Look to the future 2 years later: Shelley Midura

Image from Greg Peters.

Letter from our next mayor:

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An open letter to President George W. Bush:

August 28, 2007

Dear Mr. President:

Thank you for visiting New Orleans for the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the worst federal levee-failure disaster in United States history followed by the worst federal disaster response in United States history. We’re also grateful for the $116 billion federal allocation for the Gulf Coast. That $116 billion has served you well, as your spokesmen often cite it as an indicator of your dedication to our recovery. But, it hasn’t served us as well -- it’s not enough, it’s been given grudgingly, and only after our elected officials have had to fight for it. So I feel I must correct the record about you and your administration’s dedication to our recovery and implore you to take action to make things better.

Indeed, you have allocated $116 billion for the Gulf Coast, but 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 your administration touts "$116 billion" as the amount you 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 you have spent, and it’s an astonishing 42% more than you 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 in the City of New Orleans. Yet, other than FEMA repair reimbursements, the only direct federal assistance this city has received from you has been two community disaster loans that you 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, your administration blames local leadership for our continued need for federal assistance. But this argument is disingenuous, Mr. President. There are a host of tasks that only you and your administration can accomplish for our recovery. These are some concrete steps you can take to make good on your 2005 Jackson Square promise:
• Completely fix the federally managed levees
• Fully fund our expertly crafted recovery plan
• Give New Orleans all that you have 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 Mr. President, 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 lifetime, 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 in 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 you know, mainly that what happens in New Orleans over the next few years says something about the very heart of America itself.

Mr. President, we are in fact doing our part locally in New Orleans despite contrary comments by your 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 your 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 your 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. Your leadership of our country through this difficult time will serve as an American character lesson for future generations.

Sincerely,

Shelley Midura
New Orleans City Councilmember
District A

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NEW ORLEANS, LA – In an open letter to President Bush, Councilmember Shelley Midura responded to the assertion by Recovery Chairman Donald Powell that the federal government is doing everything it can and that the problem is with local leadership. In her letter she challenged the “$116 billion” allocation as “misleading” and further implored President Bush to assert a larger leadership role in the recovery of New Orleans and the Gulf region on the eve of his visit to New Orleans for the 2nd Katrina anniversary.

“Mr. President, we are in fact doing our part locally in New Orleans despite contrary comments by your administration,” said Councilmember Midura. “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 your 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.”

The Bush administration has frequently argued that their $116 billion allocation is evidence of their commitment to the recovery of the Gulf region. But further analysis in Councilmember Midura’s letter indicates that the actual number of dollars spent on long term recovery for the entire Gulf region is closer to $14.7 billion, less than 13% of the entire federal allocation. In contrast the Bush administration has allocated hundreds of billions of dollars for Iraq, of which $20.6 billion has been spent on recovery and infrastructure – over 42% more than has been spent on recovery for the Gulf region of the United States for our nation’s greatest natural disaster.

“Our recovery's success, struggle, or failure will be intimately woven into your legacy, for better or worse,” said Midura. “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. Your leadership of our country through this difficult time will serve as an American character lesson for future generations.”

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KATRINA: TWO YEARS LATER
FACT SHEET

1. REBUILDING
• 22% or $7 billion of FEMA’s 2005 disaster relief budget was spent on administrative costs, not rebuilding(Institute for Southern Studies)
• The figure used consistently by the Bush administration when discussing the amount of federal dollars allocated to Gulf Coast recovery is $116 billion. Of that amount, only 30% or $35 billion goes to long-term recovery projects (Jeffrey Buchanan, RFK Memorial Center for Human Rights)
• Of that $35 billion, less than 42% has been spent to date(RFK Memorial Center for Human Rights)
• The City of New Orleans has received approximately $187 million from FEMA and $150 million in Community Disaster Loans (City of New Orleans)

2. LEVEE REPAIR
• Currently, the United States Army Corps of Engineers has spent only 20 percent of the $8.4 billion allocated for New Orleans levee repair (Institute for Southern Studies)

3. COASTAL RESTORATION
• Since 1932, nearly 600 square miles of protective wetlands surrounding New Orleans have been lost (Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation)
• 30 square miles of these wetlands were lost since the US Army Corps of Engineers built the MRGO (Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation)
• 80 square miles of these wetlands were lost during Hurricane Katrina (Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation)
• The cumulative impact of these lost wetlands is a New Orleans with no natural protection against storm surges from tropical storms and hurricanes (Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation)

