Recent editorials from Louisiana newspapers:
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Sept. 22
The Advocate on the damage done by Hurricane Laura:
After hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, there were discussions - well, call them bitter disputes - among property owners, insurance companies and the government over what would be covered for repairs. It made a difference whether the damage came from wind or water.
Not with Hurricane Laura, or at least not nearly so much.
The winds of one of the most powerful storms ever to strike in North America devastated wide swaths of southwestern Louisiana, as well as up to the Arkansas line.
The tallies are starting to come in. About $300 million in damage was sustained by the Calcasieu Parish schools alone. That is 10 times the amount of damage inflicted by Hurricane Rita in 2005, that followed a very similar path starting on the coast at Cameron. Other school systems up the Sabine River corridor were also hit hard.
Local campuses, including McNeese State University and the SOWELA community college in Lake Charles, suffered severe damage.
State Sen. Ronnie Johns, R-Lake Charles, told a legislative committee that overall damages from Hurricane Laura are estimated to be about $12 billion, three times that of Hurricane Rita in 2005.
It was a monster storm, and the bill is huge. And that does not begin to express fully the difficulties of the people of the region, living without power for a long time. The emergency included boil-water advisories in Lake Charles and other cities.
The good news is that power has been restored in many areas, as thousands of crews from across the United States helped Entergy and other investor-owned utilities and rural electric cooperatives get poles and line into action.
Volunteers from across the nation are helping. More than $5.5 million has been contributed to the Community Foundation of Southwest Louisiana, leading with $1 million gifts from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation and Walmart, to help families get basic services while they wield hammers and nails.
It is vital that, although this is hardly Louisiana’s first rodeo with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, that aid flows quickly and without the nitpicking bureaucracy that plagued the state 15 years ago after Katrina and Rita.
We believe FEMA has improved under the pressure of events. President Donald Trump has appointed professionals to top jobs in the agency. And constant pressure from Louisiana’s delegation in Congress will be on FEMA, as well as other relevant sources of aid like the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The pressure is needed because the scope of the damage is so great. Congress should act very soon to direct aid to the region and give the bureaucracy its marching orders.
Online: https://www.theadvocate.com/
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Sept. 19
The Houma Courier on local economies:
Houma-Thibodaux faces an uphill battle to regain jobs lost to a years-long oil bust and the global COVID-19 pandemic.
That’s the basic, and sobering, message Loren Scott, a well-known Louisiana economist, delivered last week in an online presentation sponsored by the Thibodaux-based South Louisiana Economic Council.
The good news is that after years of losses, the metro area, comprised of Terrebonne and Lafourche, will gain 3,200 jobs over the next two years.
The bad news is that will still leave local economy 1,300 jobs below where it was before the pandemic, and related downturn in business activity, took hold in March.
One of the reasons the area’s growth will be sluggish is that its main economic engine, the Gulf of Mexico oilfield, is not expected to recover quickly from its downturn of recent years.
Houma-Thibodaux was just beginning to recover from an oil bust that started in 2014 when the pandemic hit. Scott’s figures show the bust cost the area nearly 16,000 jobs, nearly 16% of its total. The state’s estimates put the total closer to 25,000 jobs lost.
Whether the area sees a better or worse economic picture depends, no surprise, on the price of oil. Scott projects oil prices will average $40 a barrel this year, $45 next year and $49 in 2022.
“We need to see oil prices in the $55 range to really see the Gulf of Mexico come back,” he said.
As always, higher oil prices will mean more local jobs, lower oil prices less.
His report does show some of the area’s biggest businesses continue to diversify the kind of work they do. Bollinger Shipyards is a good example. Years ago it shifted most of its business to building Coast Guard boats, and last week it announced a major contract to build a dry dock for Navy submarines.
Diversification must continue if Houma-Thibodaux wants to escape the repeated ups and downs of the oil industry.
One of the main drivers of new local jobs will be more than $1 billion of coastal-restoration and hurricane-protection work that is either underway or set to begin soon, Scott said.
A lot of that money is coming from taxes on oil — state, federal and local. And that heavy dependence on a single source of money heightens the need to diversify the business mix locally and across Louisiana.
Online: https://www.houmatoday.com/
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Sept. 17
The Advocate on the restaurant business and the pandemic:
Two quotes, both involving restaurants, show how much farther we have to go with coronavirus.
“We have to get it going somehow,” Nicholas Scalco said. “If I stay closed too much longer, how do we ever come back?”
Reopening is “a necessity,” said the chef at Irene’s Cuisine in the French Quarter.
But here’s another quote, delivered from the bench in state district court in Livingston Parish. “This virus doesn’t have political views,” Judge Brian K. Abels said. “It’s seeking hosts and it’ll find them regardless of race, religion, political views, and sexual orientation.”
Abels’ comments were in a restaurant case, where Firehouse BBQ challenged a state closure order after it defied state officials on masking and other restrictions.
The case will wind its way through the courts, as Abels told lawyers that the case may eventually be heard in 19th District Court in Baton Rouge, which typically handles challenges to state government’s actions.
What the two quotes have in common is that they are sides of the same coin, the flip sides of the hard decisions being made because of the pandemic.
The impact on restaurants and hospitality, important everywhere but a particularly big employer in New Orleans, has of course been enormous. At first furloughs, then layoffs, have put a new burden on the unemployment insurance system. The expiration of the largest federal supplement to UI has hurt.
Restaurants are the quintessential small businesses, many having devoted regulars and acting as hubs of our communities, but they don’t necessarily have deep pockets. Owners’ savings and the federal payroll supplements to companies have kept some going.
But as Abels’ pungent summary indicates, coronavirus fears that keep customers away - as much or more than formal regulations from the state or cities - have not gone away either.
That some of the familiar names in the French Quarter are reopening in at least limited fashion - Bayona, Irene’s, Pat O’Brien’s - is good news. Commander’s Palace in the Garden District is another icon.
We wait eagerly for conditions that will allow more businesses to either reopen or expand their existing hours or days of operation.
But as the judge noted, the coronavirus is a threat to health that will affect people wherever they are, city or country, “red” or “blue” parishes, in barbecue joints in the suburbs or fine dining tables in the French Quarter.
Events are in the saddle, and restrictions - and the vitally important task for people, customers, following the rules - look like a long, but also the shortest, path out of the crisis.
Online: https://www.theadvocate.com/
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