“The real question is, these people work for me at the state government, so I am taking responsibility for their actions, and I’m focusing on fixing the problem”, Snyder said.
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Kildee said President Barack Obama’s budget director, Shaun Donovan, signaled support for his efforts at a closed-door meeting Wednesday with House Democrats.
Flint’s water troubles, concerns about other aging water infrastructure and the Detroit school’s district dire financial outlook – it needs a $720 million infusion of cash over a decade to avoid bankruptcy, according to Snyder – overshadowed more nuts-and-bolts budget details this year, such as funding for education, municipalities and workforce development.
The Governor devoted a large amount of time talking about his plan to financially address the Flint water crisis and the troubled Detroit Public Schools.
Governor Rick Snyder, meanwhile, declined an invitation to attend the hearing despite an invite from congressman Dan Kildee, Flint’s House representative.
But Governor Snyder said fixing all the pipes would not be “the best approach to start with”, pointing to recommendations by “hero” Dr Marc Edwards at Virginia Tech university who is leading the research team to solve the water crisis.
Rick Snyder is interviewed after visited a church that’s distributing water and filters to its predominantly Latino parishioners in Flint, Mich. Snyder will propose spending $195 million more to address Flint’s water crisis and another $165 million updating infrastructure across the state in response to lead contamination overwhelming the city.
“So many of us here have lost faith and trust in what anyone has told us, because they told us that it was safe to drink for two years when it clearly wasn’t”, she says.
The bill “wouldn’t have prevented Flint, but it would have caught it far sooner”, Kildee, who is from Flint, said after the vote.
“Clean drinking water is a necessity”, says Flo Rida. The GOP-controlled Legislature will consider the legislation in the coming months and likely approve a plan in early June. Snyder is also banking on more funding from Washington.
Snyder spokesman Dave Murray said the governor’s office didn’t know about the Legionnaires’ outbreak until March 2015.
“We’re going to restore safe drinking water one house at a time, one child at a time”, she said.
Flood’s statement comes after a number of recent revelations about just how much Flint city employees knew about the health risks associated with the local drinking water before the public was advised to take precautions. Most chemicals used in this process are phosphate based and phosphate can be a “food” for bacteria.
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In the intervening 18-month period before the state conceded Flint’s drinking water was contaminated, state officials documented a spike of legionnaires’ disease in the area surrounding Flint, including nine deaths, but officials haven’t concluded the water source was the cause of the increase. He did not specify who made the decision.
