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A Frank, at-Length Discussion about his Career, Katrina Recovery, and the Impact of Illegal Immigration. Part Two of Two (Click Here for Part One) By Perry Hicks- Special to GulfCoastNews.com
Regardless of all the media attention on New Orleans, and the plight of its hapless citizens after the levee had been breeched, the Crescent City was not wrecked by Katrina. Overall, New Orleans rode out the storm with minimal damage because it was on the west side- the weaker side- of the hurricane. (Photo above: Gov. Haley Barbour helping move bottled water with National Guard troops on the Coast after Katrina - Sept. 2005) The near destruction of New Orleans came only after Katrina had passed. Approximately 80 percent of New Orleans flooded not because of torrential rain or even storm surge overtopping the levees. The city flooded because the levees had not been designed and maintained properly and thus collapsed at several locations. Furthermore, the construction of New Orleans’ levee system had only reached somewhere between 60 and 90 percent completion with the remainder projected to be finished some time in year 2013. That levee project was originally thought to span only 13 years but it had been stretched out to 48 years from its original 1965 authorization in the wake of Hurricane Betsy. When considering how Governor Haley Barbour has
performed in office, New Orleans and Louisiana are In New Orleans, some 700 school and municipal buses were allowed to flood where they sat rather than be pressed into service for emergency evacuation. Large numbers of New Orleans police were reported to have failed to show for duty, some evacuating themselves in stolen cars ahead of the storm. Other New Orleans officers were reported to have participated in the widespread looting that was going on all over the city. On the state level, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco not only hesitated to order evacuations, she refused an offer from the Federal Government to take over the hurricane relief effort. Apparently, her reasoning was that she and her advisors thought the offer was a trick to make Democrats look bad. Unbelievably, both Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin initially blamed President George W. Bush for the fiasco that was in fact their Katrina response. As a result, the official Louisiana death count from Hurricane Katrina stands at 1464 souls. Compare that to Mississippi’s official Katrina
death toll of only about 238. Those numbers Katrina’s eye wall came ashore on the very western edge of Mississippi’s Gulf Coast and arched its way northward cutting a massive path of destruction across the entire length of the state. All of the coastal towns and much of the interior was either directly in the eye or on the eastern side- the strong side of the storm - where the counterclockwise rotation of wind pulls torrential rain out of the warm Gulf waters. Katrina came ashore so slowly, hurricane force driven rain pounded the Coast for 10 hours before the storm surge, officially recorded as 37 feet inundated the land as far north from the Gulf shoreline as Interstate 10. Congressman Gene Taylor has described the flooding in some places as six foot seas- meaning there were 12 foot waves. A post storm visit by GCN to Waveland, ground zero for the hurricane eye wall, found the destruction so complete the city could only be said to exist as a concept in the mind of its mayor, Tommy Longo. Governor Barbour had to cope with a state that 60 percent of which has been declared a disaster area. Both telephone and radio communications systems were so utterly destroyed along the Coast that for a time what was left of police and life services could not communicate with each other much less Mississippi Emergency Management in Jackson, the state capitol. The mass exodus ahead of the storm depleted fuel supplies at gas stations within a 150 mile radius from the Coast. Furthermore, there were not enough tanker trucks in the region to quickly refill all of those stations even if electrical power could be had to operate the pumps. Barbour did not waste time complaining how New Orleans was getting most of the media attention, or blaming President Bush for what could or could not have been a better Federal response. As he put it, he simply “hitched up his britches” and went to work getting his emergency management commanders what they needed to bring relief to the state’s desperate survivors. Barbour’s leadership in this post-Katrina period has so far followed the same pattern. While Mississippians have rightfully complained about the glacially slow pace of Katrina recovery, particularly the process of receiving homeowner grants, the money does indeed eventually arrive. Contrast that to Louisiana, where its homeowner grant process, called the Road Home, has recently announced that it has somehow developed a $5 billion deficit. Katrina Recovery GCN: Because of Biloxi Mayor Holloway’s work
prior to the storm- extending city limits and insuring the city
government- the city came out comparatively well even though Point Cadet
was wiped off the map. However, (Photo Right: Devastated neighborhood in Waveland, MS. Sept. 2005) We have concern for Congress refusing to forgive emergency loans to the local governments- something that has not happened since the 1970s. With their tax base wiped out, how can they work their way out of recovery with millions of dollars of loans on their back and little way to repay them? (Ed. Note- President Bush Signed forgiveness legislation May 25, nearly 21 months after Katrina.) Barbour: Let me say for the record, Congress has been considering in the supplemental appropriation program forgiveness of those loans; whether they forgive them or not we will see. But every Coast town except Pass Christian had higher sales tax collections than before the storm, including Waveland, including Bay Saint Louis, though Bay Saint Louis was just barely over two years ago. The property tax rolls are coming back though that takes longer, because the property tax builds and you don’t pay the taxes right then, you pay the taxes a year later. (Photo below: Destroyed street and homes at Biloxi's Point Cadet - Sept. 2005)
The Mississippi Development Bank made some loans to these local governments and right now is negotiating with them to extend those loans. Those local governments are gonna have that debt but they will get extensions on how long to pay and time to pay and that they will ultimately be generating plenty of revenue to do that. But if they had to pay all that off today it would be a terrible mess. But the good news, they don’t. GCN: Governor, there is a lot of people in the Katrina Disaster Zone that feel that Federal aid is not moving fast enough- not percolating down- and we are concerned that there will be a lot of foreclosures on property; that tax revenues that the counties think they will receive may not materialize in the future because people will abandon or they won’t rebuild and therefore property values on real estate of slabs and debris will be greatly reduced- particularly if they cannot get infrastructure in there. Do you think there is a bottleneck in this system? Barbour: It is never fast enough to suit me.
