FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

News from Progress Michigan

March 2, 2016

Contact: Sam Inglot, 616-916-0574, sam@progressmichigan.org

EMAIL: Snyder Knew About Flint Water Crisis in February 2015, Email Not Released to Public on January 20

Email shows Snyder setting up meetings with top staffers to discuss “Flint water”

LANSING — An email sent by Governor Rick Snyder shows that he planned to discuss “Flint water” with top staffers in February 2015 — nearly nine months before the governor claims to have known about a water crisis in Flint.

The message was sent on February 17, 2015 to the Rick for Michigan campaign email account — rather than the official state email account — of Allison Scott, the executive director to the governor, and shows that Rick Snyder wanted to personally discuss the “Flint water” situation with top officials in his administration, among other issues. The email seems to be proof that Gov. Snyder lied each and every time he claimed that his staff never brought the crisis to him and that it was not on his radar.

“Gov. Snyder wants us to believe that he knew nothing of the problems in Flint and that he was poorly served by his staffers. This email shows that Snyder was not only aware of the Flint Water Crisis but was concerned enough to discuss it with high-ranking staff in February of 2015,” said Lonnie Scott, executive director of Progress Michigan. “Every time Snyder is confronted with news about this crisis his excuse has been that he didn’t know — he can’t say that this time. This email is the smoking gun people have been looking for and proves that Snyder knew about and discussed the Flint water situation with top-level staffers months before taking any action.”

The email was not included in the January 20 email dump which calls into question his claim that he has released all of his “2014 and 2015 emails regarding Flint” following the State of the State.

The email also shows that Rick Snyder used his campaign email system to conduct state business with his top staffers. Progress Michigan is calling on Gov. Snyder to immediately release all emails sent to and from the Snyder campaign email system by staffers who work in state government. Furthermore, the Michigan Legislature should act now to remove the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exemption for the legislature and governor’s office.

“The people of Michigan deserve to know the full truth about what happened in Flint and they’ve been denied that by Gov. Snyder for far too long. Snyder has abused the public trust and can no longer serve in the leadership role needed to fix this crisis. He needs to resign immediately,” Scott continued. “The people of Flint and Michigan deserve more than just sound bites and lip service about transparency and accountability, they deserve action. Just like the people in Flint have been saying, the pipes and Gov. Rick Snyder need to be replaced.”

The email sent by Snyder came a week after an email, which was recently released by Progress Michigan, showed that the Snyder administration was bringing in water coolers for a state office building in Flint while continuing to tell residents their water was safe to drink.

The email can be viewed here.

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Snyder Scott Campaign Email by progressmichigan