Institutionalizing the recovery

Whatever the mission might have been, it seems to have been accomplished

In the latest reshuffling of his administration's often-reorganized bureaucracy, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has announced that the 2-year-old Office of Recovery and Development Administration, the far-reaching agency formerly headed by Ed Blakely, is being dissolved. Nagin said the realignment is aimed at furthering the city's transition from recovery planning to implementation.

No time like the last 6-8 months of an administration to start implementing stuff. Seems like somebody was saying something about this recently... just before he became a celebrity.

I bring JC (Johnson Controls) up now, because I want to remind folks that the biggest shennanigans in an Executive public official's reign usually occur in the last leg of his/her tenure. We are approaching that last leg with Senor Nagin. I think we may be on the verge of another Johnson Controls scenario...Nagin's version that is.

Back to Nagin

"We have overcome many bureaucratic challenges over the last several years that have allowed us to change our focus from planning to programming dollars 'in the ground' to institutionalize this recovery, " Nagin said this week. "This is what the Project Delivery Unit has been created to do: implement!

For now we will resist the temptation to ruminate upon the possible meanings of the fun phrase "institutionalize this recovery". Suffice to say, it's one of the best things to come out of the mouth of a local public person since Bob Cerasoli told us he was going to sophisticate up the corruption.

The upside of this is... we hope... that "implementation" means some of the money about to be thrown around will end up in some places where it can do some good. And, I mean, the law of averages says some of it has to, right? The article lists a few projects that may soon get underway including parks and playgrounds and "$3.9 million for the Fire Department" although it doesn't say specifically what that money does.

On the other hand, it also mentions that more properties have been cleared for FEMA funded demolition. It's maddening that the city continues to classify demolition funds as "recovery dollars". And since a separate news item informs us that Kenya Smith has returned from his quixotic mission to defeat "citizen complacency" and taken some sort of position of importance in the Implementation Institution, we aren't quite as confident as we should be.