When we had approved 80-something percent of the applications for
homeowner grant program and Louisiana had approved less than one percent,
people said boy, y’all are way ahead. I said, yeah, but it still not fast
enough; may be faster than anyone has ever done it, but it’s still not If I feel that way, think of someone that has lived in a FEMA trailer for 20 months. The fact is, in some cases it is painfully slow because of a variety of reasons. Take for instance, somebody whose records were destroyed in the storm in the Hancock County Court House; normally, before we would give someone a grant up to 150 thousand dollars we’d have to have the legal references they owned the property and were entitled to get it. (Photo right: McDonald's on Pass Christian's beachfront - Sept. 2005) We ultimately had enough people in that shape that we let them make an affidavit that they paid property taxes at this place. We had so many insurance companies- more than 100 insurance companies insured houses on the Coast- the large companies were very cooperative with us because when congress agreed- I should give you this sidebar- when congress agreed to let use community development block grants and let us to use it to rebuild the houses that were destroyed by the storm surge, one of congress’s concerns was: We don’t want be subsidizing people that didn’t buy insurance- people who were irresponsible- then the taxpayer shouldn’t have to bail them out because they didn’t buy insurance. (Photo below: FEMA trailers in Biloxi - February 2006)
Well, the big insurance that insured hundreds or thousands of people like State Farm, Allstate, Nationwide, Farm Bureau- they worked with us pretty well. Some of these little companies didn’t have five policies in Mississippi and ultimately when we couldn’t get responses from these insurance companies, we let the homeowner make an affidavit that I had insurance and if insurance pays anything I will give that back to the government- essentially deducted from the grant. All along through here we found little glitches like that and we corrected ‘em. We let some self-certification because we couldn’t get it through the insurance companies. Which is to say, why were their delays for certain people, stuff like that?
But more than 90 percent of the people that were eligible have closed their grants and more than 90 percent of them have received their money. But there are, when you are dealing with 18 thousand applicants there, you have a variety of issues. About four thousand of them turn out to not be eligible. So we put ‘em in the second phase program which we started doing closings on last week. The second phase programs are required by HUD to be income based- it is for low and moderate incomes. Anyway, congress allowed us to do things that had never been allowed before, but that meant we had to create the programs- literally we were making them up as we went along-there wasn’t a model anybody had done anywhere else. I am very proud of the quality of work and the amount
of work and the number of people that had been helped though when you are
dealing with tens of thousands of applicants, when you include all the
programs will be more than 40 thousand units of housing- when you are
dealing with numbers that large- you get little glitches, specific
problems that are not very run of the mill, and all those things slow
things down. Our private foundation, our Mississippi Hurricane Recovery Fund, gives money to non-profits and they find they can’t spend it nearly as fast as they thought they could. We are seeing that right now with our long term recovery committee for the non-profits even though we have allocated many, many millions of dollars for housing. It takes a long time to spend it. Some of the non-profit leaders say it will take us five or six years to spend all of this money, which you wouldn’t think. But, once you become involved in the actual details of what is involved then you have a little bit better understanding. Never the less, it’s frustrating that things don’t go as fast as you want to. Left Blames Katrina Response on Iraq War GCN: Recently with the Kansas tornados, there has been some criticism raised by Democrats that the War in Iraq has stripped their state of vital National Guard units. Do you see this or do you have any objection to the loss of control of National Guard units to the White House? Barbour: We never lost control of
Mississippi’s guard units, make that plain. There was some talk about
Federalizing Guard- did not happen. I had 3500 Mississippi Guard in Iraq
when Katrina hit. The National Guard in Mississippi has EMAC (ED-
Emergency Management Assistance Compact) agreements with the
