On Thursday, a hearing on the Flint water poisoning crisis went into its second day. With Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder in the hot seat, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD)—the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee—read from emails exchanged by high-level assistants of the governor, including his chief of staff, showing they discussed the potential for trouble with Flint’s water nearly two years ago when the city switched its source of drinking water. This led to lead contamination of the water supply for tens of thousands of residents. Nine died from Legionnaires’ disease. Activists want Snyder to resign and be prosecuted for his failure to act.
Cummings was scathing: “There is no doubt in my mind that if a corporate CEO did what Snyder’s administration has done, he would be hauled up on criminal charges,” he said during his opening statement. To Snyder himself, he said: “It seems like there are two basic possibilities. Either your chief of staff told you about these concerns and you did nothing, or he didn’t tell you and you are an absentee governor.”
Please join us in calling for federal prosecution of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder for his part in the Flint water crisis.
Here is Cummings at work:
Snyder, who had initially said he would not appear before the committee, conceded to the committee that his state-appointed emergency managers had failed. "In this particular case, with respect to the water issue, that would be a fair conclusion.”
The admission appeared to be one of the strongest statements so far of culpability associated with appointees made by Snyder, who has been a strong advocate of financial overseers for municipalities in financial distress.
Darnell Earley was the emergency manager Snyder appointed to run Flint’s government. He was also the fellow who decided to switch the source of the city’s drinking water to the Flint River. Poorly treated, that water, which is highly corrosive, leached lead from the city pipes, poisoning an unknown number of residents. Although a few high-level officials raised concerns early on, nothing was done until October after a doctor found elevated levels of lead in the blood of children tested because they are Medicaid recipients.
Even at very low levels, lead is a dangerous neurotoxin that can cause irreversible brain damage and developmental problems in children. As Cummings said of Flint: “These children when we’re dead, when we’re dead and gone, these children will suffer from what we failed to do.” He pointed out that the Snyder’s slogan atop the governor’s official website is “Reinventing Michigan, Getting It Right, Getting It Done.” “It’s hard to imagine a more misleading slogan,” Cummings said.
On the first day of the Oversight hearing on Wednesday, one of the key figures in the human-made disaster that poisoned the city’s drinking and may very well have killed nine people from Legionnaires’ disease played the victim. Nearly 100,000 residents are using bottled water as a consequence.
Former Flint Emergency Manager Darnell Earley said he was “unjustly persecuted, vilified, and smeared—both personally and professionally—by the media, local, state, and federal officials, as well as by a misinformed public.”
Chris Savage of the progressive Michigan blog Eclectablog wrote: “Well, cry me a river, sir.” He has long been an acerbic critic of the governor’s emergency manager appointments and has been following the Flint crisis since the situation first became known.
Here’s Savage:
Despite the valiant attempts by Committee Chair Jason Chaffetz and his Republican colleagues to make this exclusively about the failures of the USEPA to intercede early in the process, Earley took a beating not just from Democrats on the Committee but by Michigan Republican Rep. Justin Amash, as well. Former EPA Regional Administrator Susan Hedman was rightfully taken to the woodshed during the hearing, but Earley took an equally tough beating.
Committee members pointed out the hypocrisy of Earley’s contention that it was local officials that were responsible for the switch to the Flint River for the city’s drinking water despite the fact that it was he and his predecessors who ultimately made the decision, Emergency Managers who wielded absolute control over the governments they replaced. He perpetuated the myth that everyone was on board with the exclusive use of the Flint River after the city left the Detroit water system and conveniently neglected to mention that he declined Detroit’s offer to stay on their system. He played the victim card repeatedly, saying he was simply following orders and executing decisions made by others. When pressed, he refused to apologize. When asked if he directed his attorney to refuse service of the subpoena to testify last month, he lawyered up, claiming that was a matter of client-attorney privilege.
Another member of the Oversight committee, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), told Snyder, "This is a failure of a philosophy of governance that you advocate. … The taint and the stain that state government has put on this country in the form of Flint will be a long time being erased. At some point, the buck stops at your office."
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Denise Oliver Velez has posted on the subject here.