Flint mayor walks back water crisis accusation against Mott Foundation

Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley is walking back his previous allegations that a powerful foundation in the city handpicked Gov. Rick Snyder’s first two emergency managers, who played a key role in Flint’s deadly water crisis.

Journalist and author Jordan Chariton broke news in Metro Times on Monday that Neeley claimed in a recorded interview that the Mott Foundation “pulled the strings” behind Snyder’s appointment of the city’s unelected emergency managers, who were later charged with misconduct in office .

In the interview with Chariton, which occurred when Neeley was running for mayor in April 2019, Neeley also invoked the 2015 book Demolition Means Progress: Flint, Michigan, and the Fate of the American Metropolis , which alleged that the foundation’s namesake, General Motors stockholder Charles Stewart Mott, enabled and supported racist policies.

In a Facebook post Tuesday , Neeley reversed his position on the foundation, saying, “I would ask Flint residents to disregard any mistaken assumptions I made in 2019.”

Neeley contends he was “mistaken in the assumptions I expressed.”

“Though I stated then that I believed the Mott Foundation selected two of Flint’s emergency managers, I know now that only former Governor Rick Snyder had the ability to assign emergency managers to Flint and other Michigan cities,” Neeley’s Facebook post states.

Neeley then praised the powerful foundation, saying it is one of the city’s “strongest allies.”

“In the aftermath of the Flint Water Crisis, they made important contributions that increased access to robust early childhood education for Flint children, as the first line of defense in mitigating the impacts of lead,” the post reads. “They provided both emergency and long-term strategic response at a dire moment for the City of Flint.”

Flint resident Jay Nino Ewell responded, “I ain’t seen nobody back pedal this fast since Deion Sanders was on the field.”

Neeley also sought to besmirch Chariton, whose reporting is featured in the upcoming book We the Poisoned: Exposing the Flint Water Crisis Cover-Up and the Poisoning of 100,000 Americans for recording the interview without his knowledge.

“Five years ago, a conversation was inappropriately recorded without my knowledge by an unscrupulous journalist who continues to attempt to profit from the pain of the Flint Water Crisis,” Neeley wrote. “This is unethical behavior, and I hope it is clear that my 2019 comments have been presented out of context.”

In an interview Wednesday morning with Metro Times , Chariton defended his decision to surreptitiously record Neeley, saying he wanted to accurately quote Neeley and that the mayor should know that a conversation with a reporter is on the record unless both parties agree otherwise.

Michigan is a one-party consent state , which means a participant in a conversation can legally record it without informing or obtaining consent from the other participants.

To be sure, reporters often record interviews to ensure accuracy, and the person on the other end of the recording is not always notified. The point isn’t to be deceptive, but to safeguard against misquotes and future libel lawsuits.

And political candidates, politicians, and public officials should not reasonably expect that a conversation with a reporter is off the record. Both parties must agree to an interview being off the record.

“He is a politician, so he would know what ‘off the record’ means,” Chariton says. “He has to stipulate it, and we both have to agree. I think he can call me whatever he wants, but at the end of the day, I’m a journalist, and a politician sat down next to me and talked to me.”

Chariton also said he faithfully conveyed Neeley’s comments and took nothing out of context.

“His words speak for themselves,” Chariton says. “They were recorded. There is nothing out of context.”

In addition, Chariton scoffs at the idea that he’s reporting on the Flint water crisis to profit from a human-caused catastrophe that caused immeasurable harm. As an out-of-state reporter, Chariton spends a lot of his own money reporting on what happened in Flint.

“I have lost a lot of money covering this,” Chariton says. “You don’t make money covering Flint. I’m sorry to say that.”

Chariton says his motive is to reveal the scope of the crisis and how politicians and others caused the disaster. Unfortunately, he points out, Flint journalists have failed to adequately cover the crisis and still refuse to hold public officials and others accountable.

In fact, as of Wednesday afternoon, Metro Times was the only publication to report on Chariton’s interview with Neeley.

“How is it that the mayor of one of the largest cities in Michigan is on tape accusing one of the largest foundations in Michigan of basically pulling the strings that caused the Flint water crisis?” Chariton asks. “No other media outlet has covered it. It seems like an obvious story, so one has to wonder, is the local media worried about reporting critically on the Mott Foundation?”

Chariton points out that nonprofits funded by the Mott Foundation spend a lot of money advertising in local media.

He says he has pitched other revealing stories about the water crisis, only to be turned down by other major media outlets.

“The hardest part about journalism should be building sources, getting the documents, and writing the stories, not getting the media to publish the work,” Chariton says.

In 2017, the Mott Foundation issued a lengthy statement about claims that Mott was racist.

The Flint water crisis began when the city, while under state emergency management, switched its drinking water supply to the Flint River to save money in 2014. The decision created one of the nation’s worst public health disasters in decades, contaminating drinking water with dangerous levels of lead.

State officials ignored signs of serious health hazards in the predominantly Black city and failed to implement corrosion-control treatments, causing lead, iron, and rust to leach from aging pipes into the water supply.