some thoughts on NOLA

The President visited New Orleans again this week, his first trip since standing in Jackson Square promising to rebuild. This week, he highlighted tax credit legislation to encourage the private sector to rebuild, and modest levee funding. While this will help a little, it continues to ignore the magnitude of the disaster. The solutions put forward are larger versions of typical economic development strategies. They rely on small amounts of public dollars to leverage large private sector investment and additional tax credits to sustain growth. This strategy can work in areas suffering from economic disasters like the shuttering of a large employer. But the complexity of the challenges facing New Orleans faces challenges demand innovative ideas, not retreads of existing strategies.

Plans to reconstruct the city acknowledge that some areas of the city will be lost, and many residents will not return. At this point, that is likely true. But why?

After the water receeded and the magnitude of the damage to New Orleans was clear to officials, estimates of the recovery cost approached $200 billion. To date, Congress has appropriated $85 billion. The failure of the President to lead Congress to rapidly commit large sums of money both for levee repair and reconstruction has undermined the confidence of New Orleans' former residents. This has exacerbated problems from Katrina, created new ones, and undermined the effectiveness of the solutions put forward by the President.

Last weekend I went out with some friends in the Garden District. Many businesses there have reopened. But shuttered businesses remain so because they lack for workers. Workers can't return because they have nowhere to live, and the city can't provide essential services like schools. With its tax base destroyed, New Orleans needed a major commitment of federal funds to reopen its schools and rebuilt critical infrastructure. Instead, it's received loans and vaguely worded promises about rebuilding. So the city has been slow to rebuild. And every day more families decide never to return.

While it's not too late to improve upon this outcome, I've seen nothing to indicate a comprehensive effort from the federal government. Instead the reconstruction effort will proceed at the minimum politically acceptable level. And with most Americans unaware and focusing on the next made up controversy, like whether an Oprah-endorsed book was true, the Crescent City will not rise again.