The New Orleans Leadership Vacuum Continues

Mayor Ray Nagin's Bring New Orleans Back Commission is releasing its final report/recommendations at this very moment, but the Times-Picayune offers an early glimpse. What is shows is a continuing leadership vacuum and double-speak from Nagin.

All along, Mayor Ray Nagin has been steadfast in his commitment to residents of New Orleans' flood-ravaged neighborhoods that they -- and not the government -- should have sole authority to decide whether to rebuild or relocate.

Nagin isn't wavering on that as he prepares to unveil his Hurricane Katrina recovery blueprint tonight. But the final report from his Bring New Orleans Back Commission offers some weighty caveats for homeowners thinking about resettling in some of the hardest-hit areas, in particular the Lower 9th Ward and a pair of low-lying sections of eastern New Orleans.

In those so-called "delayed recovery areas," Nagin said, his administration will continue issuing building permits to all comers. But City Hall's pledge of cooperation comes with a strongly worded warning to people to rebuild there at their own risk, at least for the time being.

"I just want to be honest with people," Nagin said. "I want to let them know what the deal is."

If people are at risk, why does City Hall continue to issue the building permits? People in the so-called delayed recovery areas cannot be promised police protection, working sewers or weekly garbage collection. Then why are they being encouraged to return? Nagin is simply promising anarchy.

Nagin said he also is concerned about allowing rebuilding in areas where the infrastructure remains in shambles.

"Right now, people are saying to me they want travel trailers in Lower 9, and I say, 'I can't do that; you don't even have a working sewer system,' " he said. "When I say 'delayed recovery areas,' that's what I mean by that.

"I'm not recommending people go in those areas right now."

But in the end, Nagin said, he will not prohibit rebuilding anywhere unless there is evidence of environmental danger.

Get that? The mayor knows you are unsafe in returning to the heavily damaged parts of the city. But if you want to come back, come on. A cop won't be there to help, but come on. You won't have a functioning toilet, but come on. Garbage will pile up on the curb, but come on.

Nagin wants to be all things to all people. What the city needs is a mayor who says: "Recovery will not take place overnight. It will not take place in a year. Complete recovery will not take place in five years. It is not safe for some areas of New Orleans to ever be reoccupied. That is a simple fact, and we are not going to jeopardize lives by saying otherwise."

But with an election on the horizon, Nagin won't be honest. It's a shame, too, because he came into office with an honest reputation and lived up to it in the first years. He had his own cousin arrested in the taxi scandal, for chrissakes! Ray Nagin should surrender his re-election hopes and use the month telling residents and displaced residents alike that some areas of the city will never return -- and, in turn, they may never return, either, at least not to their former neighborhoods.

But instead, we're stuck with the reincarnation of Vic Schiro, the former New Orleans mayor who famously said: "Don't believe any false rumors, unless you hear them from me."

P.S.: Schiro was mayor when Hurricane Betsy hit in September 1965 -- just a few days shy of 40 years to the date Katrina came ashore. With Betsy's storm surge "levees for the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet along Florida Avenue in the lower Ninth Ward and on both sides of the Industrial Canal were overtopped and failed. The flood water reached the eaves of houses in some places and over some one story roofs in the Lower Ninth Ward. Some residents drowned in their attics trying to survice the rising waters."

Sound familiar?