Rochelle Riley

Detroit Free Press Columnist

A state legislator and former Flint City Council member charged Thursday that Gov. Rick Snyder has misled the public by not releasing all of the e-mails about the Flint water crisis, including one the representative sent a year ago saying that “the city of Flint stands on the precipice of civil unrest” over not having clean drinking water.

State Rep. Sheldon Neeley, who as a city councilman was barred by a Snyder-appointed emergency manager from filing suit over the water, said he reached out to the governor Jan. 29, 2015, because residents were upset about “boiled water advisories, and things were not going on in an appropriate fashion." His letter asked for an executive order to forgive water fund loan balances totaling $20 million so Flint could rebuild the city's infrastructure, fix the water and "minimize the potential for litigation against" the city and state.

On the telephone Thursday, the governor's spokesman, David Murray, chuckled about the letter.

"Oh, I remember seeing that," he said. He said he didn't want to embarrass Neeley by pointing out that the letter -- which was titled "Letter of Appeal for Flint" and was cc'ed to then Lt. Gov. Dick Posthumus, chief of staff Dennis Muchmore, Clyde Edwards and Kiersha Speech -- went to the wrong address.

You see, Neeley sent the letter to governorsoffice@michigan.gov, an e-mail address for constituents -- regular people -- that gets, Murray said, "thousands and thousands of letters" from, well constituents -- the people who pay taxes, the people who include some who may have helped elect the governor, people with concerns.

How could anyone associated with the Snyder administration read that -- and ignore it, or worse have a laugh?

Murray said he was the one who sent Neeley's letter to the governor a month later. It was just before Snyder announced a $2-million grant to find out what was wrong with Flint water. It would be months before the Department of Environmental Quality would learn, then admit, that lead was poisoning the water.

Snyder himself declined to comment, but the questions for him are: Where were you? Did you read the letter? And if your staff told you about the letter, did it not present a situation serious enough to declare a state of emergency and begin testing residents? And where were you for the months afterward? When the problem was discovered to be lead, did no one on your staff think you should know?

Neeley's complaint to the governor came three months before a March 2015 consultant's report that recommended spending $50,000 to add corrosion control chemicals to Flint's drinking water because iron was leaching from the pipes and turning the water brown.

The disclosure of the Snyder e-mail and a second one Neeley to State Attorney General Bill Schuette in September asking for an investigation into the Flint water delivery crisis came two days after Snyder promised in his annual status report to fix the Flint water problem.

Schuette, who declined to investigate last fall, is investigating now.

Could Neeley's complete letter have been omitted because he wrote that "community health could be on the decline as citizens become afraid to even shower or bathe in their homes. The people of Flint bring bottles of brown water full of sediment and other foreign substances to community meetings, asking only to be treated as human beings."

Nobody read that but the press secretary? Michigan deserves to hear those words this week. Flint deserves it.

“It’s really hard to figure out who are the accessories to the crime being committed against this city and who are the allies to fix this massive problem that we facing,” Neeley said. “I think the governor has more to say to the people of Michigan, and he is reluctant to say it. He’s being selective about what truths he wants to release.”

Understandably, Flint residents and some elected leaders are not sure whom to trust and wonder whether all that needs to be done will be done – for residents and for the children.

"The frustration hasn't subsided yet,” Neeley said. “My frustration has grown with individuals who are very dismissive of the Flint community and their concerns."

The question to be asked now may not be: What did they know and when did they know it?

The question may be: How could an intelligent, organized millionaire and former businessman have something happening in his state as catastrophic as the Flint water crisis -- and not know about it for 18 months?

Or: What kind of people did he choose to work for him that they would let this problem, which could have been resolved with a $100 additive or a $50,000 anti-corrosion treatment, get this big? And do they still work there?

And here's a third question: How could this happen to Flint? The Rev. Jeffery Hawkins, pastor of Prince of Peace Baptist Church just blocks from the Flint River, had an idea.

“I believe it’s a city that has been kicked so many times, and when it comes to voting, our numbers are not always the greatest numbers … because of that, I think that the governor just doesn’t care about the city,” Hawkins said. “But there are still human rights afforded, and he could have cared far more than he did. There’s no excuse for what he did, at the end of the day."

Contact Rochelle Riley: rriley99@freepress.com or 313 378-5135. Follow her on Twitter @rochelleriley for updates on the #FlintWaterCrisis, the Detroit Public Schools and other Michigan news.