4. ECONOMY AND JOBS
• Two contracts of the 140 FEMA awarded for travel trailers, pre-fabricated homes, and other items, went to Louisiana and accounted for less than half of 1 percent of the $1.6 billion total (Times Picayune, Bill Walsh, “Fema Isn’t Hiring Louisiana Companies, Workers; Out-of State Firms Get Most of Business”, Washington bureau)
• According to Senator Carl Levin, D-Mich., 75 Louisiana electricians working at the Naval Air Station in Belle Chasse are out of a job as Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, now holds the contract (Bill Walsh)
• Four contracts, let by the US Army Corps of Engineers, for removing debris created by Katrina, worth a total of $2 billion with an option for $500 million more, went to Florida, Minnesota, and California (Bill Walsh)
• US Army Corps of Engineers contracts specified that the award process should give preference to local companies hit hardest by the storms (Bill Walsh)
• Although $4.5 billion in Gulf Opportunity Zone projects have been approved in Louisiana, only 1 is located in New Orleans. Strangely, a 10-unit luxury condo development in Tuscaloosa, Alabama (approximately 4 hours from the coast) is the recipient of GO Zone tax breaks (Institute for Southern Studies)
• The Small Business Administration finished processing loan applications for Katrina-impacted businesses in May of 2007, 21 months after the storm (Institute for Southern Studies)
• Federal agencies claimed that 259 contracts went to Louisiana small businesses but were later discovered to have gone to big companies or ineligible recipients (Institute for Southern Studies)

5. SPENDING IN IRAQ
• The federal government has currently spent over $455 billion on the war in Iraq (MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olberman, August 3, 2007 and www.nationalpriorities.org ) vs. $116 billion for the Gulf region’s recovery.
• The Bush Administration has spent $20.9 billion to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure (Wall Street Journal, May 10, 2006) as compared with the $8.4 billion allocated for New Orleans levee repair (Institute for Southern Studies)
• Congress has authorized $44 billion in funds for rehabilitation and reconstruction projects in Iraq, yet Bush has threatened to veto due to cost the $21 billion water resources bill being considered by Congress of which only $1.9 billion would be devoted to restoring Louisiana’s coastal wetlands (Institute for Southern Studies and www.voanew.com )
• USAID (United States Agency for International Development) has created a $4 million program to save Iraq’s Mesopatamian Marshlands (The Iraq Foundation)

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Any doubt she should be our next mayor?

Comments

[liprap]

Woohoo! Lovin' the blog makeover.

And I'm gunning for her for prez, myself. Mayor is a damn good start, however.

[saintseester]

Finally, a concise and coherent elucidation of where the money is (not). Now I have something I can give people who say to me, "But they've been given 100 billion dollars..."

[Courreges]

Midura's argument isn't really that compelling. She cites that most of the recovery dollars haven't been spent, but doesn't explain why that ought to be a federal concern. I would expect that local officials would be better placed to spend the money than pencil-pushers in Washington. Besides, if local officials aren't spending the money, how is that Bush's fault?

Moreover, Ed Blakely has expressed the view that he couldn't spend all the money to which New Orleans is entitled even if he had the funds. Apparently at the city-level, the planning isn't complete yet.

Finally, comparing New Orleans to Iraq is downright childish. Iraq has a population of approximately 27 million. Baghdad alone has a larger population than New York. The per capita dollars dedicated to New Orleans dramatically exceed those committed to Iraq. In any case, you're dealing with distinct policy issues, and comparing the two may make for nice political theater, but it isn't convincing.

[ashley]

Courreges, do me a solid on this solemn day, will ya? Go back to Houston and STFU. Comparing Iraq to an American city is childish? Fuck off and die. You're gone.

[jeffrey]

I don't feel like addressing Courrges's points at the moment either. Any other day perhaps....

Anyway. Just to drive the point home about the Iraq comparison, might I point you to Matt Taibbi's latest article on the INSANE amount of cash bloodily pissed away there.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16076312/the_great_iraq_swindle

After reading that, if you don't immediately want to shoot Glenn Beck in the head for suggesting that taxpayer dollars are wasted on New Orleans, you have no pulse.

[Adrastos]

I liked the letter but would be willing to wager against Shelley's becoming Mayor. She has become a pretty good councilwoman though and I had my doubts about her a year ago. She's really improved.

[ashley]

She's the only one on the council with...well...whatever I used to have.

[bill]

Ashley,

couple of questions, why is this day more solmen that others, and why don't you answer the questions?

[ashley]

Bill, if you don't know why today is solemn, then you're probably reading the wrong blog. Seriously.

[Karen]

Now Stacey is using subpoena powers to have a conversation with Dept heads.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-23/1188368639232970.xml&coll=1

[saintseester]

Uh. Bill? What planet do you live on?

[aaron]

I concur with everything said by you on the post and the comments, Ashley.

The definition of tragedy, going back to the Greeks, is a terrible event happening to a protagonist either through hubris or through unavoidable circumstances. It is doomed to happen, nothing can be done to prevent the impending disaster. The original damage to New Orleans and the ongoing damage to New Orleans is not tragic, nor has it ever been. It's been predicted by experts and those in the government and preventable. The ongoing morass we find ourselves enveloped in is likewise preventable, and the willingness and ability to use funds of the magnitude to remediate the suffering of this city have been demonstrated in Iraq and other places.

It is not a tragedy, but it is ever so lamentable.

[jimb]

You've got to be kidding, Ashley. I read Owen's response. It was a reasonable response, not childish in any way, and certainly not deserving of STFU or "Fuck Off And Die".

