secretive and cumbersome disclosure process outlined in the Fink/Roth bill argue that incremental steps toward greater accountability are preferable to the status quo. But a majority of House members already support the more robust version of disclosure championed by LaGrand. Why are Speaker Wentworth and Senate Majority Leaders Mike Shirkey (R-Clarklake) so reluctant to embrace the ethical rules lawmakers in the U.S. Congress and almost every other state legislature are bound by?

The phony disclosure provisions adopted by House Republicans aren’t “half a loaf”; they preserve a status quo that uniquely insulates Michigan lawmakers from public accountability. That simply won’t suffice in a state whose ethical standards for elected officials are already recognized as the nation’s worst.

Voters shouldn’t accept any substitute for real public disclosure, and neither should Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. If the state Senate’s Republican majority rubber-stamps the House’s cynical subterfuge, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer should return it, without her signature, the same day.