Big Government: The Cause of, and Solution To All Of Life's Problems

Never mind the fact that the levee situation in New Orleans was a failure of government to operate properly - both in oversight and in maintenance/design/operation. Some actually think that the solution to the crisis in Louisiana is to make the federal government the biggest landowner. Oh, and with an $80 billion pricetag.

Representative Richard H. Baker, a Republican from suburban Baton Rouge who derides Democrats for not being sufficiently free-market, is the unlikely champion of a housing recovery plan that would make the federal government the biggest landowner in New Orleans - for a while, at least. Mr. Baker's proposed Louisiana Recovery Corporation would spend as much as $80 billion to pay off lenders, restore public works, buy huge ruined chunks of the city, clean them up and then sell them back to developers.

At a time when various state governors are busy proposing their annual state budgets,

Now comes word that New Orleans can't begin serious demolition work, including removing houses that were tossed into the street by the onrush of floodwaters as the levees broke.

New Orleans has finally begun the difficult task of sorting through the various problems and prioritizing the rebuilding efforts.

The commission devising a blueprint to reconstruct the city will propose on Wednesday a complete reorganization of the troubled school system, the elimination of a 76-mile shipping channel that was a prime cause of flooding after Hurricane Katrina and the creation of a new jazz district downtown.

The commission report, several members said, will also advocate building a 53-mile light-rail system crisscrossing the city, connecting neighborhoods with the airport, downtown and other commercial centers. That system would be in addition to a separate heavy-rail system that would link New Orleans with Baton Rouge and the rest of the Gulf Coast.

The light-rail system, estimated to cost $3 billion, is intended to help spark redevelopment in areas of the city that were flooded.

Toward that end, the plan calls on the city to enlist developers to build at least four communities of 1,000 or more houses at stops along the proposed light-rail lines.

The jazz district would be in the old Storyville section, north of the French Quarter, an idea championed by the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, a member of the commission and the co-chairman of its culture committee.

The recommendations are among dozens in a sweeping seven-part report to be announced beginning on Wednesday by the Bring Back New Orleans Commission. Mayor C. Ray Nagin established the panel in September to plan the rebuilding.

Because the state and federal governments will have large voices in the process, many proposals may run into opposition, but the plan represents the city's first comprehensive effort to put itself back together.

The most controversial proposal, reported on Sunday by The New York Times, would have allowed residents to return soon to all sections of the city but within a year would close those neighborhoods that did not achieve a critical mass of residents. A leader of the commission, Joseph C. Canizaro, said Tuesday that members had modified that proposal over the last two days and now believed that no one should be allowed back into the most damaged neighborhoods until June.

And don't think that Whiplash Nagin wont reverse himself on that position either. It's also interesting to see that the Commission's reports focus on revitalization projects and what would otherwise be considered pork (light rail projects) and by and large not on the very infrastructure that failed the City in the first place. While the Commission considers closing the MRGO canal, which is seen as one of the causes of the levee failures, little is said about the actual levee system itself or how and where the new levee system should be operated.

Don't you think the critical failures of the levee system would be first and foremost on the minds of those returning to New Orleans? Who would want to return to the Lower Ninth if the levee system is doomed to fail again under similar circumstances? This isn't a call to abandon the Ninth, but a call to make sure that the priorities are in the right place.

Building a light rail system through New Orleans sounds like a grand idea, but when that money could instead go to upgrading the levee systems and various flood control projects and other critical infrastructure, it makes you wonder just where the priorities lay. As it is, we're seeing the Superdome refurbished for $100 million, money that could be used as a down payment on an engineering study for a comprehensive flood control system. But, since Louisiana officials think that the federal government is going to let the money flow, they could do all kinds of other projects and eventually get around to doing the flood control projects at a later date.

It's that kind of thinking that got Louisiana into this mess in the first place.

And then there's the four-month time limit for communities to show their viability. That's pretty arbitrary, especially in light of the problems still facing the flood control throughout the City. The pace of the resettlement of New Orleans will shape the future footprint of New Orleans. If that's the case, then expect the Lower Ninth to cease to exist because most of those folks are too poor to come back and rebuild and will instead need to be bought out (under proposed plans).

And it's not just Louisiana. Mississippi was even harder hit than Louisiana and Gov. Barbour's state of the state address was a very visible reminder of that fact. Gov. Barbour proposed the following:

1. "Authorizing the formation of regional organizations for delivery of certain public services, as has previously been authorized and implemented by the DeSoto County Regional Utility Authority."
2. "Innovative transportation projects that improve evacuation when future storms hit; that divert traffic from Highway 90, so it can again be a tourist-attracting Beach Boulevard; and that allow the Port of Gulfport to recover and rebuild as a stronger maritime cargo operation."
3. "Helping local governments get back on their feet financially." Critical to this third point is Barbour's request of the Legislature "to authorize - authorize, not require - impact fees to be assessed by these local governments on new development projects in their communities. This will have the effect of advancing revenue on these developments so the local governments can provide services and, indeed, survive."

Gulfport, MS expects to be back in sound fiscal shape within four years.

Mayor Brent Warr and the City Council met with adviser Demery Grubbs, who said Gulfport didn't have to borrow money to meet the payroll after Hurricane Katrina because city leaders had put millions of dollars into a savings account.
However, it likely will be about two months before the city knows how much it will lose in property taxes, since those normally are paid in January and February. Also, the city won't know sales tax figures for January until March.
Mike Necaise, the city's financial director, estimates that the city will lose $2 million each year for the next two years in property taxes.
Grubbs said sales taxes have increased since the storm in part because of the number of companies here buying supplies to rebuild homes and businesses. Also, most of the city's businesses weren't on U.S. 90.
Warr said developers from across the country and the world have visited Gulfport and are interested in building casinos, restaurants, condominiums and retail shops.
Warr said he isn't against casinos and thinks Gulfport has space for up to four of them.
"I think we can have wonderful casinos," he said. "We do have place for a few, and we want them to be very high quality."

UPDATE:
A recall effort on Gov. Blanco is being formulated. Good luck with that.

A formal push to oust Gov. Kathleen Blanco, after harsh criticism of her response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita, began Tuesday when a St. Martinville resident filed a recall petition with Louisiana's elections office.
The task is a tough one: in Louisiana, a recall election requires handwritten petition signatures from at least one-third of the state's registered voters, or about 900,000 people, in 180 days, according to Jennifer Marusak of the secretary of state's office.

The 180-day period began Tuesday, when the petition was filed, she said.

Then, a majority of voters in a recall election would have to vote to get rid of Blanco, a Democrat, before she would be forced out of office.

UPDATE:
Witold Rybczynski reports that Mississippi may be ahead of the curve by engaging in forward-thinking on rebuilding the Gulf Coast. They've got a well-developed plan on rebuilding and moving forward. There are other factors at work, but they're ahead of Louisiana, despite being more heavily damaged than Louisiana.