December 15, 2017
By Leonard N. Fleming
In 2015,(click here) Rosenthal allegedly helped manipulate lead testing results and falsely reported they were below the federal action level of 15 parts per billion....
I don't get it. Rosenthal is a career employee to the Michigan DEQ. By every standard that is enviable. He had his future set. Why? I don't believe he was evil or racist or any other descriptor that puts him in a category of being diabolical. Why would such a man launch into fraud that he knew would harm people.
None of this makes sense.
...The state acknowledged high lead levels in the city’s children in late September 2015 and switched back in mid-October 2015 to the Detroit area water system, now called the Great Lakes Water Authority.
Lead testing this year has found that Flint’s results have consistently been below the federal action level of 15 parts per billion. But the state has maintained advisories against drinking Flint’s water until all of the city’s lead lines have been replaced.
Three others entered pleas in connection with the scandal:
Former Flint utilities administrator Michael Glasgow pl:eaded guilty in May to a reduced charge of willful neglect of duty, a one-year misdemeanor. Sentencing for Glasgow was set aside as long as he cooperates with the ongoing investigation by Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette.
Corinne Miller, who retired as director of the state’s bureau of epidemiology earlier this year, pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of neglect of duty in office in exchange for providing information to investigators.
Miller originally was charged with failing to respond properly to an early report that city children were affected by lead contamination in Flint and instructing state health employees to delete emails pertaining to the report. She was sentenced to one year of probation in March.
In late November, former Flint utilities director Daugherty Johnson pleaded no contest to failing to give water documents to a Genesee County Health Department employee investigating a possible connection between Flint water and Legionnaires’ disease outbreaks that eventually killed 12 and sickened 79 others in the Flint area in 2014-15. The deal resulted in two felonies being conditionally dropped in exchange for his cooperation....
This makes sense. Not that it is right, but, a member of Snyder's cabinet acting on his behalf, cutting corners and sacrificing standards for an ideology that the people of Michigan voted down, namely "Emergency Manager," is believable. The indictment of career employees just doesn't fit the picture. Snyder's power brokering to put forward an ideology more important than people's lives is something I would expect out of this investigation.
December 15, 2017
By Ron Fonger
Flint, MI -- A member of Gov. Rick Snyder's cabinet (click here) won't return to court on criminal charges related to the Flint water crisis until 2018 after a potential five-week delay.
Genesee District Court Judge David Goggins announced a short-term schedule for Nick Lyon, director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, during the tenth day of Lyon's preliminary examination Friday, Dec. 15.
Lyon is facing charges of involuntary manslaughter and misconduct in office.
Prosecutors claim his actions or failure to act caused a Legionnaires' victim's death in December 2015 and say he knew about suspicions that Legionnaires' outbreaks here were related to Flint water but failed to warn the public...
