Gov. Kathleen Blanco called a press conference Monday to announce the creation of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, a non-partisan commission charged with assisting Blanco in leading the state’s rebuilding efforts after hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Blanco said the 23-member authority will be instrumental in helping the state address both short- and long-term issues, including housing, jobs and rebuilding the infrastructure along the Gulf Coast.
Blanco’s announcement comes during a time – seven weeks after Katrina – when her leadership abilities have been questioned by state officials and the national media.
The authority’s members represent the wide array of talents necessary to address the magnitude of the state’s recovery effort. Members range from Donna Brazile, a democratic political strategist, to Mary Ella Sanders, a medical doctor.
“The Louisiana Recovery Authority will help me bring the entire state together in the effort to rebuild Louisiana,” Blanco said. “It will be a unified voice with the single focus on rebuilding. It will show the nation that we can work across all of the old boundaries that once kept us apart.”
Increased political in-fighting among state officials since the hurricanes has made a unified recovery effort difficult, and Blanco said she asked the authority to avoid similar delays and focus on addressing what she said is the most important thing – reconstructing Louisiana.
“We cannot afford to not work together,” said Norman Francis, Xavier University president and the authority’s chairman, after Blanco’s remarks. “That has to be the bottom line. We have to work together.”
Blanco said the state is facing unprecedented challenges and needs unity to maintain a forward momentum.
“This state has been changed forever,” Blanco said. “But that doesn’t mean this state and its institutions can’t become better.”
She said the rebuilding effort will require a “daring and realistic plan,” and the authority will oversee that plan.
“We cannot simply recreate what the storms destroyed,” she told reporters. “We must make the new Louisiana smarter, safer, stronger.”
Francis said the commission will have definite deadlines for achieving the goals outlined for it to keep the plan in motion over an extended period of time.
“We know people expect the state to be rebuilt tomorrow, but it won’t,” Francis said. “We’re asking for patience because it’s not just recovery we’re talking about. We’re talking about enhancement.”
Though she told reporters the authority has been in the works since the storms hit, Blanco cited evolving challenges as the reason the authority took seven weeks to assemble.
“We began working on creating this panel after Katrina, but we were delayed when we had to turn our attention toward Rita,” she said. “We had to come back and rethink the whole thrust of the effort.”
Blanco said her authority will work closely with the commission created by New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, in spite of reported disagreements between the two.
“Mayor Nagin held an opening for a member of my commission to serve on his commission, and he’ll be nominating a person to serve on the state commission as well,” she said. “It’s going to be a powerful synergy.”
The authority’s vice chairman Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute and former CNN chief executive officer, said he anticipates a good working relationship between the two commissions.
“We’re going to forget about the history of fighting,” he said. “We are going to surprise you with how well we’re going to work together.”
Contact Jeff Jeffrey at [email protected]