NOLA with no recovery plan

[Patrick]

W doesn't seem to understand that in NOLA they are simply entitled..no need for a viable plan. Same goes for pro sports entertainment in NOLA.

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1138345807148660.xml

[Patrick]

And today, Nagin claims he has a plan.....

New Orleans has plan, Nagin says

Strategy for rebuilding ready to be released soon
Saturday, January 28, 2006 By Keith Darcé
Staff writer
A day after President Bush rebuked local and state officials for not producing a hurricane recovery plan, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said his administration is just weeks away from delivering a voluminous document that will detail the city's strategy for rebuilding neighborhoods, restoring public services and resurrecting the region's wrecked economy.

Nagin's promise came on Friday after his Bring New Orleans Back commission accepted the last of six reports from subcommittees advising the mayor on education, culture, health care and other matters.
The economic development subcommittee recommended increasing housing for workers, creating tax incentives for businesses in the disaster zone, developing new worker-training programs and launching an aggressive marketing campaign to repair the damage done by negative media reports since the storm.
Nagin said he will spend the next two weeks meeting with focus groups that will discuss each element of the commission's recovery plan. At the same time, members of the public will be able to submit comments to the commission.
The commission will debate recommendations made by the subcommittees during its final public meeting in February then deliver its report to the mayor, who will publish a final version soon after, Nagin said.
Bush on Thursday suggested that more federal money to finance the region's massive recovery from Hurricane Katrina will be slow to arrive until the city and state produce a comprehensive recovery plan.
Nagin said Friday that Bush's comments overlooked the progress that the commission has made since being created in October.
"I want to remind everyone that New Orleans has a plan, and our plan is very well put together. It's in good shape," he said. "We're ready to go."

Price tag
Once a final report is published, Nagin will ask the New Orleans Council to "crystallize" the document by making its recommendations part of city law.
The mayor may accept, reject or modify the commission's recommendations.
Nagin didn't address specific elements of the subcommittee reports, but he said the overall cost of the recovery program should fall between $10 billion and $15 billion.
With the commission's recommendations for neighborhood redevelopment projected to cost up to $17 billion alone, the mayor's price target suggested that some recovery proposals will have to be removed or recalculated before the final report is issued.
Key White House officials overseeing the administration's hurricane response told Nagin this week that initial cost estimates were too high for the recommendations coming from the commission's subcommittees.
"They made it very clear that they thought it was a bit rich," said the mayor, who spent part of the week in Washington.
Nagin said he wants to move quickly to clean up and begin repairing the most heavily damaged areas of the city near levee breaches, where houses were swept off foundations and entire city blocks were reduced to flat expanses of rubble. The work would send a powerful message to Washington and the rest of the world, he said.
"If we can bring back the most devastated parts then we can bring back the rest of the city," the mayor said.

Economic development
The 84-page report on reviving the city's economy centered on stabilizing the tourism industry, the port and major manufacturers that formed the foundation of the economy before the storm.
Those sectors desperately need housing for workers and training programs for new employees, said Dan Packer, chief executive officer of the city's electricity utility Entergy New Orleans and co-chairman of the economic development subcommittee. The panel was composed of some of the city's leading business executives and public service officials.
Tax incentives could be used to revive smaller industry sectors -- such as film production, information technology and biomedical research -- that had experienced promising growth before Katrina, the report recommended.
The city could help small-business owners by leasing a hotel for six months to house displaced business people for 30-day stints free of charge while they work on reviving their shops.
The subcommittee also recommended creating an Internet "portal for jobs" that would help people seeking employment connect with businesses looking for workers.
Though many audience members praised the subcommittee for its efforts, several said the report contained some glaring omissions,
"Your effort to rebuild New Orleans doesn't seem to involve (African-Americans) in the grass roots, the working poor folks," said Albert Clark. "I don't see any of them on this committee."
Anthony Favre said tourism was featured too prominently in the document at the expense of other sectors, such as the city's six universities, that have the potential to generate higher-paying jobs.
"We've taken tourism about as far as it can go. We have the world's best educated waiters and waitresses because that's the best jobs that we have," he said.
. . . . . . .

