John M. Barry in today's LA Times:
Although the energy and shipping industries primarily benefit the entire country, Louisiana does gain economically -- as it does from levees -- so one could argue the state has made a devil's bargain. Yet the dams and reservoirs that provide important benefits -- ironically including flood protection -- to states from the Upper Midwest to the High Plains enormously increase the danger to New Orleans, coastal Louisiana and part of Mississippi, but give nothing to them.
The Bush administration, instead of recognizing that hurricane protection for Louisiana is an urgent national problem, is treating this protection as if it were a routine local economic development project. In addition to opposing putting any money for Louisiana in the supplemental appropriation bill, the administration wants Louisiana to pay proportionately the same share of the costs for protection from a 100-year hurricane that local governments pay to build, say, a canal lock.
This is bad policy on two counts. First, failure to put the money into the bill will delay protection for at least two hurricane seasons. New Orleans needs this protection sooner rather than later. Second, the administration wants Louisiana to pay $1.8 billion as its share of the costs. To a region struggling to recover, this is a crippling burden, especially because it comes on top of the $500 million that Louisiana has allotted to such protection this year and next, and a state constitutional amendment that has dedicated all future tax revenues from offshore energy production, estimated at more than $650 million a year, to coastal restoration and protection.
So far, policymakers have not seen the problem as a whole, and they largely perceive federal assistance as generosity. That's the wrong way of looking at it. Given that benefits to states throughout the Mississippi Valley actually created the problem, federal funding is not generosity. It's equity.
via: Varg
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