Emergency managers, city officials targeted in latest Flint water charges

[demmiblue]

Source: Freep

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette announced new criminal charges against four defendants Tuesday – including two former emergency managers appointed by the state – in his ongoing criminal investigation of the Flint drinking water crisis and lead poisoning of city residents.

Schuette brought 20-year felonies against defendants he alleged conspired to operate the Flint Water Treatment Plant when it wasn't safe to do so and used a phony environmental order to allow Flint to borrow money to proceed with the Karegnondi Water Authority pipeline, while tying Flint to the Flint River for its drinking water in the interim.

In 67th District Court in Flint this morning, a judge authorized charges against former Flint emergency managers Darnell Earley and Gerald Ambrose and city officials Howard Croft, who was public works superintendent, and Daugherty Johnson, the utilities administrator.

Jeff Seipenko, a special agent with the Attorney General’s Office, told Judge William Crawford II that the investigations showed the former emergency managers conspired with Croft and Johnson to enter a contract based on false pretenses that bound the city of Flint to utilize the Flint River as it's drinking water source, "knowing that the Flint Water Treatment Plant was unable to produce safe water."

Read more: http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/12/20/schuette-flint-water-charges/95644964/

[Siwsan]

1. Thanks for posting - you just beat me to it! Here's Congressman Kildee's statment:

December 20, 2016

Congressman Dan Kildee (MI-05) issued the following statement today after additional criminal charges were filed in the Flint water crisis:

“Justice for Flint families is important and I support ongoing investigations, led by the facts, which seek to hold those who caused this crisis responsible. Today’s criminal charges, including against two of Governor Snyder’s state-appointed emergency managers, is an indictment not only of their decisions, but an indictment against the administration’s failed emergency manager law that contributed to this crisis.

“There are many forms of justice; one of them is certainly holding accountable the state officials who created this crisis. Another form of justice is the state stepping up to provide more resources to families who continue to live without access to clean drinking water. The state and the Governor must act in a bigger way to help in Flint’s recovery.”

[demmiblue]

2. Good statement, particularly this:

Today’s criminal charges, including against two of Governor Snyder’s state-appointed emergency managers, is an indictment not only of their decisions, but an indictment against the administration’s failed emergency manager law that contributed to this crisis.

The emergency manager law is a slap in the face of democracy. Snyder, at the very least, should have stepped down.

[sarcasmo]

3. There is no way Rick Snyder should still have his job.

[heaven05]

4. sacrifices all to distract from the creator of this

tragedy. They possibly knew what the switch would do, yet synder knew from the studies alone told him about switching to untreated river water from the treated Detroit water system, they just did not care about the people affected if they could save a dollar or two.......these people probably had to follow orders and if they knew what they were doing to thousands, someone should have raised concern.....cowardice and money are strong motivators to do nothing.

[onecaliberal]

5. That is awesome

[mitty14u2]

6. This all started with Emergency Managers "Michigans fight for legal dictators continues"

January 21, 2011. Almost a year ago, I wrote on NRO about Detroit and the rise of the new American dictators. In looking at Michigan, my point was to show how liberty can be sacrificed thanks to the failures and incompetence of elected officials, and the seemingly reasonable decision to save municipalities by appointing emergency managers. Whether they feared the loss of their freedom, or couldn’t face up to the harsh medicine doled out by putting their cities under effective receivership, nearly 53 percent of Michigan’s voters rejected Public Act 4 in a referendum on November 6, thereby seemingly ending the rule of the emergency managers.

The story does not end there, however. Michigan governor Rick Snyder, a Republican who supported Public Act 4, then decided that the state’s old emergency-manager law, the less powerful Public Act 72, would come back into effect, allowing him to continue appointing emergency managers. A state appeals court upheld Snyder’s interpretation on November 16, rejecting a legal challenge to the imposition of the previous law. Snyder’s opponents are now to file a suit with the Michigan Supreme Court seeking to kill the emergency manager law forever.

As I tried to argue last January, freedom usually disappears in fits and starts, and Republican Rome saw its liberty eroded by the slow, yet steady, expansion of the powers of the Senate-appointed, one-year-term-limited dictator. Similarly, Michigan’s Public Act 4 was the third incarnation of an emergency-manager law, each one giving more power to the manager than the last. Under Public Act 4, the managers could dismiss local elected councils, break and renegotiate contracts, and essentially take over any bureaucracy in their locality. They still remained under the control of the governor, and approved by the state legislature, but their powers were clearly growing. Governor Snyder argues that not having any emergency-manager law dramatically raises the risks of municipal bankruptcies, but some observers may argue that is just what is needed to bring a shock dose of reform to Michigan’s failing local governments.

Yet even as the larger questions of liberty and accountability play out, the state’s largest city, Detroit continues to stumble into ruin. So far, it has managed to avoid having a dictator appointed, which would be an epochal act for a major American city with a population of 700,000. Yet in exchange for escaping state control, Detroit was forced to surrender some of its sovereignty by agreeing to a Financial Advisory Board. The Detroit Free Press describes the board as ”the joint city-state panel overseeing the city’s finances under Detroit’s fiscal stability agreement with the state.” When city officials told the board in mid-November that Detroit would likely run out of money by the end of 2012, the state agreed to provide $30 million in funding, on condition of a number of financial and legal commitments.

https://www.aei.org/publication/michigans-fight-for-legal-dictators-continues/