Emails show state officials were discussing ways to keep a doctor on the state payroll while she was facing a charge of involuntary manslaughter in the Flint water crisis.
Crain's Detroit Business reported on the emails Friday. The state's medical executive, Dr. Eden Wells, was appointed as a public health adviser inside the Department of Health and Human Services, a job that pays about $180,000 a year and has civil service protections.
Without the new job, she likely would have been ousted by the next governor.
In a Sept. 20 email, the health department's human resources director, Mike DeRose, told another official that "we'll do what we can" to get Wells into an appropriate job.
Wells was officially hired on Dec. 2 for a job that was posted internally for just a week.
Five days later, she was ordered to stand trial on charges related to a Legionnaires' disease outbreak in the Flint area.
