Matthew Dolan

Detroit Free Press

The state's health department director is a target of the criminal investigation into Flint's water crisis and received a subpoena Tuesday ordering him to produce documents about his official role and responsibilities, according to his lawyer.

Nick Lyon was told last month by state investigators that he is a focus of the investigation by the office of state Attorney General Bill Schuette, said Lyon's lawyer Larry Willey of the Grand Rapids criminal defense firm Willey & Chamberlain.

“As a result of our investigation, you have become a target," Todd Flood, Schuette’s special counsel in the case, wrote to Lyon in early September.

The contents of Flood's letter were confirmed Tuesday by Willey. Flood did not immediately return a message for comment Tuesday.

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Lyon has not been criminally charged in the case, Schuette spokeswoman Andrea Bitely said Tuesday.

If charged, Lyon would be the most senior official in the administration of Gov. Rick Snyder accused as part of a wide-ranging probe into the city of Flint's disastrous switch to the Flint River for its water supply. That switch in mid-2014 led to a poisoning of the city's drinking water source with high levels of lead.

In a statement Tuesday, Snyder said: "Nick Lyon has guided the department through this crisis and made improvements to the procedures that are followed to protect public health. I am not aware of any official charges being filed against Nick, so I can't comment further on the investigation specifically. Overall, I would say that this issue needs to be resolved efficiently and without further prolonged delay."

It was not immediately clear whether the document meant that Lyon would soon have to appear in court. The subpoena is labeled "order to appear" at 10 a.m. Tuesday. But his lawyer said he has not appeared in court and a department spokeswoman said "Director Lyon is at our Statewide County Directors’ Meeting until later this week."

A representative in the court clerk's office in Flint said there is no criminal warrant for Lyon on file. The case number in the document is connected to another former state health department worker already charged in the investigation.

The subpoena issued by 67th District Court in Flint ordered Lyon to produce "any and all Michigan Civil Service Commission job specifications, any and all Department of Health and Human Services job descriptions related to his tenure as director, job requirements, duties or responsibilities, and policies related to the employment of Nick Lyon, between the dates of September 1, 2014 and December, 31, 2015."

In recent months, Schuette's investigators have turned their attention to the state health department and its role in the related Legionnaires' disease investigation.

So far, the State of Michigan has paid outside lawyers to represent 16 current and former employees of the state Health and Human Services Department.

The department under Lyon has been criticized for failing to notify the public quickly about a deadly Legionnaires' outbreak in the Flint region in 2014 and 2015.

In January, Lyon told Gov. Rick Snyder about the Legionnaire's outbreak at least one year after the health department director knew about the public health issue, according to e-mails released by the Snyder administration. Lyon has served as head of the department since April 2015.

At least 91 Legionnaires' cases were detected in 2014 and 2015. Some experts blame Flint's water, which wasn't treated at the time to reduce corrosion, prompting the attorney general's probe. Flint residents still must drink filtered tap water because of elevated lead levels in the water supply.

A former director with the health department pleaded no contest earlier this month to a misdemeanor charge of willful neglect of duty by a public officer in connection with the crisis.

As part of the plea agreement, Corinne Miller, the former director of the bureau of disease control, prevention and epidemiology, who retired from the department in 2016, must cooperate with the state attorney general's investigation into the water crisis and provide truthful testimony.

The subpoena issued Tuesday to Lyon is in connection with the criminal case against Miller, the document shows.

The plea agreement includes references to “Suspect 1” and “Suspect 2,” and says Miller was asked in January 2015 to provide a report about an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease in the Flint area that started after the city changed its water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River. She gave both people information about it, court documents say, but officials haven’t revealed the identities of the two people.

Miller was the second defendant to reach a plea deal among the nine charged in connection with Schuette's investigation.

Flood, the outside lawyer hired by Schuette to spearhead the prosecutions, has told the court that Miller knew people had died after being diagnosed with the disease, and said she, along with other Michigan Department of Health and Human Services employees, knew that unless the state provided proper notice, “it could be reasonably foreseeable that other innocent victims could be infected."

“Defendant willfully neglected to report the epidemic to health care providers or to the general public,” Flood said.

Twelve deaths were linked to Legionnaires' disease during a 17-month period in 2014 and 2015 in Genesee County, state health officials said. The public wasn’t notified about the outbreak until January 2016.

So far, nine current and former government workers have been accused of lawbreaking on the job, including Stephen Busch, Mike Prysby, Liane Shekter Smith, Adam Rosenthal and Patrick Cook with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. Three people from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services — Miller, Nancy Peeler and Robert Scott — and Flint city worker Mike Glasgow have also been charged.

In May, Glasgow pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor count of willful neglect of duty and is cooperating with the investigation.

Contact Matthew Dolan: 313-223-4743 or msdolan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @matthewsdolan. Staff writer Elisha Anderson contributed to this report.