OPINIONS

Editorials, opinions and commentary from The Times-Picayune

The new Veterans Affairs hospital expected to anchor a medical district near downtown New Orleans is among the centerpieces of our long-term recovery. Yet Mayor Ray Nagin's administration is maintaining its secretiveness about some of the project's most important details -- and that's unfair to the public.

The Times-Picayune's Kate Moran reported last week that the mayor committed the city to spend as much as $79 million, mostly from federal grants, to buy dozens of homes at the proposed site, relocate residents and pay for other project expenses.

The administration had in the past refused to publicly discuss how much the land buying would cost. Instead, the newspaper learned of the working estimate from a contract Mayor Nagin signed with the state in August. The document was posted this month on a password-protected Web site that the vast majority of New Orleanians cannot access.

Continue reading "New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin should be up front with taxpayers on VA hospital expenses" »

The New Orleans Police Department needs to track down $19,000 in cash that disappeared from its evidence room, but beyond that, the department needs to tighten lax procedures that allowed the money to go missing in the first place.

Superintendent Warren Riley revealed last week that the money, which belongs to a former defendant, was gone. He criticized former Capt. Danny Lawless, who oversaw the evidence room, saying that a dozen people had keys that gave them access to money and drugs.

Continue reading "Ignoring the evidence: New Orleans Police Department must tighten its evidence room" »

When Lt. Gen. Russel Honore retired from his Army command in January, he said that Katrina left him with a passion to "be a champion of something." One of his big concerns, he said, was how unprepared the nation still was for catastrophe.

Trying to change that was one of the things he decided to focus on after retirement.

His return to the city Tuesday was part of that effort. In an address to the National Spinal Cord Injury Association, he called for residents and elected officials to be on constant readiness for hurricanes or other disasters.

Continue reading "Your orders from Lt. Gen. Honore: Be prepared for an emergency" »

Census data are not fun to read in Louisiana, even if you happen, like Elliott Stonecipher, to be a demographer. The way Stonecipher ciphers it, every day for the last 27 years, 84 more people have left Louisiana than have moved in.

Continue reading "Smart folks leaving; the rest run our state" »

Election Day has come and gone. And as the hype ends, so will our youth's political participation. After two years of rigorous campaigning on both sides, the madness finally is over. No longer do political ads dominate our television sets. Yard signs now litter the streets as mere tumbleweeds of an already dated election. With each passing day, fewer and fewer Facebook statuses serve as personal endorsements for either of the candidates. With the close of the election brouhaha, Americans apparently have moved on with their lives.

Continue reading "For young voters, it's just the start" »

Debris from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita has clogged Louisiana bayous and lakes for more than three years -- so long that it's been joined by junk from Hurricanes Gustav and Ike.

But while the old obstructions are finally going to be removed at federal expense under an agreement between FEMA and the Coast Guard, officials from those agencies say that the newer debris can't be included.

Instead, FEMA says that local governments will have to clean up marine debris from 2008 on their own and apply to FEMA for reimbursement.

Continue reading "Another kind of obstruction: Gustav and Ike's debris in waterways also needs removal" »

Orleans Parish School Board President Torin Sanders certainly is eager to help out the teachers' union.

One board committee voted against bringing a new collective bargaining agreement to a board vote, and a second committee deadlocked on the issue. But Mr. Sanders used his powers as president to add the item to today's meeting agenda.

Only one member besides Mr. Sanders has said that she is in favor of bringing back collective bargaining, and four out of five of the incoming board members have asked the board not to do so.

Continue reading "Union contract for New Orleans schools is a bad move" »

The rebuilding of New Orleans' City Park remains one of the brightest spots in our post-Katrina recovery -- a point reinforced by its latest addition.

Under the guidance of the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, crews will complete a privately funded, $2 million green-space facelift around Big Lake lagoon next to the New Orleans Museum of Art.

The effort will transform the little used, 50-acre tract by adding gardens, a fountain and a pedestrian and bicycle path to the lagoon's surroundings. Crews also will build a 16-acre meadow for outdoor concerts and new parking.

Continue reading "New Orleans City Park an example for post-Katrina recovery" »

The Army Corps of Engineers has released a preliminary statement of where the permanent pumps will be constructed in each of the three outfall canals in Orleans Parish. The Orleans and London Avenue canals are unique in that they are the only outfall canals located on the part of the Orleans lakefront that was reclaimed from the lake in a project that started in 1926. The project resulted in reclaiming about 2,000 acres from the lake, constructing the sea wall that still exists, and the planning of several neighborhoods along the lakefront. This is still a unique area with ample green space. The outfall canals existed as drainage canals at the time the land was reclaimed, so the layout of the parks and subdivisions necessarily took them into account. Continue reading "Don't build towering pumps at lakefront" »

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin wants to raise taxes to balance next year's budget. Instead, he should trim expenses by renegotiating the city's huge garbage collection contracts and saving millions a year.

Garbage across the city is getting picked up efficiently, the French Quarter looks great and residents are happy with the service. But so are residents in unincorporated Jefferson Parish, who also get bi-weekly, unlimited garbage pickup for millions of dollars less.

Continue reading "A tale of two garbage contracts: New Orleans doesn't need to pay millions more than Jefferson Parish" »

The Louisiana Public Service Commission rejected a chance to redeem its image, which has been battered by audits that criticized the panel for eating and drinking on companies it regulates.

