TRENTON, N.J. – A small but provocative moment of truth may have arrived for N.J. Gov. Chris Christie, who is busy running as a Republican candidate for President, touting his purported competence as a governor.

A bill to revitalize New Jersey’s fund for fighting lead poisoning by investing $10 million has been sent to the his desk; he has until noon on Jan. 19 to sign it, according to a story written by investigative reporter Todd Bates.

The bill passed the N.J. Senate by 29-6 on Jan. 7; the bill had previously passed the N.J. Assembly by a vote of 48-20-1, with bipartisan support.

To understand the significance of the new legislation and the challenge it poses for Christie, a little history is required, courtesy of Bates and his award-winning reporting.

• The Lead Hazard Control Assistance Fund was launched in 2004 but since then, it has been heavily raided, with money siphoned off by New Jersey governors, including Christie, to help balance state budgets.

• In Christie’s fiscal 2016 spending plan, as in his four previous budgets, the governor provided zero tax revenues from paint sales and surface coatings for the lead fund, as directed by the 2004 law.

• The purpose of the fund is to pay for removing or controlling lead in homes, relocating households with lead-tainted children on an emergency basis, and supporting widespread education and outreach on lead poisoning.

• The fund is also supposed to pay for training on lead-safe building maintenance practices, an online Lead Safe Housing Registry, free dust-wipe kits for detecting lead-based paint and dust, and X-ray analyzers at health departments.

But, as Bates’ reporting documented, at least $53.7 million to as much as $100 million-plus in sales-tax revenues have been diverted from the lead fund since its enactment in 2004, with the money siphoned off into the state’s general fund.

Further, the state has failed to inspect one- and two-family rentals to ensure that they’re lead-safe, despite a 2008 law requiring such inspections.

Failing to protect families from terror of lead poisoning
Protecting the security of New Jersey residents from the threat of terrorism has been one of the Christie’s campaign trumpeted talking points, but when it comes to protecting thousands of New Jersey children and families from the terror of lead poisoning, an entirely avoidable, man-made scourge, with its lifetime of irreversible damages, Christie has been missing in action.

Last year alone, high levels of toxic lead were detected in more than 3,000 young children in New Jersey, according to reporting by Bates.

In the past 15 years, once again, according to the excellent reporting by Bates, “elevated lead concentrations have been found – for the first time in their lives – in about 225,000 [New Jersey] children who are five and under.”

Translated, a quarter-million of New Jersey’s next generation have been sentenced to a lifetime of potential permanent brain damage and behavioral problems by a preventable, man-made plague.

In his story published on Jan. 8, Bates framed the issue: “Young children face the greatest threat from lead poisoning, which can cause permanent brain damage and a lifetime of learning problems and behavioral issues. Minority children who live in older housing in urban areas are typically at highest risk.”

“Lead poisoning can be extremely detrimental to the health of a child, leading to learning and behavioral problems and to others that are far more severe,” Sen. Ronald L. Rice, a primary sponsor of the bill, told Bates. “Yet, there are thousands of children, many living in urban areas, who are being exposed to this harmful substance in their own homes.”

Who will be the first national news outlet to ask Christie a question about his history of failure in funding the protection of New Jersey residents from lead poisoning?

Will it be Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski? Megyn Kelly on Fox News? Anderson Cooper on CNN? Scott Pelley on CBS, Lester Holt on NBC, or David Muir on ABC?

ConvergenceRI’s best guess is that it will probably be someone such as MassLive political reporter Shira Schoenberg who has the gumption to ask Christie the question, tying it to the tragedy and travesty that is now unfolding in Flint, Mich.

Egregious
Even more egregious than Christie’s willingness to siphon funds destined from the Lead Hazard Control Assistance Fund, in the name of budget austerity, has been the ongoing story of the man-made lead poisoning disaster in Flint, Mich., also a story of budget austerity gone wild.

In 2014, when Flint was being run by a state financial advisor appointed by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, the decision was made, on a cost-saving basis, to stop paying Detroit for its existing supply of clean water from Lake Huron and instead, tap into the polluted Flint River.

That decision was hailed at the time as a way to save financially strapped Flint millions of dollars. The human consequences were never considered.

However, the “externalities” of that budget decision may end up instead costing the state billions of dollars; it could also lead the potential of Snyder being charged with crimes and going to jail, if community activists have their way.

The budget decision resulted in highly corrosive water from the Flint River leaching the lead out of the aging pipes and poisoning hundreds of children and families in Flint, and putting more than 8,000 children under the age of six at severe risk of lead poisoning.

Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said recently that fixing the city’s lead-damaged infrastructure could cost as much as $1.5 billion – essentially being forced to replace all the pipes carrying water in the city.

The big river denial
As with many scandals, instead of owning up to responsibility for making a bad decision, the state government under Gov. Snyder compounded the problem, at first denying there was a problem, and then belittling a pediatrician, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, the pediatric residency director at the Hurley Children’s Hospital in Flint, who in September of 2015 brought her research results to state officials showing a dramatic rise in lead poisoning in children correlated with the changeover to using the Flint River as a source of water.

When Hanna-Attisha first released her research, based upon studies looking at lead levels in children, looking at one group before the switch to water from the Flint River, and a second group afterward, with about 700 in each group, she found a doubling of the percentages of children with lead poisoning after the switch in water sources. The state responded by calling her “an unfortunate researcher” and accusing her of “slicing and dicing” her numbers, according to Hanna-Attisha.

The state later conceded that the results of her work were consistent with their own tests.

“What’s so damning about lead poisoning is you see the problems forever,” Hanna-Attisha said in an interview with The Oakland Press. “It causes dropping [of] your IQ. It causes behavioral problems. It has been directly linked to violent offenses. In five years, we’re going to see more kids who need early education and special education. In 10 years, we’re going to see more kids with behavioral problems like ADHD. In 15 years, we’re going to have more kids with criminal justice issues. We don’t see the illness of lead right now; we see the consequences over the entire life of the child through their adulthood.”

She concluded: “Lead is an irreversible neurotoxin with a lifelong, multi-generational impact. And we just had a whole population exposed to it.”

Hanna-Attisha said that despite people complaining about the water from the very beginning after the switch to the Flint River as the source, it took evidence that children were being poisoned for a lot of things to happen. “Even though we’re [now] back on Detroit water, the water is not safe,” she told The Oakland Press, because of the damage caused to the piping infrastructure.

What did Snyder know, and when did he know it?
The residents of Flint had consistently complained about the quality of the water, from the beginning of the water source change to the Flint River. They were largely ignored.

As reported by the Detroit Free Press, an email exchange between Dennis Muchmore, then Gov. Rick Snyder’s chief of staff, and state health officials, during the summer of 2015, captured the bureaucratic denial of what was happening.

In the email, which came to light as a result of a FOIA request, Muchmore wrote: “I’m frustrated by the water issue in Flint. I really don’t think people are getting the benefit of the doubt. These folks are scared and worried about the health impacts and they are basically getting blown off by us [as a state we’re just not sympathizing with their plight].”

Nancy Peeler of the state Department of Community Health wrote back to Muchmore, downplaying the significance of any spike in lead-level tests, according to the Detroit Free Press. Peeler characterized the increases as “not terribly different from what we saw in the previous three years,” saying that lead levels in children often rise during the summer months when homes with lead-based paint open and close their windows, which, Peeler claimed, can disturb lead-based paint.

“We don’t believe that our data demonstrates an increase in lead-poisoning rates that might be attributable to the change in water source for Flint,” Peeler wrote in response to Muchmore.

There are more than 8,000 children in Flint under the age of six, the time period during which children would be most vulnerable to brain damage from lead.

Based on the research by Hanna-Attisha, every child exposed to Flint water – from a tap, from a shower or bath, from food cooked in it or from formula mixed with it – may have been irreversibly harmed.

But, when confronted by a reporter who asked Snyder on Jan. 8, point blank: what did you know, and when did you know it, Snyder sidestepped the question, instead saying that the state was investigating and he would wait until the investigation was complete.

However, in the future, Snyder may not be able to duck questions in a court of law.

Taking action
Belatedly, on Jan. 5, Snyder declared a state of emergency for Gennesee County where Flint is located, as a result of the water crisis – following increased national attention by the news media. Sources of bottled water, however, were not apparently being coordinated by the state or with the federal government, leaving local charities and churches to serve as the only source of clean water – and being frequently left without any supplies, according to reports by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.

The U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Michigan is also investigating the case of the poisoned water in Flint.

In November of 2015, Flint citizens had filed a class-action suit on behalf of victims of high levels of lead against Snyder, the state of Michigan, the city of Flint, and other state and city officials.

The health effects listed in the class-action suit include: skin lesions, hair loss, high levels of lead in the blood, vision loss, memory loss, depression and anxiety, according to a recent CNN report.

Michael Moore, filmmaker, has called for Snyder’s arrest. In an open letter last week to Snyder, Moore wrote: “Thanks to you, sir, and the premeditated actions of your administrators, you have effectively poisoned, not just some, but apparently all of the children in my hometown of Flint, Mich. And for that, you have to go to jail.”

