One of the great mysteries of the Flint Water Crisis is: What did former Gov. Rick Snyder know and when did he know it? Especially, that is, about the outbreak of Legionnaire’s Disease that coincided with the period of time citizens were drinking the Flint River water that corroded the pipes and caused lead to leach into water citizens were drinking.
At least a dozen people died and 87 became sick from Legionnaires’ in 2014 and 2015. There may have even more cases that were misdiagnosed. Some close aides to the governor knew about this for months, but Snyder insists he never heard a thing until 2016.
He said that once he did, he immediately held a press conference. However, the governor saw people every day who knew about this, and his own director of Urban and Metropolitan Initiatives said he told Snyder weeks before.
Who is telling the truth? Reporters and the public have a convenient tool in many states: The Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA. This is a public issue, and our citizens should have the right to look at emails and memos from our highest officials about public business.
You can do that in most states, but not in Michigan. Oh, we have a Freedom of Information law. But it doesn’t apply to either the governor or the legislature.
This has earned this state a lot of scorn. The Center for Public Integrity in Washington has given Michigan an F for openness and transparency in government. This has caused some concern among our politicians. Twice in recent years, the Michigan House of Representatives has passed bills to extend FOIA, but they were dead on arrival in the state senate.
Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof, who cared nothing for openness or democracy, sneered at the thought of expanding access, and the bills got nowhere. Fortunately, he’s gone now. Three days ago, the Michigan House unanimously passed another package of bills that would indeed extend FOIA to the state’s top elected officials and the legislature.
Personally, I don’t think this bill is strong enough. Everyone knows there should be some things that shouldn’t have to be disclosed – private medical or certain other personal information, for example. But these bills exempt too much, including information about budget recommendations. We certainly ought to be able to see how they propose to spend our money.
More troubling is that citizens or journalists who are denied access to information wouldn’t be able to appeal that decision to an independent arbiter, or judge.
Instead, under these bills, their only recourse would be to go to a legislative employee, and those who were unhappy with the result would have no right to go to the courts.
That’s worse than what we have now. But there are other good things in these bills, and ideally the state senate should strengthen them. Unfortunately, the opposite seems more likely.
New Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey doesn’t seem as bad as Meekhof. He told reporters, “We’re not going to do nothing. We are going to do something. But it won’t be exactly like what the House is sending over.”
What I fear — what we should all fear — is that they will end up passing something so weak it is meaningless. Democracy indeed dies behind closed doors. Expanding the Freedom of Information Act and giving it some real teeth is the best way to pry that door open.
Politicians may be less apt to do things that are wrong, if they know we have the right and ability to find out all about it.