Continue reading "Louisiana Public Service Commission decides to keep the meals coming" »

When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, his chief concern was economic justice. He had come to the realization that civil rights laws, in and of themselves, were not going to be enough to change the lives of the oppressed and that it was therefore necessary for him to wage a "Poor People's Campaign."

Continue reading "History's made, and Kings want cut" »

The Obama campaign's policy statement on the Gulf Coast's recovery promises to provide Category 5 hurricane protection, help restore Louisiana's wetlands and shake loose billions in recovery dollars that are stuck in the federal bureaucracy.

It also talks about rebuilding hospitals, schools and infrastructure, restoring affordable housing, shoring up the criminal justice system in New Orleans and encouraging the creation of jobs in storm-battered communities. The policy paper even promises that an Obama administration will reverse an awful FEMA policy that puts local governments and nonprofits on the hook for millions of dollars in insurance deductibles during future disasters.

Continue reading "South Louisiana's recovery going forward: The agenda for Barack Obama's administration" »

Sexism is a sin, according to Roy Bourgeois, the Catholic priest from Lutcher who faces excommunication for advocating the ordination of women. It is a sin of which the Ku Klux Klan appears to have purged itself. Women can't get to put on robes in church but they are welcome to do so down at the klavern. There was a time when any self-respecting Cyclops would have run a woman off without blinking an eye. But the sad tale of Cynthia Lynch reveals that the tide of feminism has reached dark places, even unto Bogalusa's Sons of Dixie Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which had at least two women members when she applied to join.

Continue reading "Equal-opportunity hate" »

Who here remembers the Rusk Report? Hmm, I thought not. In 1999, a local bunch of granola eaters, financed by business, philanthropic and academic types, commissioned an urban planning consultant named David Rusk to analyze the state of the New Orleans area and make some recommendations. Rusk, the former mayor of Albuquerque, N.M., condemned the region's urban sprawl and concluded we were all doomed without something approaching regional governance.

Continue reading "Jefferson looking at the big picture" »

As Election Day approached and the GOP's vice-presidential candidate was touting her qualifications as former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, television's funniest fake news show went to that small town to find out what its current mayor does.

Diane M. Keller joined the long line of nice-seeming folks who may live to regret the decision to give an interview to "The Daily Show." For despite Keller's express belief that being mayor of Wasilla is adequate preparation for the vice-presidency, she struggled to explain to "reporter" Jason Jones what she actually does every day.

Continue reading "Jarvis DeBerry: Mayor Hasn't Learned His Lesson" »

New Orleanians have patiently waited for the Nagin administration and its contractors to deliver on promises to install up to 1,000 working crime cameras that would help convict violent offenders and reduce crime.

What residents have gotten instead is a program dogged by waste, technical problems and scant evidence that it's making a substantial difference in the fight against crime.

Continue reading "If New Orleans' crime cameras are useless, cut them from the budget" »

The Coast Guard has deservedly gotten a public relations beating since a July 23 Mississippi River oil spill exposed serious violations and lax oversight in the towing industry.

The incident occurred four years after Congress ordered the Coast Guard to crack down on the towing industry. Yet the agency is not set to launch a permanent inspection program until next year.

Continue reading "The Coast Guard's move to police towing industry" »

White Americans are faced with a historic opportunity. Recognizing the significance of the moment, President-elect Obama told the story of Ann Nixon Cooper, who at the age of 106 voted for him, and who was born "just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons: because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin." He concluded his election-night speech by asking: "If my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?"

Continue reading "For white Americans, a chance to atone" »

Cynthia Lynch's family describes a timid woman who had never ventured outside of her home state of Oklahoma before traveling Friday to St. Tammany Parish for a Klan initiation.

Continue reading "Hate among us: Klan emerges in St. Tammany Parish" »

Louisianians will be able to keep a much closer eye on how the state spends public money now that the budget office has put a wide range of information on line.

The Web site, at wwwprd.doa.la.gov/
latrac/index.cfm, debuted this week and it could use a catchier URL. Something like urtaxdollars.gov would be easy to remember.

Continue reading "Louisiana Web site lets you keep an eye on your money" »

-- City Park Amusement Park has a new, bigger Ferris wheel to replace one that was damaged during Hurricane Katrina. The new ride, built with Dow Chemical Foundation donations, seats 48 people.

-- Lakefront Arena will see its first college basketball games since a $26 million post-storm renovation. The University of New Orleans' women's team will play the inaugural game at the arena tonight, and the Privateers men's team will play North Carolina State there Saturday.

Continue reading "New Orleans City Park's Ferris wheel returns -- and other signs of recovery" »

Terry Lisotta must have figured he had everyone fooled. Lisotta, as head of the public corporation that insures property owners spurned by the commercial market, fiddled his expenses to the tune of more than $100,000 in three years, according to a report from Legislative Auditor Steve Theriot.

Continue reading "Goodwill wasted on ex-insurance chief" »

In D.W. Griffith's 1915 film "The Birth of a Nation," a white woman chooses to jump from a cliff rather than be raped by a black man, and the Ku Klux Klan is the heroic cavalry that pays that man back by lynching him.

Continue reading "Klan is still no laughing matter" »