Responsibility for Flint, Michigan's Leaded Water Problem

Governor Rick Snyder's chief of staff Dennis Muchmore told his boss that the high levels of lead in Flint, Michigan water was the "real responsibility" of the local government officials. Muchmore noted in a September 25 email that former state treasurer Andy Dillon had signed off on Flint's plans to build a water pipeline from Lake Huron, necessitating a temporary switch to the Flint River. In his State of the State speech, Governor Snyder apologized for any state complicity in lead getting  into the Flint water supply. A day after giving the speech, Snyder released more than 270 pages on the matter.

When CBS Evening News anchor Scott Walker conducted a lengthy interview with Governor Snyder, Snyder exhibited his lack of knowledge about the leaded water problem: he didn't know how many Flint children had ingested lead; he didn't know how the affected victims would be treated; and he didn't know the extent of the problem. Walker asked a number of tough, pertinent questions, but to my mind, he didn't ask the crucial question of when Snyder became aware of the problem and what steps did  he then take.

Although the Republican leadership in Michigan has tried to foist some responsibility for the water problem to the Flint city council, the Flint area's representative in Congress has said that the emergency manager in Flint had 100 percent responsibility for anything that  happened in the governance of Flint. The GOP-dominated state legislature and the Snyder administration have made a fetish of appointing emergency managers for cities that they, collectively believe, can't be properly governed locally. This is a paradoxical position to take for a political party that professes to believe that the government closest to the people governs best.

In a referendum,  Michigan voters threw out the emergency manager system. Undaunted by this public rejection,  the Michigan legislature wrote an even tougher law to restore the emergency manager system. The legislature appropriated $1 million to fund emergency managers, because appropriations are not subject to referendums in Michigan. Governor Snyder and his legislative GOP allies seem to have been students in Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's School of Devious Governmental Management, which specifies that when you run for election you don't tell the citizens what nefarious things you will do when elected and if you are repudiated subsequently by the state's residents, you simply rewrite the offending legislation to achieve the same result.

The toxic Flint River corroded lead pipes, causing lead to be mixed in the water. The problem could have been avoided by putting chemicals in the river. The Michigan environmental department didn't do this, raising the prospect of criminal liability among high state officials, all the way up to the governor.