Voters' distrust didn't begin with Flint water crisis

He spoke with genuine contrition, like a man who belatedly realizes that a thoughtless romantic dalliance has put his marriage and professional reputation at mortal risk.

But this was not some freshman legislator copping to adultery in a rambling YouTube video; this was the governor of Michigan taking responsibility for an environmental catastrophe that imperils lives as well as relationships and careers, and he was doing it on live TV, before a joint session of the state Legislature.

"Government failed you by breaking the trust you placed in us," Rick Snyder said."You deserved better."

Whatever you think of Snyder, it seems obvious that he has been utterly gob-smacked by the water crisis in Flint, and by the speed and ferocity with which it has hijacked his second term. We’re still awaiting the definitive autopsy that will reveal the governor's precise role in this ongoing train-wreck, but Snyder is realistic enough to understand that any legal distinction between his subordinates’ incompetence and his own culpable negligence will likely prove irrelevant in the court of public opinion.

It’s his scandal now, and he seems resigned to being the lightning rod for all the rage it has elicited so long as he can be the one to oversee the cleanup.

Any catastrophe that threatens the health of innocent children deserves our attention on its own merits, But Snyder is savvy enough to understand that his administration’s lapses in Flint have cost him the confidence of constituents throughout the state, not just those who reside in Flint and Detroit.

But Snyder is likely to be disappointed if he believes he can reclaim the electorate's trust merely by making things right in Flint. The man-made disaster there may be the most egregious breach of the social contract between Michiganders and their elected representatives, but it would be disingenuous to portray it as the first such breach since Snyder took office in 2011.

A steady erosion

In fact, the tainted water crisis is just the latest cause for estrangement between the government and the governed —  a vivid but hardly unique demonstration of the degree to which Lansing has become deaf to the voices of ordinary Michiganders.

Even the accomplishments in which Snyder takes the greatest pride — the massive business tax cut that was the centerpiece of his first term, and the appointment of an emergency manager to shepherd Detroit through a painful but expeditious municipal bankruptcy – subordinated the interests of middle class workers and retirees to the governor’s grander vision of fiscal responsibility and economic growth.

Snyder credits the business tax cut for Michigan’s recovery from the nadir of the auto bankruptcies, but he is hard-pressed to demonstrate that the cut was a critical spur to the state’s impressive employment growth, much less its proximate cause..

And while Kevyn Orr navigated Detroit’s fiscal crisis far more deftly than the emergency managers appointed to oversee Flint and the Detroit Public Schools, it remains to be seen whether the residents reduced to spectator status during Orr’s tenure will reap their proportionate share of the Motor City's resurging fortunes.

An empty pledge 

Snyder campaigned on a pledge to make Michigan government more accessible and transparent. But five years into his term, he has proposed few ideas to advance that objective and brought even fewer to fruition.

What the governor has done is affix his signature to a steady succession of bills designed to conceal the identity and motives of the state’s biggest political donors and establish new obstacles for ordinary voters to participate.

He struck his first blow in his inaugural year as governor when he rubber-stamped a shamelessly partisan reapportionment plan that lassoed more Democratic voters into distended congressional and legislative districts. The new boundaries all but guaranteed the GOP legislative majorities disproportionate to its popular vote and strengthened the influence of the right-wing interest groups that dominate Republican primaries.

Late in 2013, after Republican Secretary of State Ruth Johnson said she would seek rule changes to require public disclosure of the so-called third-party spending that increasingly dominates Michigan election campaigns, Snyder signed a hastily passed law that both headed off the threat of disclosure and doubled the maximum political action committees were allowed to contribute directly to candidates.

Just this month, he signed two more controversial measures into law. The first abolished a straight-ticket balloting option Michigan voters had affirmed in two statewide elections, while jettisoning a no-reason absentee voting provision Snyder had reportedly favored.The second effectively doubled the maximum amount individual and PAC donors are permitted to contribute for the second time in as many years, while outlawing the voluntary paycheck deductions that organized labor has historically used to stock its political war chest.

The chicanery surrounding the passage of both measures was as offensive to good government as the bills' themselves; both were sprung on legislators in late-night, end-of-the-year amendments adopted without public hearings or notice to lawmakers in the Democratic minority. Snyder, who frequently appeals for more bipartisan cooperation in the Legislature, raised no objection to the process.

Deferring to cynicism  

The governor has expressed little public enthusiasm for any of these initiatives, fostering the the impression that he is deferring to, rather than endorsing, the petty partisan priorities of his party’s legislative majority.

But whatever its motivation, the consequence of Snyder's deference has been inimical to his oft-repeated commitment to transparency. He made a show of releasing his Flint-related e-mails, but has done nothing to advance the sort of sunshine legislation that mandate such disclosures in all but two other states. A year into his final term, his main contributions have been to perpetuate a flawed reapportionment scheme that permits incumbents in both parties to choose their voters and to enhance the influence of mega-donors whose identities and agenda are concealed from the public. Both developments have steadily increased the voters’ distance from, and distrust of, the elected officials who ostensibly represent their interests in Lansing.

Snyder has doubtless reckoned correctly that issues like reapportionment and campaign finance reform rank far down the list of voters’ anxieties. But even voters who pay no attention to such matters apprehend, however dimly, that political influence has been gravitating to an ever-smaller and more affluent group of contributors.

Bankrolling the campaigns of sympathetic incumbents is just one example of what such mega-donors do in Lansing. Their lawyers and lobbyists increasingly dominate every facet of the political process, from drafting legislation to deciding when ballot campaigns must be mounted to spur reluctant legislators or circumvent a gubernatorial veto.

Disillusioned together         

It has been said often in the past few weeks that what happened in Flint could never have happened in one of Michigan’s whiter, more affluent communities. There’s surely some truth in that; long-standing disparities in public spending and infrastructure investment have made Flint and other impoverished cities far more vulnerable to this sort of public health catastrophe.

But even voters in wealthier suburbs unthreatened by lead poisoning are increasingly disillusioned with the political process and alienated from their political leaders. They have watched their state rack up a series of negative superlatives — worst-maintained roads, least government transparency, most-restrictive absentee voting rules — while their elected leaders in Lansing temporized, as indifferent to those issues as they were to Flint's water emergency.

As awful as it is, Flint’s challenge is the sort Snyder excels at addressing — concrete, logistical, and susceptible to the kind of dashboard metrics the governor likes. I have little doubt that, in his 2017 State of the State message, Snyder will be able to appoint to measurable progress in the purity of water delivered, the number of plumbing fixtures upgraded, and the number of children taking advantage of therapeutic intervention.

But the loss of voters’ trust has been longer in its gestation, wider in its dispersion, and more corrosive than just the current outrage over Flint. Reclaiming it will be more difficult, and more time-consuming, than purging the last traces of lead from Flint’s tainted water.

Contact Brian Dickerson: bdickerson@freepress.com.