We all would love to have a reset button to erase public health crises or other disasters.
There is no such reset button, but there is an opportunity in the East Chicago lead crisis to reconsider part of the state's response to an issue plaguing at least 1,000 city residents.
In a front page article Thursday, Times reporter Lauren Cross revealed that former Gov. Mike Pence sent the city a letter Dec. 14, rejecting its request for emergency declaration of the lead crisis.
Now a newly inaugurated Gov. Eric Holcomb can and should push a figurative reset button, reconsidering a request that could open up more funding avenues for dealing with this Region catastrophe.
A horrific pattern of neglect and political corruption set the stage for the USS Lead Superfund site, which is displacing about 1,000 residents from East Chicago's Calumet and West Calumet low-income housing complexes.
These folks were exposed to lead-contaminated soil for decades, and many government officials clearly knew about it for years before we reached a fever pitch of disaster response this past summer.
The hideous head of public corruption long-plaguing Northwest Indiana politics reared itself in this disregard for humanity.
During the creation of East Chicago's West Calumet Housing Complex during the 1970s, past court testimony revealed the authority's director took more than $100,000 in kickbacks for helping steer various contracts related to the low-income housing project to friends and associates.
One of the alleged bribes was for demolishing a shuttered lead factory at the site.
It's unclear whether the bad actors associated with the complex's creation knew of the potential health risks.
But it is clear that 40 years later, a low-income housing complex has exposed hundreds of residents, many of them children, to unsafe lead levels for decades.
Now state, local and federal authorities should be doing all they can to aid the affected residents. It won't make up for the decades of neglect they suffered, but it's a start toward the path of redemption.
Former Gov. Pence rejected the city's request for emergency declaration, arguing that the state had adequately responded, including $200,000 in funds to help with residents' relocation.
But the city argues, and we agree, that an emergency declaration could open up more aid in addressing a very dire situation.
New Gov. Holcomb already has exhibited his own strong leadership characteristics delineating himself from his predecessor.
He's taken a more fresh and pragmatic approach to state-sponsored needle exchanges to mitigate a downstate HIV crisis, for instance.
It's time for Holcomb to bring that pragmatism to bear on the East Chicago lead crisis — one we know he takes seriously based on past interviews with The Times Editorial Board.
The new governor has an opportunity to show neglected residents of his state's northwestern quadrant that the highest levels of state government care deeply about their plight — and are willing to demonstrate that care with action.