Some call it E. coli-gate.</p><p>Others call the controversy over why the Jay Nixon administration failed to warn the public about high bacteria levels at the Lake of the Ozarks in May “Dirty Watergate.”</p><p>Call it what you want, but the caper has sent the eight-month-old administration careening down a twisting highway long after midnight — and the headlights aren’t working.</p><p>As last week came to a close, the latest developments left the Nixon gang facing big questions that could have serious implications:</p><p>Whom can the public trust? And how much credibility is left in the tank?</p><p>Never before did I expect to witness a reporter ask a top official named Nixon: “What did you know, and when did you know it?”</p><p>But that happened Monday at an impromptu news conference on a windswept runway apron at Wheeler Downtown Airport in Kansas City.</p><p>At that news conference, the state’s highest-elected official told reporters blatantly inaccurate — and easily verifiable — information about when Lake of the Ozarks beaches were closed in response to a report that bacteria levels were dangerously high.</p><p>At least twice, Nixon said they were closed in May. But the first beach didn’t get shut down until June 5, a week after one Nixon aide learned of the test results.</p><p>Also last week, Nixon placed Mark Templeton, the head of the Department of Natural Resources, on two weeks’ unpaid leave of absence for providing that inaccurate information.</p><p>“This is quite simply unconscionable and an outrage, and my reaction is sheer disappointment and disgust,” Nixon told reporters.</p><p>That Templeton provided such faulty information this far into the crisis — and that no one fact-checked him on it — is simply unfathomable.</p><p>And we also had the governor’s chief spokesman, Jack Cardetti, who has been well respected for several years in Jefferson City, admitting that he, too, had known about the original DNR report that said E. coli levels were dangerously high in May.</p><p>The public was not told about those levels at that time, even though the summer tourism season was heating up.</p><p>Cardetti’s admission came <em>after</em> he had spent weeks telling reporters that not a single person in the governor’s office had been told about the DNR’s E. coli report in May. This, the administration had stressed, was an internal DNR problem.</p><p>We now know that Nixon’s office was told about the report on May 29. So Cardetti was off by two persons — and one of the two was himself. </p><p>Nixon has ordered his own investigation into the mess. That comes on top of a separate state Senate inquiry that, Republican senators say, the DNR has been stonewalling.</p><p>Statehouse reporters will now follow the progress of both investigations closely, ensuring a regular drip-drip-drip of stories that will keep this controversy flowing for weeks.</p><p>Lingering in the background is a deep suspicion, even among top Democrats, that other top Nixon administration officials — perhaps even Nixon himself — knew about the DNR report in May, but opted not to make it public because of the obvious economic bombshell for tourism.</p><p>State tax revenues have been reeling all year. Why add to the mess?</p><p>Barring unexpected developments, the events of last week demonstrated that the governor will have to do more than throw a public fit over E. coli-gate. Before it’s over, he’ll face the question that chief executives dread most: Should heads roll?</p><p>All of this is a shame. An administration that so far has proved nimble at navigating a political environment dominated by Republicans in Jefferson City suddenly is off-kilter and careening down that dark highway into the dead of night.</p><p>We’ve passed the point of quick fixes. This thing is just going to have to play itself out — however long that takes.