Rebuilding New Orleans
by Robert Novak (Townhall.com)
NEW ORLEANS -- Mayor Ray Nagin's proposal to make the New
Orleans central business district a Las Vegas strip of
giant gambling casinos explains the business community's
disappointment with elected officials reacting to Hurricane
Katrina. Before revealing the idea, Nagin did not consult
his own commission on rebuilding New Orleans. "It's not
going to happen," one commissioner told me, dismissing the
mayor's gambling scheme.
Nagin is described by business leaders as overwhelmed. His
disorganization was reflected when neither the mayor nor
his representative attended the first planning meeting last
week for next year's Mardi Gras, an event essential for
reviving the city. Nagin at least is trying. Gov. Kathleen
Blanco is seen as a total embarrassment. The state's two
senators, Democrat Mary Landrieu and Republican David
Vitter, are laughed at for begging open-ended multibillion-
dollar expenditures. After a slow start, President Bush is
intimately engaged. But out of 2,520 small business loan
applications, only six have survived the Washington
bureaucracy.
What business leaders want most is restored government
services and police protection so that businesses can
reopen. After that, they feel, the magic of commerce will
do its work. Business also wants a property tax holiday to
begin building a smaller, better New Orleans. That is a
long way from the post-Katrina talk about a new nationwide
war on poverty.
A short visit here reveals the scope of the problem. Only
about 5 percent of the city's 460,000 residents have
returned or never left. The devastation is complete in the
predominantly African-American Lower 9th Ward, 36 percent
of whose residents live below the poverty level. Their
houses, in poor condition before the floodwaters, are not
worth replacing.
Nobody here takes seriously $250 billion proposed for
disaster relief by Landrieu and Vitter. Rep. Richard Baker,
a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee
who represents Baton Rouge, told me that "we're not just
going to dump a lot of money on Louisiana." He proposes a
Louisiana Recovery Corp. to acquire real estate, retire
mortgages and restore bank solvency.
After the early chaos of looting, law and order has
returned (including an enforced midnight curfew). Police
are augmented by 2,500 National Guardsmen from around the
country who man checkpoints monitoring the slim vehicular
traffic into devastated areas.
But other government services are inadequate. Hundreds of
refrigerators, filled with rotting food and posing a health
hazard, remain uncollected on sidewalks. Electric power has
not been restored fully, and many traffic lights do not
work. There is no public transportation, and I did not see
one taxi during two days in the city.
I stayed at the Soniat, a small French Quarter hotel that
reopened the day before I registered. I saw no other guests
and sometimes no staff present (I was given a key to let
myself into the hotel's front door). Management said all
workers lost their homes, and most would have no place to
go if they returned.
The expectation here is that New Orleans will downsize to
a city of around 250,000. The Lower 9th Ward can only
improve. A second gambling casino probably will be added
to Harrah's present monopoly, but there will be no
replicating Las Vegas. Developer Jimmy Riess, a member of
the mayor's commission, calls New Orleans public schools
the worst in the country and wants them totally reformed.
Educational philanthropist Eli Broad is helping establish
a landmark charter school system here.
So many poor black people are expected never to return to
New Orleans that the Rev. Jesse Jackson claims a sinister
plot by Bush adviser Karl Rove to send African-American
voters into "perpetual exile." More than the poor are
leaving forever. Ruth's Chris Steakhouse is moving its
permanent corporate headquarters to Orlando, Fla., and
New Orleans may never again see its Saints football team.
But the real story concerns those who are staying. John
Besh, owner of Restaurant August and the hottest young chef
in town, has turned down offers from New York and Florida
to stay. He sees a New Orleans rebuilt by the people who
live here, not by the politicians who make the headlines
and hog the television cameras.
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