LANSING, Mich.—Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder on Wednesday proposed spending hundreds of millions more dollars to address Flint’s water crisis from lead contamination and to update pipes there and across the state—a plan that lawmakers from both parties generally welcomed as moving in the right direction with the proper priorities.
Snyder’s plan would direct $195 million more toward the Flint emergency and $165 million for statewide infrastructure needs, at least a portion of which could replace lead and copper water lines elsewhere. He said $25 million of the Flint funding would replace 5,000 known old lead lines running from city streets to houses, calling it a “seed investment” until the state has a better handle on just how many of the pipes there are.
The Republican governor cited aging infrastructure as a pressing priority, along with restructuring the troubled Detroit school district and addressing skyrocketing specialty medicine costs.
“These areas merit special attention,” Snyder said, in a departure from his typically rosier focus on traditional budget spending. “These are issues that we need to take head-on, in a positive, constructive way, with solutions.”
Lawmakers from both parties have resisted Snyder’s plan to shift $72 million a year from the school aid fund to pay down Detroit Public Schools’ operating debt, estimated at $1,100 per student, and to launch a new district with better-performing schools. They do not want to affect funding for other districts.
So the governor proposed instead using a portion of Michigan’s tobacco settlement, the annual payment the state receives from cigarette manufacturers under a 1998 agreement.
The district, which has been under state emergency financial management for almost seven years, is burdened by debt, falling enrollment, inadequate buildings and low morale among teachers whose recent “sickout” absences have closed schools. Snyder said the city must have a decent school district to continue its recovery after emerging from the largest public bankruptcy in U.S. history.
Snyder also proposed spending $135 million a year to provide just two specialty drugs—for Hepatitis C and cystic fibrosis—to several thousand people on Medicaid or in prison.
“This is a large national problem. It’s an opportunity to help people, and we want to help people,” he said. “But we need to find the most cost-efficient ways to do that.”
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