(Updated) FLINT, MI — Two former emergency managers appointed
by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder — Darnell Earley and Gerald Ambrose —
were charged with felonies Tuesday in the ongoing investigation into
Flint’s drinking water lead-contamination investigation, Michigan
Attorney General Bill Schuette said at a news conference Tuesday.
Also charged were two former Flint city employees, Howard Croft, who
was the public works superintendent, and Daugherty Johnson, who
was the utilities administrator Johnson.
All four defendants face felony charges of false pretenses and
conspiracy to commit false pretenses, both punishable by 20 years in
prison. Additionally, Earley and Ambrose face charges of misconduct
in office, a five-year felony; and willful neglect of duty, a misdemeanor.
The emergency managers are the highest-level officials charged so far
in the investigation. Asked by a reporter if Snyder himself might be
charged, Schuette didn't answer directly, but said: "It’s serious. We’re
going up and we’re going broad. We read the emails and put two and
two together. If there’s sufficient evidence, we charge. Nobody’s on the
table; nobody’s off the table."
Schuette said the conspiracy involved borrowing about $85 million to
clean up a so-called calamity — one of the few instances in which
governments under emergency management may borrow money — at
a lime-sludge lagoon that Schuette said had already been largely
remediated. Instead, the money was used to develop the Karegnondi
Water Authority, which ended the city’s longtime relationship with the
Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, which gets its water from
Lake Huron.
The lead crisis is believed to have contributed to an outbreak of
Legionnaires disease that killed 12 people and exposed countless
children to dangerously high levels of lead in their drinking water,
Schuette said.
“That cannot be swept under the rug,” he said.
“All too prevalent and very evident in this course of investigation has
been a fixation on finances and balances sheet that cost lives,” he said.
“It’s all about numbers over people, money over health.”
You still have plenty of time to get gifts shipped to you by Christmas morning.
The investigation so far has revealed that Flint is a “casualty of
arrogance, disdain and failure of management, an absence of
accountability, a shirking of responsibility.”
Schuette was joined at the Tuesday news conference at the Riverfront
Banquet Center in Flint by special prosecutor Todd Flood, chief
investigator Andrew Arena and Genesee County Attorney David Leyton,
who have been looking into how residents of the southeast Michigan
city were exposed to toxic lead when the city began getting water from
the Flint River in 2014.
Eight state workers and one city of Flint employee were previously
charged in the investigation, which was launched last January.
Schuette said when the first individuals were charged in April when
the first individuals — two mid-level state workers and the city of
Flint employee— that they were only the “
first wave” of charges and
more would be coming.
Six more state workers in two departments were charged with
felonies in July for allegedly covering up reports of high lead levels
in the Flint drinking water supply. Whether from “arrogance” or an
attempt to support their own narratives that the drinking water was
matter,” Schuette said at the time.
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