The water crisis in Flint, Michigan has already cost thousands of residents sleepless nights, endless visits to doctors as they see about their poisoned children, and proven yet again that too often in this country people cannot trust their elected representatives to do what is in the public interest.


Now, it will cost Michigan Governor Rick Snyder one massive headache atop the one he has already inflicted on himself and his state. Snyder, it was announced today, is now the subject of a federal racketeering (RICO) lawsuit filed by hundreds of Flint residents.

The lawsuit alleges that the state of Michigan ran Flint’s day-to-day operations through an emergency manager, who then attempted to partially balance the city’s budget through a what he felt was a wise cost-cutting measure: Switching Flint’s water source from Lake Huron, which had been the source of water in the city for more than 50 years, to a local, heavily polluted river.

The state could have used federal bankruptcy protections for Flint, rather than appoint an emergency manager who was charged with balancing the budget, according to John Clark, an attorney with the law firm Bern Ripka, but state officials decided not to for purely political reasons: