Lawmakers Balk at Governor’s Route to Recovery

Standing inside the city’s convention center, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco opened Louisiana’s second special legislative session with pleas for solidarity and promises to curb corruption as the state pushed forward with its recovery from last year’s storms.

“This is not about party politics,” Blanco said during her speech Monday evening. “It’s about our people.... To all of our people who are still displaced, I want to assure you that our No. 1 priority is to bring you home.”

But a significant chunk of the Legislature wasn’t there to listen. Almost a quarter of the state’s 144 lawmakers didn’t show up at the convention center, where thousands of storm victims had spent days waiting for help after Hurricane Katrina.

And when Blanco launched the session Monday afternoon by leading a bus tour of the more devastated areas of New Orleans, less than half of the state’s legislators joined in.

Some said they didn’t participate because they had already visited the most seriously damaged neighborhoods and were aware of the problems. Others described the tour as a waste of time, saying that the focus of the 12-day session should be on passing legislation, not going on political field trips.

“I spent a week getting people in and out of there. The thought of going back to that building is painful,” said Democratic state Rep. Juan A. LaFonta of New Orleans. “The thought of going there to listen to a governor talk about a plan to tear apart this city makes me ill.”

Blanco’s plan for the special session is to focus on trimming New Orleans’ government offices and merging southeastern Louisiana’s locally operated levee districts into a single board made up of professionals.

Local levee boards are widely criticized for patronage and poor management.

The board for the Orleans Parish, for example, has been accused of being distracted from one of its primary jobs -- monitoring problems and ensuring security of the levees -- by focusing on outside ventures that include a marina and an airport.

Further, New Orleans has two court systems, two sheriffs and several property tax assessors, said a spokesman in the governor’s office.

“New Orleans has always enjoyed being the exception to the rule. The sad truth is that those exceptions have not always served New Orleans well,” Blanco said. “We had all better put Louisiana politics aside ... or our people and our state will lose.”

Monday’s verbal back and forth was a clear sign of the political divisiveness over how the region will recover and another example of what critics call government inertia that continues to stymie recovery efforts.

The special session comes on the heels of a Brown University study that found poor African American residents in New Orleans were disproportionately displaced by Hurricane Katrina, and that the city was at risk of losing as much as 80% of its black population.

The study also raised questions about who would be able to return to New Orleans as the city rebuilds -- a fear that was repeatedly voiced as Blanco and the state leaders toured the Lower 9th Ward.

At the Industrial Canal breach there, a straggling crew of residents greeted the tour buses with cries for help and chants of “We are here to stay.”

“We don’t have water. We don’t have power. We have concrete slabs and front steps and no house,” Alice Craft-Kerney, 48, told Blanco. “Folks are living outside because they don’t have trailers. When will you help us?”

Blanco shook Craft-Kerney’s hand and replied, “We’re trying. We’re moving as fast as we can.”

Craft-Kerney clung to the governor’s hand. Her eyes grew teary as she said, “I just don’t know how much longer some people can last.”