Rochelle Riley

Detroit Free Press Columnist

The questions aren’t: What did the governor know, and when did he know it?

The question, rather, is: How could Gov. Rick Snyder not know about the escalating crisis with the Flint water system when hundreds of e-mails were circulating among his top staffers, advisers, counselor and chief of staff?

And do the 550 e-mails released Friday by the Snyder administration reflect anything criminal?

Among the missives about the crisis, which began when the city began using Flint River water without anticorrosives, were at least two that were damning and heartbreaking:

One was sent to then-chief of staff Dennis Muchmore and three other top Snyder aides from senior policy adviser Valerie Brader, who apparently was advising everyone but the governor.

She argued that the City of Flint should return to using Detroit’s water system because there was an “urgent matter to fix.”

“As you know there have been problems with the Flint water quality since they left the DWSD (Detroit Water and Sewerage Department), which was a decision by the emergency manager there,” the Oct. 14, 2014, e-mail said.

Michael Gadola, who was then the governor’s legal counsel, sent this back 12 minutes later:

Flint “should try to get back on the Detroit system as a stopgap ASAP before this thing gets too far out of control.”

Gadola, who grew up in Flint, also wrote “Too bad (former Flint emergency manager Darnell Earley) didn’t ask me what I thought …”

Was it indifference, callousness, stupidity, heartlessness or ineptitude that led so many people to take so lightly the suffering of so many?

A frustrated and angry State Rep. Sheldon Neeley, D-Flint, questions whether some of it constitutes criminal negligence. He requested an official legal opinion Friday from Attorney General Bill Schuette on the following question:

“If an official (elected, appointed or assigned) knowingly withholds information and fails to act in regards to law, protocol and/or policy in the course of his or her official duties and harm of a citizen(s) results in their death, can the official be charged with the criminal offense of involuntary manslaughter?”

Neeley also asked for an opinion on what offenses would apply in cases where an official withholds information that results in serious injury. The first question has to do with an uptick in cases of Legionnaires' disease, which officials have yet to link to the water.

Neeley said he expected a different response from Schuette than he got the last time he requested help. That was in a letter from January 2015 when he requested an investigation.

“Last time, it took him three months to deny” the request, Neeley said. “I fully expect him to honor this request."

Schuette, reached Friday, said “I’m going to certainly review” Neeley’s request.

“We’re going at it full and complete and let the chips fall where they may,” he said. “As the lawyer for the citizens of Michigan, we will determine what laws if any were broken. It will be very much straight ahead and Joe Friday — just the facts.

Maybe he can begin with this: Where was the governor? And why wasn’t anyone talking to him?

After perusing some of the voluminous collection of e-mails, hundreds of e-mails, some heinous, some petty, some written by employees who obviously didn’t care about people, it is clear that this was a big topic of conversation — with everyone but Snyder.

Thousands of e-mails circulated all over the state capitol but none made it to the governor?

Among the most damning was this one from Angela Minicuci, who was then a spokeswoman for the Department of Community Health.

“They shouldn’t have sent this notice out.”

That e-mail came on Feb. 3, 2015, after she learned that a state agency had alerted Flint child care centers that they might want to consider using bottled water or consult with physicians.

Child care centers.

Somebody ought to go to jail.

And at some point, the governor will have to explain where he was from April 2014 through October 2015.

Because he couldn’t have been at work.

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