A full third of these monies are to go for lawyers' fees. That needs to be pointed out to Judge Levy.
By Ron Fonger
Flint - A fairness hearing (click here) over a proposed partial $641-million settlement of civil lawsuits related to the Flint water crisis has been scheduled by a federal judge and is expected to last three days in mid-July.
U.S. District Court Judge Judith E. Levy on Wednesday, May 19, told attorneys involved in the settlement that the hearing will begin at 10 a.m. July 12, continue until 1 p.m., return at 2 p.m. and continue until 4 p.m. that day.
Levy said she will be available to continue the same schedule on July 13, and also scheduled the hearing to continue at 9 a.m. July 15.
The judge said the hearing must be held virtually because federal court officials have decided not to authorize an in-person meeting at that time because of COVID-19 concerns and restrictions.
More than 150 individuals have filed objections to the settlement, according to federal court records, and many of those have requested to address the court during the hearing, including former Flint mayors Woodrow Stanley and Karen Weaver.
July’s hearing is the next step in the moving the settlement process forward and is a required step before the judge can determine whether the agreement proposed by attorneys for residents, the state of Michigan, and others is fair, adequate, reasonable, and has been an arms-length transaction....
There is also one official in all this that wants her old job back, because, her criminal charges were repealed. Liane Shekter Smith was used as a scapegoat by Snyder. She should be interviewed by the press and/or compelled to testify at the trial of the Flint Nine.
The case against her was mute.
The Emergency Manager Law dissolved the authority of everyone, except, the Emergency Manager. The law removes any democratic process. So, no matter how much she may or may not have invoked her authority, as was the case with the Federal EPA, it was ignored by Snyder. She needs to be held for testimony.
I have stated this before, why Snyder is not held for at the very least negligent homicide is anyone's guess. Snyder was refusing to act on the authority of others, including the Federal EPA. You can say all you want about the Emergency Manager, but, it was Synder getting the letters about Flint and ignoring them. He negated democracy, including the referendum voted on and passed by the people of Michigan to end the law. There was nothing but determination by Snyder to see out his agenda of wealth for his friends. In every instance of the actions of the Emergency Manager, precious assets of the cities involved were sold to Snyder's friends for development.
There is also a piece of this often overlooked, the name of the chemical is trihalomethane. It is a carcinogen and it was in the water that came out of the Flint River. It was the Flint City Council that acted to end that danger, not the state. The MDEQ warned the City Council of the chemical in the water (click here), but, it was the City Council operating even with an Emergency Manager in place, that acted to end the danger of THM.
...In February 2015, (click here) more than nine months after the change to Flint River water, Flint hired Veolia Water North America Operating Services (“VNA”) to help solve the serious problem of THM contaminating the public water supply....
By Ed White
Liane Shekter-Smith (click here) (second from far right) pictured in 2011. She was terminated Friday.
The only Michigan official fired (click here) in the Flint water disaster wants to be reinstated and get years of back pay after a criminal case against her fizzled into a misdemeanor that was ultimately erased.
Liane Shekter Smith and the state's environment department are meeting privately this week with an arbitrator, more than five years after then-Gov. Rick Snyder dismissed her in 2016, attorneys said.
Shekter Smith was head of Michigan's drinking water office when Flint, with the state's approval, used the Flint River for water in 2014-15, a catastrophic step that contaminated the system with lead. The highly corrosive water wasn't properly treated before it flowed through aging pipes to roughly 100,000 residents.
In 2016, a task force appointed by Snyder said the Department of Environmental Quality, as the agency was known at the time, misapplied lead and copper rules in Flint and "caused this crisis to happen."...