It was simply an opposing viewpoint. If you want an echo chamber, then you're well on your way.

By the way, the Federal response to Katrina may well have been flawed, but the state and local failures were complete.

[ashley]

Jim, it's a bad day to try to convince me that Owen and his Houston gang have anything constructive to say...but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

It's all about the levees. The levees were built by the feds, they built, designed, and maintained them poorly, and that's why thousands died. Period.

Now, the feds and the feds alone need to do what Donald Powell said: "The Federal Government is committed to building the best levee system known in the world".

That is all we really need at this point from the feds. That is what is keeping us from recovery.

[jimb]

you're telling me that since the Army Corps of Engineers built the levees, that state and local officials had no responsibility whatsoever?

And even if they don't, what about the consistent welfare-state mentality of so many of the people there that just assumed that the government was going to bail them out, or the lack of local and state response in the days leading up to the disaster, or the fact that once the federal government stepped in, Ms. Blanco kept wanting to establish state control (for a change) but continue to blame the Fed? There were failures all around, including all the way down to Nagin's level (remember the flooded school buses that could have been used for evacuations instead).

I am sick and tired of the rest of the nation needing minimal federal assistance compared to NO. They pick themselves up, endure the hardships, clean up and move on. Not NO, apparently - How many still live in FEMA trailers for 2 years and still not have their feet under them?

[ashley]

Jim, you're trying to change the subject to one of your canned talking points.

It's about the levees. The USACE is responsible for the levees. End of story.

[jimb]

Canned talking points? If you say so. I suspect that it isn't so black and white about the levees, though, and if you think that the state had nothing to do with the problem, I suspect you're shutting out what you don't want to hear.

[Karen]

JimB..Have you visited New Orleans?

If you want to make this a personal attack on the character of New Orleanians, perhaps you would benefit from actually meeting some of "us, many of "us" living in homes which we are unable to fix because the Insurance companies and Federal Flood Insurance did everything in their power to shortchange us.

Maybe some residents of this City are not living up to your idea of a social contract but most of us are.

Take a look out of the window of your own glass house and imagine everything and everybody gone, and then you tell me how you would fix it?

[aaron]

We've had this argument before Jim, aired these views, disspelled the myths you think are fact. We've done it with scientific papers, eyewitness reports, testimony from the very people in power who were in control, and we've cited it all. But this isn't for today. This might be one more mental exercise for you, it's a knife dripping blood for us, still pulled fresh from a wound. Seriously, just bring this shit up tomorrow, today's not the day for you to be an asshole.

[jimb]

Karen, there were failures on the state, local, federal levels of government. There is also a large segment of the population who has not done their part. Perhaps you are one to pull yourself up by the bootstraps. I assume you're not still living in a FEMA trailer with no job and a plasma TV in the living room? If so, fine, but a lot of your fellow New Orleanians are not following suit. That's not a personal attack, that's a sad statement on the state of dependency created by the government.

[jimb]

Seriously, just bring this shit up tomorrow, today's not the day for you to be an asshole.

With that, I'm out. I haven't attacked any of you personally.

[barbawit]

The folks who think all of the money allocated by the feds is accessible don't understand the Paperwork required for obtaining that money. The system has been set up to make it as difficult as posdsible to obtain funds to help the recovery. While I find many of the comments by our detractors uninformed and just mean spirited it's what I have come to expect form the folks that goose step in line with the Bush administration.

[dcgirl]

Why should the rest of the US fund those that don't have the mental capacity to not live in a city that is basically under sea level and is sinking every year? And why is Mississippi able to pick up, rebuild, and move on without the constant crying and carping about how "enough isn't being done for ME". I think the answer is that most of the people of NO expect the government to fund and take care of everything for them and that they have no personal responsibility to (a) get out before a storm hits (duh) (b) start cleaning up themselves (saw a woman on tv that was doing that with a bunch of other women) (c)start having higher morals that are needed for the personal responsibility. Why should all these people STILL be getting free rent, etc.? They need to go out and get a job like the rest of us. I have had a total loss myself, but I didn't have ANYONE giving me free rent, free food, free news time to complain, etc.

Any bets on whether or not this post is displayed or pulled since I disagree with "Ashley". And professor, I hope you try to teach your students better than you blog.

[ashley]

dcgirl, I won't pull it. You're doing a good enough job making yourself look stupid.

Part of the problem of the Lone Star gang is that you don't know the facts that we've been hammering on for years, and we're just tired of repeating them.

NOLA is mostly above sea level; the levees are the problem; the levees are the responsibility of the USACE; the rest of the nation needs minimal assistance...blah blah blah.

But don't let facts get in the way of your argument. Why start now?

[Markus]

I want to know why I'm being asked to pay for two wars for an attack on New York, if you want to look at it that way. And how stupid could anyone be to work in a building that was a known terrorist target based on clear past experience?

Do your arguments against New Orleans look any more interesting to you rephrased in this way? Just wondering.