Moore continued: “To poison all the children in an historic American city is no small feat. Even international terrorist organizations haven’t figured out yet how to do something on a magnitude like this.”

Lessons for Rhode Island – and the nation
The lead poisoning of Flint’s children and families – and the failure by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to fund lead poisoning prevention and clean up – exposes one of the fundamental policy divides in American politics in 2016: the alleged threat of regulation to business and prosperity vs. the role of state and federal government in protecting citizens from environmental harm.

Here in Rhode Island, the stories about what is happening with lead poisoning in New Jersey and in Michigan may seem to be distant and unrelated, but they are not.

In Rhode Island, the menace from lead poisoning has not gone away, despite increased health screenings and new housing regulations requiring lead-free housing certificates.

• In 2014, there were nearly 1,000 children identified through screening that had been poisoned by lead for the first time – an environmental toxin that is not beneficial, in any amount, in any form, according to Roberta Hazen Aaronson, executive director of the Childhood Lead Action Project.

“It’s not an equal opportunity disease; it has to do with wealth and power,” Aaronson told ConvergenceRI in a recent interview. “People of color, children of color, are disproportionately impacted.” [See link to ConvergenceRI story below.]

The statistics from one of Rhode Island’s busiest hospital clinics supports Aaronson’s claims.

• Of the more than 10,000 children receiving care over the last three years at the Hasbro Children’s Hospital Pediatric Clinic, one fifth – some 2,000 children – had been lead poisoned, according to Dr. Patrick Vivier, director of the clinic

Governmental efforts in Rhode Island to enforce lead-free housing certificates has led to dramatic improvements in test scores for African American students in Rhode Island, according to a new study.

• “Inequality in Lead Exposure and the Black-White Test Score Gap,” a study conducted by Anna Aizer, Patrick Vivier and Peter Simon of Brown University and Janet Currie of Princeton University, was published in August of 2015.

It documented the racial disparities in test scores, focused on African-American students’ disproportionate exposure to environmental toxins, and, in particular lead. The study concluded: “Environmental regulation, when targeted to those children at risk, is effective in reducing environmental exposure and that declines in racial disparities in exposure, test scores, and ultimately, economic outcomes, could follow.”

•In a new study commissioned by The Research Collaborative, Brown University researcher Aizer will be looking at the racial disparities for Latino students, in research entitled: “Raising Test Scores: The Impact of Lead Exposure on Latino Students’ Success.”

The gaps in policy
While there are numerous ongoing policy efforts to address gaps in the educational achievement, economic attainment of students, and racial health equity gaps, well-publicized and promoted by the state and early childhood advocates, the impact of lead poisoning on all these efforts has been largely missing from the conversation.

At the launch of The Rhode Island Campaign for Grade Level Reading at United Way of Rhode Island in November of 2015, there was no mention of lead poisoning and the documented ways that it creates a lifetime of learning problems, such as with reading. [See link to ConvergenceRI story below.]

At the launch, Gov. Gina Raimondo said that she was “sad and disappointed” by the results of the recent Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC tests.

When it came to measuring what the test called students’ performance in English language arts, only about one in three – some 36 percent – met or exceeded expectations for the state standards.

“It’s not working,” she said, and then repeated the phrase, “It’s not working,” talking about the state’s public education system, sharing her assessment that the results of the test had been “awful.”

Raimondo continued: “Thirty-six percent [statewide], 18 percent in the urban areas, 12 percent for people of color,” Raimondo said. “We’re letting these kids down.”

Not addressed, however, by any one at the gathering was the correlation between lead poisoning of children in urban areas and for people of color with lower performances on standardized tests, which has been readily documented – but has yet to be made a major focus of educational policy interventions.

Translated, teachers, parents, schools and curriculum can all be targeted for more resources and improvement engagement and better training to improve reading scores, but until lead poisoning is identified and dealt with as a primary root cause, with healthy housing becoming an integral part of the state’s educational strategy, those gaps may continue to persist.

R.I. Education Commissioner Ken Wagner, in turn, recently called for a new initiative creating what he described as open enrollment, giving parents the opportunity to send their kids to another school district, now only possible through charter schools.

“We’ve created this burden by making them go to school where they live,” Wagner said, as reported in a story by The Providence Journal. “If a school has extra seats, why not open the door and allow people to come in?’

Whatever the merits of such an open enrollment program, it will not change the basic facts of unhealthy housing and the high incidence of lead poisoning that afflict many urban centers – and remedy the lifetime of learning and behavioral deficits that it creates.