[Patrick]

Bush just asking NOLA to help themselves:

Baker: Bush offers us 'death blow'

He'll keep pushing own bill to rescue state
Saturday, January 28, 2006 By Bill Walsh
Washington bureau
WASHINGTON -- Calling the Bush administration's approach to hurricane recovery in Louisiana a potential "death blow to the state's economy," Rep. Richard Baker vowed Friday to continue fighting for his legislation to bail out homeowners and help the region rebuild after Hurricane Katrina.
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That begins, Baker said, with educating the White House and the nation about the bottom-line wisdom of restoring an area crucial to the U.S. economy as a key port for wheat and other agricultural products, as essential to the growth and harvesting of seafood, and as a center for offshore oil and gas production.
Baker, R-Baton Rouge, said the administration's proposal for targeting Community Development Block Grants to 20,000 uninsured homes outside the flood plain would abandon almost 200,000 more homes needed for workers in those industries and more.
"Those things are important to our nation, but those things cannot occur if we lose 185,000 homes" in the New Orleans area, Baker said. "There is a price to pay for blind neglect. The current plan would be a death blow to the state's economy."
At the same time, Baker said his plan is widely misunderstood and that it would be far less costly than skeptics claim. Creating a corporation backed by federal bonds to buy out and redevelop housing under a more unified approach, he said, is the better way to assure the area comes back -- and quickly.
"I don't think people in Virginia and Wyoming understand the value of our region to our country in economic terms," he said. "We've got a lot of work to do."
Baker acknowledged that White House opposition to his proposed Louisiana Recovery Corporation "will cause some Republicans to take a second look."
"But I do not believe it is beyond recovery," Baker said.
Baker's bill, which enjoys broad bipartisan support among Louisiana politicians and planners, would create a public corporation financed by the sale of federal bonds. A board appointed by the president would use the proceeds to offer buyouts to the owners of flood-damaged homes for at least 60 percent of the equity based on pre-Katrina value. It also would pay off the mortgages, heading off a possible wave of foreclosures.
Unlike the block grant approach, Baker said the corporation would attempt to recoup some of the money -- and fuel the economic recovery of the region -- by selling tracts of land to developers who would rebuild communities according to local plans.
The bill passed a key House committee 50-9 in December but stalled in the final days of the 2005 congressional calendar. The White House was noticeably mum on the bill until Wednesday, when Bush's hurricane recovery chief, Donald Powell, came out against it. He said it would add a needless layer of bureaucracy, run up astronomical costs and return less than what Baker has predicted. The president himself echoed the complaints a day later.
Instead, the administration has urged Louisiana to tap $6.2 billion in Community Development Block Grants awarded to the state this week to help uninsured homeowners outside the flood zone, a plan assailed by Gov. Kathleen Blanco as "a kick in the teeth."

Backing from bankers
Despite White House opposition, Baker said Friday he sees some hopeful signs for his bill. The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee has agreed to a Feb. 15 hearing on the legislation. Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., has declined to take a position on the bill until the hearing. He has scheduled consideration of another housing bill the same day. The committee also will consider "urban homesteading" legislation by Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., that would turn over federal land in the hurricane disaster zone to low-income families for housing.
Baker also touted support for his bill from the Mortgage Bankers Association, which this week made the legislation one of its "top five priorities" for 2006. The mortgage bankers are an active lobbying group on Capitol Hill, donating $22.5 million to lawmakers, 57 percent to Republicans, since 2002, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
The bankers, some of whom gave homeowners in the hurricane zone extensions on mortgage payments, are eager to recoup loans and fear that widespread homeowner bankruptcies in metropolitan New Orleans will cost them dearly.
"Some people will simply never be able to repay those loans if the property is worth nothing," Kurt Photenhauer, a lobbyist for the mortgage bankers, said. "Any proposal, including Congressman Baker's, which proposes a method of restoring value gives lenders and borrowers something to work with."

National fallout
Photenhauer said that aside from White House opposition, the major political obstacle is "a growing perception in Congress that the region is recovering on its own."
Without an understanding of the scale of destruction, Baker said that critics, such as those in the Bush administration, lack an appreciation for the kind of big-picture legislation that is needed to get the region back on its feet. He warned of the national fallout in agriculture, seafood and oil industries if Louisiana's economy fails to revive.
It's an odd position for Baker to be in. He is a loyal Bush ally in Congress. Last year, according to Congressional Quarterly, he voted with the administration 91 percent of the time, the highest rate in the Louisiana delegation.
In a post-Katrina world, however, Baker finds himself in tune with Democratic critics of the administration, such as Blanco and Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. On Friday, he complained that his plan has been misconstrued by the White House as a limitless drain on the federal Treasury.
Instead, he said that "conservative estimates" show that a third of the money would be repaid when land, whose value would presumably increase, is resold to developers. He said that his staff estimates that the return would be at least 50 percent.
"That's the conservative part of my plan that has been largely ignored," Baker said.