Former Michigan Teasurer Robert Kleine added another layer to the debate about what caused the Flint water crisis. Decisions made by Flint’s emergency manager led to the water crisis, but Kleine says the EMs aren't given enough tools to fix the problems in these struggling cities. In his op-ed in The Washington Post, entitled "Rick Snyder isn’t the only Michigan leader who abandoned Flint," he says the state government’s “hostility” toward cities and revenue sharing cuts is making the job of an emergency manager that much harder.“When a city has no tax base, an emergency manager is not going to be successful,” said Kleine during an interview with Stateside. “We’ve had emergency managers in the same cities several times. They can maybe make a short-term difference but then a couple years later, the city is back in the same financial mess.”Kleine, who was the state treasurer for four years under Gov. Jennifer Granholm, cited a study conducted by Michigan State University that said the
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