Towns around Flint spent their own money to fix their own pipes. They sacrificed to do the right thing. If a place like Flint now gets upgrades for free, we're rewarding irresponsibility. The voters of Flint choose to be irresponsible for decades.
Do those other towns get paid for what they already did?
The big catastrophe that happened to Flint was caused at the state level (specifically, by a budget-cutting Republican statewide government). It wasn't anything the town of Flint had a say in.
Not really; one Michigan-specific consequence of the financial crisis was a takeover of city governments by state-appointed "Emergency Managers." These managers were given broad, non-democratic executive latitude. In Flint's case the appointees were Darnell Earley and Gerald Ambrose. They are currently being charged with a multitude of crimes for their actions which caused this (so are a dozen other employees, but they all reported to Earley and Ambrose) and they are responsible for the drive to "save" money, damn the consequences.
The emergency managers didn't tell them to save $100/day but failing to adjust the pH, they're just incompetent at their job. Democrats ran Flint into bankruptcy, but they're off the hook when the state has to try and clean up their decades of mess (including rampant nepotism).
The criminal charges have all been dropped give months ago.
I didn't say anything about Democrats or Republicans - both parties have blood on their hands in this case, and city-level planning decisions are often disconnected from party-defining policy issues anyway.
Regardless of which party it was, the executive failures - which is what you agree is the problem when you say "they're just incompetent at their job" - cannot be in any meaningful sense a local problem when the executive is being run by a state appointee and not an official elected locally or appointed by one. The emergency manager system is just another case of the nepotism you mention.
Completely false. Flint and Detroit governments caused this. Flint’s lack of money was because that government was so financially inept. Decisions made by Flint caused this.
The “towns around Flint” exist and are wealthy due to explicitly racist maneuvers during the White Flight era that intentionally impoverished inner cities and their black residents.
Towns around Flint spent their own money to fix their own pipes. They sacrificed to do the right thing. If a place like Flint now gets upgrades for free, we're rewarding irresponsibility. The voters of Flint choose to be irresponsible for decades.
Do those other towns get paid for what they already did?