I’ve wanted to post my first diary a lot earlier in the first year of my first term as an elected official but as you can imagine, we are just a little bit busy here in New Orleans. After reading story after story where President Bush’s surrogates have tried to push the story that the Federal Government has done more than their part to rebuild our city and that it is somehow a problem on the state or local level that we can’t seem to spend the money I decided I should set the record straight.
As they say there is more after the flip.
To say that state and local government is the problem would be funny if it weren’t so insulting to those of us in Government that are consumed by the daily performance of three monumental tasks:
Rebuilding an entire city from the ground up
Reforming all levels of government.
Carrying out the normal day-to-day duties of public servants.
In other major cities, item number three is a full-time job for a fully-staffed City Hall and city officials. Imagine trying to accomplish all three of these things with half of city government laid off due to crippling budget cuts.
Keep in mind that as elected officials, we get paid to perform these tasks as we are public servants. The citizens of New Orleans however are going through this painful recovery voluntarily and doing so because of a deep love for the City of New Orleans.
Add in the federal government and a President that until the elections this past November had put politics before progress beginning with initially putting Karl Rove in charge of leading our recovery
and speeches full of empty promises and platitudes without the budget appropriations that we so desperately need and you have what you see today in New Orleans:
A city that is rebuilding not due to help from the federal government (Who, by the way, just so happens to be the designer, the builder and the owner of the levee system that failed our city), but is rebuilding in spite of government.
A year ago I was a person who decided that I wasn’t going to write any more letters to my Councilmember; I decided I wanted to take his job because I knew we could do better – must do better – than career politicians with both our city’s short (rebuilding of roads and schools and homes) and long-term (desperately needed reforms in education, criminal justice, and governmental accountability and transparency) future.
As a proud Democrat who didn’t run away and as the first Democrat to hold this Council seat in almost 30 years I’ve witnessed every bedrock talking point of the Republican revolution laid bare in the past two years.
From:
"We just need more tax cuts"
To:
"We need less government"
All the way too:
"We are fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here"
With the recent turnover in Congress we have finally appeared on the President’s radar thanks to heroes like Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) , Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), Rep. Melancon (D-LA), Rep. Gene Taylor (D-MS), and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) who are now in the majority and have taken immediate and dramatic steps to recognize our need for a federal partner in the recovery from this disaster.
But the more things change, the more things stay the same as each action taken by the Democratic held Congress and Senate has been met by our President with threats of veto and vetoes .
While it is true that President Bush has allocated $116 billion for the Gulf Coast, that number is misleading. According to the Brookings Institute's most recent Katrina Index report, at least $75 billion of it was for immediate post-storm relief. Thus only 35% of the total federal dollars allocated is for actual recovery and reconstruction. And of that recovery and reconstruction allocation, only 42% has actually been spent. In fact, while the Bush administration touts "$116 billion" as the amount they have sent to the entire area affected by Katrina and the levee failures, the actual long term recovery dollar amount is only $14.6 billion. This amount is a mere 12% of the entire federal allocation of dollars, billions of which went to corporations such as Halliburton for immediate post-storm cleanup work, instead of to local businesses. Contrast that to the $20.9 billion on infrastructure for Iraq that the Wall Street Journal reported in May 2006 that they have spent, and it’s an astonishing 42% more than they have spent on infrastructure for the post-Katrina Gulf region. The American citizens of the Gulf region do not understand why the federal obligation to rebuilding Iraq is greater than it is for America's Gulf coast, and more specifically for New Orleans.
New Orleans has more challenges and fewer resources than we've ever had in my lifetime. Yet, other than FEMA repair reimbursements, the only direct federal assistance this city has received from the administration has been two community disaster loans that they are demanding be paid back even though no other city government has had to pay back a these types of loans for as long as our research can determine (at least since the 70’s). These loans are being used to balance the city budget to provide basic services to citizens who need far more than the pre-Katrina basics.
Despite this obvious contradiction, the Bush administration blames local leadership for our continued need for federal assistance. But this argument is disingenuous. There are a host of tasks that only the administration can accomplish for our recovery. These are some concrete steps Bush can take to make good on his 2005 Jackson Square promise:
• Completely fix the federally managed levees
• Fully fund our expertly crafted recovery plan
• Give New Orleans all that was promised to Baghdad - schools, hospitals, infrastructure, security, and basic services
• Forgive the community disaster loans, as authorized by the new Congress
• Appoint a recovery czar who works inside the White House that reports daily and directly to you and whose sole job is the recovery of New Orleans and the rest of the region
• Restore our coast and wetlands
• Work with Congress to reform the Stafford Act
• Cut the bureaucratic red tape
In turn the people of New Orleans are more than willing to do our part. We have already:
• Consolidated and reformed the state levee board system.
• Consolidated and reformed our property assessment system.
• Passed sweeping ethics reform legislation.
• Created an Ethics Review Board.
• Hired an Inspector General
• Submitted a parish-wide recovery plan.
Much has changed in New Orleans for the better since the storm, and more progress is coming. Civic activism is at an all time high. For the first time in my life, there is an actual reform movement in New Orleans driven by the people. "Best Practices" has become a City Council mantra. We have a new Ethics Board. Our incoming Inspector General, Robert Cerasoli, is considered one of the elite in the Inspector General world, as is our new Recovery Director Dr. Ed Blakely in that world and our Recovery School Superintendent Paul Vallas in the realm of public education. We are attracting the cream of the crop. Young people from around the country seeking to make a difference with their lives are moving to New Orleans to teach in public schools, provide community healthcare, build housing, work for nonprofits engaged in post-Katrina work, and, in general, do whatever they can for the recovery because they all know what I am not so sure that President Bush knows, mainly that what happens in New Orleans over the next few years says something about the very heart of America itself.
We are in fact doing our part locally in New Orleans despite contrary comments by the Bush administration. Our intense civic activity and government reform initiatives are serious indicators of our local commitment to do our part for the recovery. But we are drowning in federal red tape. We are being nickel and dimed to death by Bush’s Federal Emergency Management Agency. We are resource-starved at the city level. The mission here is not accomplished. What we need is Presidential leadership, not just another speech filled with empty promises. Our recovery's success, struggle, or failure will be intimately woven into Bush’s legacy, for better or worse. What Americans think about America is deeply affected by how this country rises to national challenges, none more significant than post-Katrina New Orleans. Fully restoring New Orleans to its formerly unique and permanent place in American culture is this nation's greatest domestic challenge. Bush’s leadership, or lack thereof, of our country through this difficult time will serve as an American character lesson for future generations.
I hope you can take the time to click on the link to my open letter to President Bush, Press Release and Fact Sheet so you can realize that New Orleans will not allow the discussion of our recovery be anything but factual and done via the reality based community and not through spin and talking points.