COLUMN: Snyder should not take whole blame for Flint water crisis

Gov. Rick Snyder's State of the State address on Tuesday was filled with grief and regret.

He has been at the center of one of the biggest political controversies this state has had in recent memory.

During his annual address on, our governor laid the blame for the Flint water crisis at his own feet. He was contrite as he apologized to the people of Flint and promised them he would do everything he could to fix the problem his administration helped cause.

I believe him.

I also believe Snyder does not deserve the whole blame for the Flint water crisis atrocity.

It is important to remember how Flint got here.

Flint’s economy has been in the gutter since the auto industry went belly up many years ago. Two words have defined the city recently: Unemployment and crime.

The state-appointed emergency manager approach worked in Detroit. So Snyder applied it to Flint.

Seventeen months ago, Flint’s second emergency manager, chosen by Snyder, decided to switch the city’s water supply from the fresh Great Lakes to the Flint River as a temporary cost-cutting fix.

Big mistake.

It appears top executives at the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality failed to provide Flint's new emergency manager with accurate and crucial information regarding the lead levels in the Flint River.

This was a systemic failure.

It is unrealistic to expect Snyder to anticipate each intricacy of state government leading up to the catastrophe.

Now, his mission is to fix it.

Snyder asked Michigan legislators for $28 million to help those affected by the crisis and asked the people of Flint to trust him to fix their biggest problem.

All people have the right to consume clean drinking water. Snyder knows that. He is devastated people in Flint don’t have clean water right now.

The people of Flint were robbed of their right to clean water by a colossal and woeful bureaucratic failure.

Snyder has issued public apologies and declared a state of emergency in the city as a federal investigation into the crisis is being conducted by the U.S. Justice Department.

A policy decision has caused this chaos.

To Snyder’s underlings, who often are too concerned with the bottom line, the decision to switch seemed financially responsible.

Now Snyder is being accused of knowingly poisoning an entire city.

What a farce.

Today, Michigan State Police Troopers go door-to-door handing out bottled water to city residents.

The democratic process failed in Flint.

Snyder should have been more aggressive in his vetting of the information he was being fed from his emergency manager in Flint and a major state agency.

He did something many successful bosses do every day: He trusted the people that work for him.

They let him down. Now Snyder’s legacy is in jeopardy.

People talk about losing trust in government all the time.

Perhaps it is time we start discussing whether the government can trust itself.