I am just throwing it out there as I have not seen any introspective diaries on DKos as to who is to blame. From a lay person's perspective, while better than Bush's responses to Katrina, how is the Obama-Christie-Bloomberg-Cuomo's administrations' preparation for this satisfactory? This diary's purpose is not to lay out the answers. But I am hoping the comments I get will give us a better idea of what Cuomo and the others faced and if they could have done a better job?
So many people still without power more than a week later.
People were still confused what to do leading to some people dying because they did not expect the flood waters to be that dangerous. One of them being a case where a mother panicked and had her kids die in a flood.
Long Island Power is blasted for their ineptitude and this pieceillustrates how bad they were and they are a state run operation, even if they are contracted to National Grid,a private entity. One of the points was Cuomo himself did not make appointing board members and a permanent CEO of Long Island Power as big of a priority as it should have been. A state run entity is no better than a greedy profit driven one if there is no accountability. TO Cuomo's credit, he is seeking responses now and seems to be willing to hold people accountable. But was it too late?
But some longtime politicos say Cuomo needs to look in the mirror when it comes to LIPA, a state authority that has been without a permanent chief executive officer since before he took office in 2011.
Chief Operating Officer Michael Hervey has been serving as acting CEO since September 2010 when former LIPA head Kevin Law left to head a business trade group.
“An organization needs leadership,” said a longtime top state official. “For the governor to talk about the bureaucracy — it’s a bureaucracy he’s supposed to oversee.”
In addition, three of the LIPA board’s six gubernatorial appointments, including chairman Howard Steinberg, are serving with expired terms. Cuomo has appointed just one new board member since taking office.
A Cuomo aide pointed out that the problem goes beyond LIPA to National Grid, which does the actual work and is overseen by LIPA.
“The facts are the utility is National Grid,” the aide said. “They are contracted with LIPA. And if National Grid is not up for it, we’ll find a new contractor.”
A state senator who asked for anonymity says the LIPA report shows the authority should have been held accountable long before now.
“The governor has done absolutely nothing with LIPA since taking office,” the lawmaker said. “He owns at least a piece of this.”
I am sure we can find equal problems(maybe worse?) in the republican run NJ. But I want to see an evenhanded critical look at our own party. Was enough prep work done by the federal and state governments(NY, NJ) and the cities(NYC) when they had a week to prepare for the storm?
Of course, long term, I am going to put more blame on the Republicans because if Obama proposed any kind of stimulus program to give jobs to people who could actually do productive stuff like improving the infrastructure, they would oppose it. And regardless of how much blame one can lay on our party, the republicans have historically opposed funding for infrastructure improvements that would render quicker recoveries after a storm like this. But I have this gnawing feeling that democrats dropped the ball too. I hope I am wrong.