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Last year, Gov. Rick Snyder was a dead man walking. He was under attack for the Flint water crisis. Movie stars, presidential candidates, members of Congress, Flint residents and the media blamed him for the mess. In fact, he was so politically toxic, no Republican candidate wanted his endorsement in the Michigan primary.
On Tuesday night, a more confident Snyder delivered the State of the State Address in Lansing, joking at times, playing up Michigan's accomplishments, its low unemployment rate and job opportunities, and touching on the Flint water crisis, but only briefly, and a half hour into his speech.
Snyder, who isn't known as a masterful politician, put on the best face possible while talking about Flint without sugar coating it, but avoiding taking blame even though two ex-Flint emergency managers he appointed were recently criminally charged in the case.
Rep. Dan Kildee
U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, a Democrat who represents Flint, blasts the Republican governor in a statement after the speech:
“Governor Snyder has failed Flint families. It is disgraceful that a city of 100,000 people still doesn’t have clean drinking water and the Governor could barely devote two minutes of his State of the State to Flint. Just two minutes dedicated to Flint? Really? This is an ongoing emergency– people in my hometown are still drinking bottled water and using filters. The Governor is either completely aloof or simply doesn’t care about Flint.
“Shame on the Governor for not using tonight to outline additional steps that he is going to take to ensure clean drinking water in Flint. I will not rest until the Governor and the state step up to do more to help the city recover from this man-made crisis.”
After playing up the state's successes, Snyder tiptoed into the Flint mess:
"Now, I'd like to talk about Flint for a couple minutes. Make no mistake, this was a sad chapter in the history of our state. Last year the people of Flint suffered an unacceptable crisis. I made a commitment to the people of Flint to fix it. We took immediate action and the following days and months, we've worked tirelessly to make Flint's water safe to drink again and improve the entire city of Flint."
"We're making progress, but our work is not done yet. I want to thank Mayor Weaver who's here tonight, the city council and the White House, for their partnership. We all owe the people of Flint a solution and we worked hard to deliver that and we're going to continue to be committed to that. . . .
"In terms of progress, though, on the water front. We have new test results and by June of 2016 of this last year, we've provided $27 million to help with lead pipe replacements to the city of Flint. To date, we've seen progress. Over 600 pipes have been replaced and we look forward to working with the city on accelerating the progress of that. We're working hard on that topic. In terms of health, we have over 24,000 new Flint residents on Medicaid waivers to help provide health care.
"On education, we have over 400 new positions for early childhood education in the community of Flint. And we've seen 827 new jobs created in that community since we started this process, and again were going to keep up activity in each one of those categories. "
Snyder also talked about the need to improve infrastructure around the state. He also said he plans to push to create stricter standards than the federal government for lead and cooper testing for water.
A Crain's Detroit Business reporter puts his reference to replacing more than 600 Flint water lines into context:
A little bit of context: Snyder isn't in charge of pipe replacement. @karenaboutflint is. Her administration took 8 months ramp up removals. https://t.co/LFtFTiKRTh
— Chad Livengood (@ChadLivengood) January 18, 2017
Through first 7 months of 2016, Flint had replaced 33 of 11,300 lead-leaching pipes. Now they're at 600. https://t.co/WxwAVAHT28 https://t.co/QfWh6NuHqE
— Chad Livengood (@ChadLivengood) January 18, 2017
