Quote of note:

...White House aides, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the subject, faulted the New Orleans political community for failing to face hard choices about race and geography.

...White House officials have said they see no merit in re-creating failing schools and flawed public housing in New Orleans. Still, they reject conspiracy theories about racial engineering.

...Isaacson, a New Orleans native and former Time Inc. editor appointed by Gov. Kathleen Blanco to the panel overseeing the state's recovery plans, estimates that $3 billion, plus about $5 billion already in the pipeline, will bail out the owners of the roughly 220,000 homes destroyed by Katrina. Given that Congress has already agreed to spend $85 billion on Katrina relief, the cost does not seem insurmountable. But first, the White House and Louisiana pols will have to overcome bitter partisan sniping and racially charged gamesmanship.

A Katrina Brownout
Local pols think the White House blew off rebuilding New Orleans. Behind the latest battle to get it right.
By Evan Thomas and Holly Bailey
Newsweek

Feb. 20, 2006 issue - In America, there are always second acts. One of the most breathtaking was on display last week on Capitol Hill, where former FEMA director Michael Brown—the much-ridiculed goat of the federal government's sorry response to Hurricane Katrina—was magically resurrecting himself as a heroic whistle-blower. Testifying before a Senate committee, Brown declared that he had informed the White House and the Department of Homeland Security of a levee breech on the day of the storm and warned that "we were realizing our worst nightmare." He scoffed at statements by administration officials, including President George W. Bush, that they had been left in the dark by FEMA and only learned of the severe damage the day after the storm passed. "Baloney," Brown said.

Katrina is the storm that just won't blow away. Local, state and federal officials are still blaming each other for failing to react to the hurricane when it hit and then failing to come up with a workable plan to rebuild New Orleans. Meanwhile, great swaths of the city lie wrecked and moldering. While the politicians have postured and dithered, New Orleanians who lost their homes in Katrina have been left in the lurch, caught in a long-running drama of raised—and dashed—hopes.

A happy ending is still possible. "I think this problem could be solved in 20 minutes," says Walter Isaacson, the president of the Aspen Institute and vice chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. "It's low-hanging fruit and not that expensive." Isaacson, a New Orleans native and former Time Inc. editor appointed by Gov. Kathleen Blanco to the panel overseeing the state's recovery plans, estimates that $3 billion, plus about $5 billion already in the pipeline, will bail out the owners of the roughly 220,000 homes destroyed by Katrina. Given that Congress has already agreed to spend $85 billion on Katrina relief, the cost does not seem insurmountable. But first, the White House and Louisiana pols will have to overcome bitter partisan sniping and racially charged gamesmanship.

For a time last fall, it appeared that Richard Baker, a Louisiana congressman, had come up with a plan that would help homeowners swept away by the storm. The Feds would give them 60 percent of the pre-Katrina value of their homes, enough for most to rebuild or move on. But in late December, as the Baker bill seemed headed for passage by Congress, the White House balked. Bush barely mentioned New Orleans in the State of the Union address, and in early February, Donald Powell—an old Bush friend appointed by the White House to act as federal coordinator for rebuilding the Gulf Coast—attacked the Baker bill as bureaucratic and profligate in a Washington Post opinion piece.

Baker, as well as the Louisiana pols and New Orleans city leaders who had been counting on his plan, complained that they had been betrayed by the administration. But White House aides, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the subject, faulted the New Orleans political community for failing to face hard choices about race and geography.

Many experts believe that New Orleans should not rebuild in low-lying areas that were flooded by Katrina—and could be flooded again, even with repaired and improved levees. Most of those areas are populated largely by African-Americans. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin—who is black but widely regarded as a tool of white business interests in New Orleans—declined to put those areas off-limits to building and return them to cypress swamp or parkland. Instead, he has either reaffirmed the right of homeowners to rebuild in historically black areas like the Lower Ninth Ward, or danced around the subject. ("Look, we have a race problem," says developer Joe Canizaro, a member of the mayor's commission on rebuilding New Orleans. "We're trying not to say to black people that they can't come back to New Orleans because they got hurt the worst.") Last month, in a bizarre speech that may have doomed his chances of re-election in March, Nagin called for New Orleans to remain a "chocolate city"—while lamenting that the hurricane was God's punishment for inner-city family breakdown and invading Iraq.

Nagin, as well as other African-American leaders in New Orleans, have strongly harbored suspicions that the White House does not really want blacks to return to the city. Katrina drove tens of thousands of blacks from their homes. Cities like Houston still have large populations of storm refugees from the Big Easy. In Louisiana in recent elections, black voters have given some Democrats a narrow margin of victory—most notably in re-electing Sen. Mary Landrieu in 2002. A whiter New Orleans could mean a more Republican state.

White House officials have said they see no merit in re-creating failing schools and flawed public housing in New Orleans. Still, they reject conspiracy theories about racial engineering. ("Just absurd," says one White House aide.) Bush's advisers acknowledge, however, that the administration has felt little political pressure from voters nationwide to spend more money to rebuild New Orleans.

That may be changing. Brown's testimony recalled the chaotic and bumbling response by the Bush administration in the immediate aftermath of Katrina. NEWSWEEK has learned that the White House will soon release its own internal study showing systemwide failures at all levels of the federal government. It is perhaps no coincidence that White House officials are now taking a somewhat more conciliatory line toward Louisiana officials trying to cobble together a new buyout plan for New Orleans homeowners. Interviewed by NEWSWEEK, the White House's Powell and Congressman Baker were discreet and polite about each other. Powell said he had "good working relationship" and a "common objective" with Baker, while Baker chose his words carefully and said as little as possible. On with the play.