Detroit News: Lawmakers want Flint Registry funding for '26, but project in 'limbo' due to CDC cuts

Washington ― A bipartisan group of 16 lawmakers is urging congressional leaders to fully fund the Flint Lead Exposure Registry for the 2026 fiscal year, even as the program's money for this year has been held up at the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention due to layoffs at the agency.

Twelve Michigan lawmakers led by U.S. Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet, D-Bay City, last week signed onto the letter with four others to appropriators in the House and Senate, asking them to include $5 million in the 2026 spending bills that will be drafted and marked up this summer.

The registry, which was created in response to the Flint water crisis, helps track residents who were exposed to lead and links them up with resources including social and health care services, voluntarily enrolling nearly 22,300 people. The registry has been funded at $5 million a year since 2022 and has also aided other communities including Michigan's Benton Harbor; Newark, New Jersey; and Oahu, Hawaii.

"The CDC has described the Flint Registry as an 'innovative, one-of-a kind Lead Exposure Registry, creating the model for the nation’s first lead-free city,'" the lawmakers wrote.

"Maintaining this level of funding in FY 2026 will ensure the Flint Registry can effectively deliver its existing programming and continue supporting the Flint community’s recovery from the water crisis.”

The letter was signed by all members of the Michigan delegation except Rep. John James, R-Shelby Township; Sen. Gary Peters, D-Bloomfield Township; and Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Caledonia. Both Peters and Moolenaar support the effort, according to a news release, but sit on their respective chambers’ appropriations panels.

The letter came as 2025 funding for the Flint Registry has been held up and the program is facing closure this summer after all staff were put on leave in April at the office at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that administers the registry and its funding.

"Those are the folks that run our Flint Registry. ... The childhood lead-poisoning prevention program for the whole country has been eliminated," Dr. Mona Hanna, the pediatrician who helped uncover Flint's lead-tainted water crisis, said Tuesday at the Mackinac Policy Conference.

"So we have no program officers. We have no program staff. We're in this kind of state of limbo. It might get renewed. It might not get renewed."

Michigan State University, which operates the program, has begun notifying nearly two dozen employees and contractors that it might be shutting down the program by July 31.

Health & Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is reorganizing the department he leads, and officials have said the CDC's lead-prevention efforts will be housed under a new Administration for a Healthy America.

An HHS spokesperson, who declined to be named, said in a Tuesday email to The Detroit News that the reorganization is still underway, but that "the work of this program will continue."

Kennedy last week claimed at a Senate hearing that the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program was still being funded; however, NBC News confirmed that it's not operating, noting that the program’s 26 staffers were placed on administrative leave in April, with their terminations set for next week, June 2. 

NBC quoted Erik Svendsen, director of the CDC's Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice that includes the childhood lead program, which helps state and local health departments with blood lead testing and surveillance. Svendsen said none of the staffers have been reinstated. 

The registry of Flint residents was modeled after a similar registry of survivors of the 2001 terror attack on the World Trade Center in New York City who faced years of health problems from the dust and debris that were unleashed on Lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001, Hanna said.

"It is one of the largest registries in the nation," Hanna said. "We see how people are doing, and then we've gotten them connected to all these amazing resources in the community. We've made over 30,000 connections to different services."

Another appropriations request made this month is seeking $1.5 billion in federal funding in 2026 to continue lead service line replacements around the country to further the federal government's goal of replacing all such lines within a decade.

U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Detroit, led the letter with U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Ann Arbor, asking appropriators to include the money in addition to regular funding for the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund.

The congresswomen want the money administered as grants or forgivable loans and with guidance similar to what the Environmental Protection Agency is using for the $15 billion provided for lead service line replacement under the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act adopted under President Joe Biden.

Sixty-five House members signed onto the letter requesting the funding, including McDonald Rivet and Democratic Reps. Haley Stevens of Birmingham and Shri Thanedar of Detroit.

Tlaib also separately requested a $2 million earmark for lead service line replacement in Redford Charter Township.