On Sunday, The New York Times took a look at the more than $50 billion in federal money for Louisiana since Hurricane Katrina.
The experiment is still playing out, but some indicators suggest that what occurred in Louisiana — dumping a large amount of reconstruction money into a confined space in the three and a half years since Hurricane Katrina — has had a positive outcome. The state’s unemployment rate of 5.7 percent in February was considerably below the national average of 8.1 percent, and it was the only state to see a drop in unemployment from December to January. It was also the only state with an increase in non-farm employment in February.
The Times then contrasts that aid with Gov. Bobby Jindal's position that he will reject nearly $100 million in federal stimulus funds, along with his mantra that more spending by Democrats will be detrimental for the nation.
In Louisiana, however, the consequences have hardly been dire — just the opposite, in fact. One of the governor’s leading aides, the state’s recovery director, Paul Rainwater, praised the federal relief effort in Louisiana in recent remarks to Congress, the day after his boss scorned federal help on national television in the Republican Party’s response to President Obama’s first address to Congress.
“No other state in the nation has been blessed with such generosity from Congress and the American people,” Mr. Rainwater said.
On Friday, the Los Angeles Times contrasted New Orleans' economy with the rest of the nation's. The city's unemployment rate is 5.3 percent compared to the national rate of 8.1 percent, and while construction employment in January fell by 10.2 percent nationwide, in New Orleans it rose by 5 percent.
Perhaps most important, the federal government has allocated $34.5 billion in rebuilding aid for the state, with $19 billion of that amount still to be spent, according to the Louisiana Recovery Authority. And that doesn't include the $3.8 billion headed to Louisiana under the federal stimulus package hammered out in February.
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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