The budget plan includes the Republican governor’s proposed $195 million in new aid to Flint, mostly in the form of educational and health assistance for residents.
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Public health experts and Flint officials appeared in front of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee.
Flood says the nine-person investigation team can also use investigative subpoenas and convene a grand jury, if necessary.
“If this can happen in Flint, Michigan, it can happen anywhere”, Committee Co-Chair Donna Edwards of Maryland said.
Kildee urged lawmakers to consider comprehensive legislation he has introduced in addition to spend $765 million to help solve the water crisis in Flint. One ward showed a 16 percent increase, she said.
Since then, “corrosive tap water has caused the level of lead in kids’ blood to soar and has sparked fears of permanent neurological damage”, The Washington Post reported.
Republicans, meanwhile, have remained silent on Flint, despite growing national calls to address the emergency.
Doctor Mona Hanna Atisha of the Hurley Medical Center and the superintendent of the Flint School District also testified Wednesday. The challenges are numerous, she cautioned.
He says putting state police in Detroit, Flint, Pontiac and Saginaw has reduced violent crime in those cities.
A health official in Genesee County, where Flint is located, was “putting up the flare” and had “made the leap formally in his email that the uptick in cases is directly attributable to the river as a drinking water source”, Wurfel wrote.
“They’ve got a bill that we’re putting up this week that really is not a solution, and we hope they don’t try to frame that as a solution to the problem”, Becerra said of Kildee’s measure (H.R. 4770) to boost EPA’s authority to notify communities of elevated lead levels in drinking water. When it did, in November, it acknowledged that “differing” interpretations of the rules were possible under the federal Lead and Copper Rule.
Flint Mayor Karen Weaver was also there to speak on behalf of the people.
Waters said she and other lawmakers plan to visit Flint next month “and I don’t intend to be nice”.
Lead leached from old pipes into homes after the city’s 2014 switch to the Flint River from Detroit’s water system. Kildee said President Barack Obama’s budget director, Shaun Donovan, “likes the direction” of the bill “but has some suggestions” on how it could be improved.
But people in Flint still feel disillusioned, and it’s hard to see how that gets fixed. “And we are two years too late”.
Gov. Rick Snyder wants to expand a program so state police troopers patrol more MI cities.
“But we need your help”.
“It’s disappointing for the Governor of the State of MI is not here to answer questions from his point of view. And I think in part it’s a failure to acknowledge their full responsibility”, he said. “And so that’s why we’re pushing for the federal government to play a role in this”, he said.
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The bill is the first approved by Congress to respond to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.
