Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley Blames Staffer After College Degree Claim Exposed as Untrue

Flint did not need this.

For years, Sheldon Neeley’s ascent as a Michigan politician, from city councilman to state legislator and now mayor of the notoriously troubled city of Flint, included a seemingly banal detail: he had a bachelor’s degree.

But in the wake of a Fox News digital story that revealed he attended but did not graduate from Saginaw Valley State University, Neeley has been scrambling to explain himself—and pass the buck.

“Mayor Neeley has been clear from the beginning that he received his associate’s degree from Delta College and that he studied Communication at Saginaw Valley State University, but did not complete a bachelor’s degree,” a spokesperson said in statement late Wednesday, as reported by a local ABC affiliate. This is accurately reflected on the official website for the City of Flint, and in MLive Flint Journal candidate surveys dating back to 2001, 2007, and 2014.”

Then came the blame game.

“Any legislative biography that said otherwise was a compounded oversight made by a political staffer,” the statement added. “Mayor Neeley has worked to set the record straight.”

Neeley’s office did not immediately respond to a voicemail seeking comment on Thursday. But the Fox story pointed out that at least as of early this week, a slew of online biographies clearly stated the mayor had a bachelor’s degree in communications. Among them: his biographies on Legistorm—a database on state and federal politicians and legislation—and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.

Both biographies had been amended to indicate the mayor simply attended the school by Thursday afternoon. The bogus claim that he received a bachelor’s was still visible, however, on the text of a resolution passed by his then-colleagues in the state legislature in 2019, honoring his ostensible achievements. The ABC affiliate also reported that the mayor’s official website biography indicated he had a bachelor’s degree prior to being revised in 2021.

In a city that has been gutted by a historic water poison crisis and plagued by routinely sky-high crime rates and a legacy of police violence, catching the city's top elected official in a lie about a basic biographical fact is remarkable in its own right.

But it also comes at a delicate time for the mayor, who, as MLive noted, faces a potentially tight re-election bid against a predecessor, former Mayor Karen Weaver, in the November general election. Neeley defeated Weaver by just over 200 votes in 2019.

The controversy also comes just weeks after, as The Daily Beast reported, Flint police tased a handcuffed woman twice. Police at the time declined to identify the officers who used force that day.

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