Woes Raging Before the Flood

[msgadget]

Errol Louis
September 2, 2005

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Hastert wins no prizes for tact - the dead in New Orleans haven't even been counted, much less buried - but he has a point. The city that rises on the site of New Orleans must be reimagined from scratch, from its failed levees to its low-paying industries and government agencies plagued by corruption.

The Crescent City, like all of Louisiana, was in dire economic straits long before this week's hurricane. I saw it first hand two years ago while working on a foundation-funded consultant team that was designing a plan to attack poverty and chronic unemployment among ex-inmates in inner-city New Orleans.

Louisiana ranks 46th among the 50 states in the percentage of people living in poverty, 48th in the percentage of adults over 25 years old with a high school degree and 49th in the percentage of working-age adults holding jobs.

The state's industrial jobs are concentrated in the oil and chemical sectors, mostly in low-paying front-line work: Louisiana ranks 48th in industrial research and development. In New Orleans, the main unskilled work options are very low-paying hotel and restaurant jobs.

Local government has proved unable to defeat these deep-rooted problems. A stunningly honest long-term master plan called Louisiana 2020, published by the state government in the late 1990s and regularly updated, isn't afraid to list one of the most painful obstacles to progress: "the perception that Louisiana is a 'Banana Republic' with self-serving governmental leaders who lack the political will to enact and sustain fiscal and socioeconomic reforms that will facilitate broad-based economic growth and prosperity."

To their credit, state leaders took that ugly truth to heart and, fed up with Louisiana's perennially low economic rankings, struggled to stick with the master plan. But I fear the momentum for reform may be lost as the coming rush of billions for disaster relief and reconstruction tempts officials to revert to the worst habits of the past.

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A diverse set of new industries with higher-paying jobs must be convinced to give the Gulf Coast a try. Venture capital and other forms of financing have to be lured to the area, something the state's tax structure currently discourages.

Above all, government leaders must be relentless about preventing and punishing cronyism, waste and corruption as the disaster aid rolls in.

The immediate task is to save lives and organize relief. But it's a mistake to think rebuilding New Orleans will simply be a matter of pumping out lake water and rebuilding levees, roads, homes and refineries. A much deeper level of reconstruction has to take place.