April 6 2016 Flint Water Crisis Lies and Bloviating by Rodgers SILC
To Whom it May Concern,
I point your attention to Ed Rodgers comments here from the February 12, 2016
Statewide Independent Living Council meeting:
“ Let me address the Flint water crisis which has touched all of our
society whether it's people in Government, outside Government, people who may
even live in Marquette in one way or another have been touched by this crisis,
this situation. The Bureau of services for blind persons has had a large
amount of our employees volunteer to go to Flint on the weekends, to use their
own time to help distribute filters, water and information to residents of the
greater Flint area who are in the water area. And I want to thank all of the
BSBP employees who have been involved in that endeavor.
Different divisions within BSBP have donated money, for example the
training center, donated money to help buy additional water supplies. We have
also contacted either in person or by telephone all of the clients of BSBP who
live in the water system. I can't give you any more information about that
because the release of client names, addresses, phone numbers, et cetera is
protected by both state and Federal law. But I will say that we have reached
all the blind persons who are current clients. We don't have the capability of
going back and per se creating a list that would allow us to for instance find
out where Joe Smith is living from 1995, that is just an impossible task,
however, as I understand it the efforts of all the volunteers and all of the
agencies at state Government have pretty much tried to knock on every door in
the Flint area and provide information. There is also a statewide web page
that provides information and it's accessible as I understand it, although I
won't verify that under oath because I have not actually gone to it but it's my
understanding that it is accessible.
“
Now, as all have seen even by their own admission BSBP didn’t even know how
many “clients” it has and this was documented in numerous FOIA responses. They
didn’t even use their client list of those subscribers to the Braille and
Talking Book Library. They didn’t do anything for any client according to FOIA
until January 29, 2016 and then it was a few calls to let folks know to call
211. Even that was spread over months and as early as February Rodgers was
debating whether or not BSBP had 11, or 36 clients in the Flint Water District.
And when they sent me a database of redacted contacts the count was 36 people
allegedly contacted for resources. And several were not contacted until well
after the above comments made again February 16 and many haven’t been reached
at all.
Now, today after prompting BSBP alleges they contacted an additional 100 or so
from the Braille and Talking Book Library list. (All have seen my post to
Rodgers on using this by the way.)
And to this date I know of many in this county who haven’t had so much as a
phone call or an inaccessible letter from BSBP.
That includes me who is a client and subscriber to the Braille and Talking Book
Library who lives two miles from the Flint Water system and who does and has
routinely done business in Flint being our county seat.
Now, the SILC and others talk about emergency response for people with
disabilities and we see this clown show go on in this county?
There is a “state of emergency” in Genesee County people! It is declared and
runs through August and yet this one agency, our CIL, and others haven’t put
together even basic and accessible information and referral for anyone but
particularly for people with disabilities living in and/or engaging in regular
activities in Flint like say the schools!
But Rodgers just bloviates, and the Flint Office of BSBP just is too busy
committing records fraud including on “ghost IL” clients such as it did on me
and which I’ve documented to the likes of CAP, RSA, ILA and Ms. Gravetti and in
the public record.
There needs to be an investigation in to the utter fraud going on at BSBP and
in our Independent Living programs and our VR programs here.
Joe Harcz,
Citizen who is Blind
Cc: Lt. Gov. Calley
Cc: MSILC
Cc: NFB MI
Cc: BSBP
Cc: Zimmer, DSA
Cc: RSA
Cc: ILA
Cc: several media
