OPINION: Bill Schuette’s environmental hypocrisy

Aug. 25--In his eight years as Michigan's attorney general, Bill Schuette has been a champion for Michigan's environment in approximately the same sense that Bill Clinton has been a poster boy for marital fidelity.

But another statewide election is drawing nigh -- and unless I miss my guess, voters are about to be subjected to a glossy advertising campaign that portrays the Republican gubernatorial nominee as a stalwart defender of Michigan's air, land and water.

Expect to see video of a shirt-sleeved Schuette listening compassionately to Flint residents whose water was poisoned on Gov. Rick Snyder's watch (which coincided, for those keeping score at home, with Schuette's own). An accompanying voice-over will remind viewers that the attorney general did not hesitate to prosecute officials from his own party for their conduct in Flint's environmental catastrophe.

Since Flint's aggrieved residents account for only a negligible slice of the electorate, the voice-over will insist that Schuette's relentless pursuit of fellow Republicans who screwed up in Flint is only the latest instance in which the AG has put the defense of Michigan's natural resources ahead of his own political interests.

The big lie

This is, of course, a whopper of Orwellian proportions. And before the myth of Schuette as environmental steward gains any traction in the public consciousness, voters would do well to remember a few salient highlights of his tenure as Michigan's top law enforcement officer:

--Schuette was among the group of Republican attorneys general who sued to block the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of U.S. efforts to meet its obligations under the Paris Accord to reduce greenhouse gases. The campaign to stave off restrictions on emissions from power plants fueled by coal and other fossil fuels was led by then-Oklahoma AG Scott Pruitt, who scuttled the Clean Power Plan entirely after Donald Trump tapped him to lead (and defang) the Environmental Protection Agency.

Pruitt was forced to resign last month after a tenure plagued by scandal, but his acting successor has outlined a new, weaker coal regulation plan that would (according to the EPA's own projections) boost pollution-related fatalities by as much as 1,400 deaths a year.

--In 2015, Schuette enlisted in a similar lawsuit to block enforcement of the Waters of the United States rule, a regulation the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had crafted to curb pollution of rivers, streams and wetlands that feed larger bodies of water like the Great Lakes and the Chesapeake Bay.

Pruitt's EPA also suspended enforcement of that rule, and the agency is planning to replace it with a new one that places fewer restrictions on farmers, ranchers and real estate developers who bridled at the original.

--In an earlier sally against federal clean air initiatives, Schuette intervened in the U.S. Court of Appeals for District of Columbia to oppose the EPA's Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, which limited emissions and created a "cap and trade" program to prevent upwind states from fouling the air of neighboring states downwind.

Long before he became the fossil fuel industry's most important water-carrier in Lansing, moreover, Schuette was one of its best friends in the U.S. Congress.

From 1987 to 1991, during the two terms he served in the U.S. House, he consistently supported industry efforts to limit oil companies' liability for environmental damage caused by oil spills. He also voted to weaken standards for automotive pollution control devices.

For consistently opposing state and federal initiatives to curb air and water pollution, Congressman Schuette earned a lowly 32% score from the bipartisan League of Conservation Voters. Later, as a Michigan state senator, Schuette incurred the organization's renewed disapproval for sponsoring legislation to permit energy companies to drill for oil and natural gas under Michigan's portion of the Great Lakes.

Accountability or opportunism?

So, probably no one is going to name Schuette as Michigan's Environmentalist of the Year, unless the award sponsor is Koch Industries and the year is 1959. Still, doesn't he deserve props for his efforts to identify those responsible for Flint's catastrophic water crisis and bring them to justice?

Well, maybe -- although Schuette's office was virtually the last law enforcement agency to take an interest in Michigan's worst man-made environmental disaster, and it remains unclear whether the highest-profile targets of his multimillion-dollar investigation will ever be convicted of (or plead guilty to) the serious criminal charges Schuette has brought against them.

Nick Lyon, the Snyder administration's public health chief, was bound over earlier this month for trial on involuntary manslaughter charges in the deaths of two elderly men who were treated for Legionnaires' disease at a hospital on Flint's tainted water system. Schuette's decision to prosecute Lyon has enraged critics as diverse as Snyder, former Democratic Attorney General Frank Kelley, former Republican state Supreme Court Justice Maura Corrigan, and former Republican state Sen. Roger Kahn. Some see the prosecution as a ham-handed effort to enlist Lyon as the star witness in an even more spectacular homicide case against Snyder; most regard it as a political stunt doomed to end in Lyon's eventual acquittal.

David Uhlmann, a University of Michigan Law professor who served at the U.S. Department of Justice for 17 years and was the top environmental crimes prosecutor in the country from 2000 to 2007, says government officials betrayed the residents of Flint and should be held accountable. But he contends that the prosecutions do not change the fact that Schuette did nothing to help Flint residents before the water crisis and has sued to block clean water and clean air programs at every turn.

"Whatever the outcome in Flint, I look at an attorney general with the worst environmental record this side of Scott Pruitt, and I see a cynical, transparent effort to burnish environmental credentials that are otherwise non-existent," Uhlmann says.

Lyon's attorneys say they'll file a motion seeking to quash District Court Judge David Goggins' order binding their client over for trial. But even if they're unsuccessful, it's unlikely a trial will get underway before Schuette's term as attorney general ends on Jan. 1, much less before the Nov. 6 election.

By then, the charges against Lyon will have served the purpose of whatever political calculations may have prompted them. So it will likely be up to a new attorney general to decide whether to proceed with what is roundly perceived as a flimsy case.

In the meantime, voters should keep a lookout for campaign ads that exploit Schuette's theatrics in Flint to distract their attention from a career marked by sympathy for industrial polluters, hostility toward environmental regulation, and indifference to the threat of global warming that most civilized nations are struggling to arrest.

Brian Dickerson is the Free Press' editorial page editor. Contact him at [email protected].

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