LANSING, Mich. | The state-appointed emergency manager for Detroit’s troubled school district is leaving the job about 4½ months early, Gov. Rick Snyder announced Tuesday.
Darnell Earley also was the emergency manager for Flint when its water source was switched in 2014. State regulators failed to require the water from the Flint River to be properly treated, allowing lead from pipes to leach into the supply and causing a public health emergency.
Earley notified Snyder of his decision Tuesday, telling the governor that he completed the work ahead of his 18-month schedule. His last day is Feb. 29.
Democratic lawmakers, who oppose the emergency manager law that gives the state broad financial powers in municipalities and school districts, had called for Earley’s resignation both because of problems in Detroit — rolling teacher sick-outs in the district have forced dozens of schools to close intermittently in recent months due to complaints about decaying facilities and wrecked finances — and his role in Flint.
The Republican governor is pushing the GOP-controlled Michigan Legislature to provide state funding to address the district’s $515 million operating debt and help transition the district, which has been under emergency management for nearly seven years, back to some form of local control.
Earley, who took charge in January 2015, “has done a very good job under some very difficult circumstances,” Snyder said in a statement, noting that he restructured the central office, cut back on costs and took “steps to stabilize enrollment.”
Earley said in a statement that the goal was “for me to be the last emergency manager appointed to DPS.”
“I have completed the comprehensive restructuring, necessary to downsizing the central office, and the development of a network structure that empowers the educational leadership of our schools to direct more resources toward classroom instruction,” he said.
But officials with the Detroit teachers union have said Earley, 64, has not responded well enough to their complaints about leaky roofs, rodents and mold in school buildings.
Snyder said he will appoint a transition leader, not an emergency manager, before the end of the month while legislators debate his restructuring proposal.
Earley, 64, was invited to testify Wednesday at a U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Flint’s water crisis but has declined the invitation, district spokesman Michelle Zdrodowski said.
Six Detroit-area Democratic state senators said that they “welcome Earley’s resignation, but it doesn’t signal the end of investigations or accountability.”
Earley was one of Snyder’s go-to guys to fix foundering cities and cities and school districts, getting two of the toughest cases.
During his 16 months in Flint, Earley approved a plan to save money by switching its water supply from the Detroit system to a new pipeline consortium, and to use Flint River water until the new pipeline was ready.
The city council and a previous emergency manager, Ed Kurtz, had approved the move to the new regional pipeline in 2013. In 2014, Earley turned down the Detroit system’s offer to continue selling water to the city, saying Flint had been actively pursuing the river as a temporary water source.
“I came along at a time when this project was already underway and it fell to me to oversee implementation of it,” Earley told WDIV-TV last month.
Anti-corrosion agents were not added to the river water because of mistakes at the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, causing metal leaching in pipes and dangerously elevated lead levels among some residents.