Header photo: Ehrlif
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office released a long-awaited report on the criminal investigation and prosecution related to the Flint water crisis. The 105-page report is available online, although some sections are heavily redacted because state law doesn’t allow some types of information obtained during investigations to be released to the public. Nessel did encourage state legislators to repeal those statutes so that the redacted portions of the investigation can also be released someday.
If you read the report, here’s what it will provide: some detailed analysis and explanations for why criminal cases against those responsible for the water crisis stalled, as well as an organized timeline and insight into how decisions were made and potentially covered up by several state and local officials.
Here’s what it won’t provide: any type of closure or satisfaction.
As a document that offers insight into the investigation, it is at least mildly interesting to understand the precision required to criminally charge and pursue convictions against high-level government officials, and the many factors that caused those attempts related to water crisis officials to unravel. But the point is, they did unravel. And they unraveled despite evidence both in the moment and over time that many people were criminally negligent and callous in their approach to Flint, resulting in deaths, long-term health and developmental issues, and potentially irreparable shattered trust in government and public institutions.
The report is obviously detailed and a lot to absorb. But I keep coming back to two simple takeaways that are at odds with each other.
On page 12, the report states: “The investigation into the Flint Water Crisis was one of the most complex and comprehensive investigations in Michigan’s history.”
In her foreword, Nessel writes: “My heart also breaks because I recognize, to a large extent, justice has evaded the people of Flint.”
Read together, those two sentiments sort of give the game away. The investigation into the Flint water crisis was robust, heavily resourced, and comprehensive. It turned up thousands of pages of documents, communications, medical records, interview transcripts, and other materials showing clear awareness of the problem and efforts to cover it up rather than acknowledge to the public what happened. And in the end, despite that pile of evidence, none of the people responsible faced any sort of real consequences for the massive amounts of physical and mental destruction they caused.
Legalese and minutiae aside, these are the two basic thoughts I constantly return to regarding the water crisis:
- No one in government has been held accountable in any way despite very clear evidence of carelessness and incompetence among local, state, and federal elected officials and several staff members.
- Many Flint residents who were harmed by the crisis are still waiting to receive payment for that harm, despite the money existing for years as a result of civil litigation. The amount of bureaucratic hoops people had to jump through even to receive payment is mind boggling (rather than … you know … using identifying information that government has easy access to, figuring out who lived/worked in Flint during the affected years, and simply paying them), and the judges and attorneys who were a part of those processes should feel deep shame.
Everyone failed Flint’s people. The health issues from lead poisoning and exposure, as well as deaths from Legionnaires Disease, are tragic. But among the most damaging long-term consequences is the impact it has had on the way Flint residents interact with institutions. The lack of trust in any entity has been catastrophic. It is nearly impossible to get information from government or public health sources that isn’t disputed. Conspiracy theories and misinformation and rage baiting, propagated by people who continuously take advantage of the earned lack of trust, flourish. There is no clear path to restoring that basic foundation, other than radical transparency and no level of government currently seems capable of supplying that.
The report from the Attorney General’s office is dissatisfying but still important in one sense: I am always an advocate for information reaching the public. I also at least applaud Nessel pressuring the state legislature to work on allowing the redacted portions of the report to be released. That is the public’s information and under no circumstance should it continue to be hidden. It’s an extra insult – not only are the powerful who were involved in this decision not facing legal consequences, other powerful people are still providing cover for their actions. I don’t know that any real sense of healing from the various traumas the water crisis caused is possible, but I do know it is impossible without the full disclosure of materials from the investigation to the public. If the state is truly interested in the long process of restoring trust from Flint residents, it will start by unredacting this report.
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