Rochelle Riley

Detroit Free Press Columnist

Watching Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder testify before Congress about the Flint water crisis was, for all the world, like watching everyone trying to explain what happened to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

It was all somebody else’s fault: The levees weren’t strong enough. The emergency notice didn’t come soon enough. The amount of emergency transportation was woefully lacking. Plenty of people shared blame after the fact. But who’s ultimately responsible for a city before and during a crisis: The mayor.

And if the mayor has been supplanted by an emergency manager, then the governor.

Snyder's Department of Environmental Quality, which knew but refused to address resident complaints or accept research that children were being poisoned, put the Flint water crisis in his lap.

Snyder's emergency manager at the time of the water system switch, who didn’t make sure the water department added corrosives to the water to keep it from leaching lead from service pipes, placed it at the governor's feet.

And Snyder's employees at the water department who flipped the switch without adding the anti-corrosives? They counted on the DEQ to explain procedure. Did they even know how to add anti-corrosives, governor?

Sadly for the governor, who has been counseled to blame everybody for the crisis and repeat over and over that everyone failed at the national, local and state levels, this was his problem to fix. And it should have been fixed right after the first complaints in 2014 — because everyone who was suppose to fix it reported to him. Every city and state employee while Flint was under emergency management was accountable to him.

That makes it clear that, if the governor doesn’t resign — which isn’t expected — and is not recalled — which isn’t likely — what needs to happen next is this: Gov. Snyder needs an emergency manager.

Nearly all of the cities to whom Snyder assigned emergency managers were being governed by African-American leaders at the time. The cities themselves were predominantly black. In Flint, 52% of residents are African American, and 40% live below the poverty line.

What the governor has learned is leaders don't need emergency management because they are black. They just need to need help.

And Snyder needs help.

Snyder: No immediate changes to emergency manager law

After scandals involving mismanagement at a veteran soldier’s home that resulted in inadequate care, mismanagement of a public school district that led to students trying to learn in buildings with mold and rodents, mismanagement of a water system that led to thousands being exposed to poisoned water, he just seems overwhelmed.

It would be serious but righteous action that might just slow down calls for the governor to resign, which have been coming steadily and including from Congress during the hearing where Snyder testified — in a moment captured on You Tube videos that are reverberating.

It came when U. S. Rep. Matt Cartwright, D-Penn., had had enough of Snyder saying that despite hundreds of e-mails among staff, an untold number of letters and complaints from residents and God knows how many news stories and TV reports, the governor believed his staff when they said for 18 months that the water was fine.

Cartwright point-blank told the governor he didn’t believe him.

"Plausible deniability only works when it's plausible, and I'm not buying that you didn't know about this until October 2015,” Cartwright told the governor. “You were not in a medically induced coma for a year. … I've had about enough of your false contrition and phony apologies.”

Ouch.

Rick Snyder isn’t an uncaring man. He’s a corporate CEO in a people CEO job. And when you’re a public servant, and you receive a mother’s cry for help, like the one Flint mom LeAnne Walters emitted, you have to treat it like the company stock just plummeted — and act immediately. A mother’s cry for help is as important as a balanced budget. It just is.

So Snyder should assign himself an emergency manager, not a PR firm, which he already hired, or an attorney, which he already retained at taxpayer expense, but someone to help right the ship.

Before he no longer has a choice.

Contact Rochelle Riley at rriley99@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @rochelleriley for updates on the #FlintWaterCrisis and other Michigan issues.