Skubick: Playing the Blame Game with the Flint water crisis
(WJBK) - Rarely in the rough and tumble world of politics do you have one person call the other a liar. Usually they will say, "he was stretching the truth," or "the statement was not quite accurate." Call it honor among, thieves but that's the drill. So when somebody does it, ears in town perk up.
The former Emergency Manager in Flint showed up the other day and was immediately grilled on his role in the lead-in-the-water contamination crisis in that city. Darnell Earley offered he had nothing to do with it when the city switched from Detroit to Flint river water.
"That was all in place before I got there," he explained.
"That's a fairy tale," countered Flint Democratic Senator Jim Ananich who has been at the nexus of this water mess. Then, when asked if Mr. Earley was lying, he went a step further, "There is no question about it … he was in charge. He's passing the buck."
But he did not stop there.
Mr. Earley is now the EM for the Detroit Public Schools and he was in town with his hand out looking for legislative support for what the critics call a bail-out for DPS…$72 million a year for ten years to erase a whopping and ever growing deficit.
Mr. Earley will need buy-in from Democrats but Mr. Ananich, who has 11 votes in the senate, is not about to deliver them for Mr. Earley until he tells the truth.
"He's got a long way to go … before he expects me to do anything for him. He has to take responsibility for his actions."
All this must give Gov. Rick Snyder a touch of heart burn as he trudges along trying to round-up votes for the Detroit schools and now he has a credibility problem with the EM who is leading the fight.
If Senator Ananich sticks to his guns, it appears Mr. Earley may have to apologize for not telling the truth.
But if the EM sticks to his story and doesn't recant, then what?