Michigan Governor Rick Snyder got an "F” for how he handled the Flint water crisis.
The grade came from the Michigan League of Conservation Voters, a nonpartisan political environmental organization that previously endorsed the governor in 2010. Currently, however, it said this about the governor, per the 2015-2016 report card released yesterday (May 15): “Unfortunately, his record—as measured both at the end of his first term, and now mid-term in his second four years—is not where it should be.”
Community members and advocates have criticized the governor for how he handled the public health crisis that left many in the city of nearly 100,000 with potential lead poisoning. A petition created by documentary filmmaker Michael Moore (“Bowling for Columbine”) calling for the arrest of Snyder has accumulated 625,528 signatures.
While the League doesn’t go so far as to support his arrest in its report card, it calls Snyder’s role in the issue “shameful.” More specifically:
In Michigan—a state surrounded by 80 percent of our nation’s freshwater—communities have every right to believe that their drinking water is clean and safe. Instead, the residents and children of one of our oldest urban centers were poisoned by their tap water, and officials in the Snyder administration and Governor Snyder himself are primarily responsible for this ongoing tragedy.
The report includes a timeline of Snyder’s key decisions—nearly all of which it classified as negative. These include his February 2015 executive order that cut funding for drinking water infrastructure, the state’s department of environmental quality manipulating water testing results in August 2015 and, finally, Snyder ending water credits for the city earlier this year, which is now putting their homes at risk of foreclosure.
The governor did receive one “A,” on clean energy. Find the complete report here.