There were two battalions of MPs from the Alabama National Guard who came to the Mississippi Gulf Coast while Mobile was still flooded. Our sister states were great. We never had a problem. (Photo left: Governor Barbour visiting Mississippi Troops in Iraq) In fact, Perry, I remember vividly the news conference about ten days after the storm. I used to have a news conference every day for about 6 weeks or so. This reporter said that he had heard on the Coast a lot of concern about the National Guard being in Iraq and it was hurting the recovery effort. And I said that I go to the Coast every day and I’ve never heard that. You didn’t hear that on the Coast. I said where are you from? And he told me he was from national news and that he actually heard that in New Orleans. It was a concoction by the Left. The EMAC system worked very well. And if we had the worst national disaster in American history and we managed with 35 hundred of our National Guard being in Iraq, the system worked. It would not work to Federalize disaster assistance. If they sent the 3rd Army into Mississippi, that is a terrible solution compared to the Mississippi National Guard and Nation Guard from other states under the command of the Mississippi Guard. That’s what happens. They come in from other states and they operate under the Mississippi National Guard command structure. Our National Guard know the people, they know the terrain, they know the local leaders; they already have working relationships and that is far preferable than they brought in somebody from Ft. Campbell, or Ft. Hood, or Ft. Benning. Illegal Immigration GCN: The public’s angry response to the recent
attempt at immigration reform has stunned Washington law makers. (Photo right: Recent protest over Senate immigration bill in front of Trent Lott's Jackson office) Immediately after Katrina, GCN received several claims from readers desperately seeking work that the debris removal contractors basically said they had no jobs for Americans. The next question falls in to Katrina recovery in that we have a lot of illegals in the state and it has been said that we need them to rebuild. There are a lot of people in Mississippi that are looking for work and we built America long before we had illegal immigrants; so we reject this argument that illegal aliens are so necessary. Do you think they are harming the state? What do you think is the impact of having so many illegal immigrants here? Barbour: Before Katrina we had one of the smallest percentages of population that were Spanish speakers. Since Katrina there’s been a lot of Spanish speakers that have come in, particularly on the Coast. And we been talking about that the Recovery, while it’s at a record pace is not fast enough. Boy, I’d hate to think about what it would be without these workers. Some of them are here legally, and I am sure some of them are here illegally. But we have had a labor shortage on the Coast since the fall of 2005. Everybody from Laurel south who wants a job has one. We have a number of people on the Coast who have chosen instead of going back to work trying to get their house rebuilt; try to get their families back in order. But everybody on the Coast who wants a job has one and wages, salaries have gone up very significantly because of that. The shipyards say they need 2000 more workers; can’t get ‘em. And it’s not just high skilled; McDonalds needs workers. To give you a little idea of what it is like down there, we are working with the Federal Government to try to give ways to allow local law enforcement to combat illegal immigration. As you know, the Federal rules are not very friendly to the locals combating illegal immigration. But our Department of Public Safety, which is headed by a former U.S. Attorney, is very much working on that as we speak. We want the government to allow us to help combat illegal immigration at the local and state level and we want for them to help us prevent employers from hiring illegal aliens either inadvertently or purposefully. And again, the Federal government doesn’t give us very much help. But we are working with them and we think we’ll have some agreement with ‘em before the summers over. (Editor's Note: The interview with Barbour was held prior to the voting on the Senate immigration bill, which was defeated June 7) GCN: Have you looked at a draft of the Immigration Reform Bill that is to be debated next week? Barbour: No. I know that they came to some sort of agreement this week. I’ve been traveling all week as you know and I haven’t seen enough of it to know what’s in it. I’ll tell you something that needs to be in it: A way for the Federal government to keep up with people who come to the United States on temporary visas. If there are 2 million illegal aliens in the United States, more than 40 percent of ‘em came to the Unites States legally. They didn’t sneak across the border. They had some sort of visa. Millions of ‘em stayed here after their visa expired and the government doesn’t have the vaguest idea where they are. We need the system to say if you are here
temporarily, we are going to have a way to keep up with you so that when
time comes for you to leave, that we know you leave; you leave or you get
an extension. But we lack a system to prevent legal aliens from
overstaying their visa, and that’s almost half of the people who are here
GCN: We think that the number of illegal aliens will eventually turn out to be much more than 12 million. While they have shown to be hard workers, and their situations in their home countries is difficult, we have some concerns about legitimizing people who are Federal felons by virtue that they came here illegally for whatever reason. Barbour: The foundation of this, the Government, any government, must enforce its laws. And one of the first conditions of nationhood is to protect your border. And you people can make the argument about sympathy or need or whatever but a country must enforce its laws and one of the first thing it must be able to do is protect its border. GCN: Do you think the illegal immigrants in Mississippi have an overall positive effect or a negative effect? Barbour: Actually, our state auditor has been doing a study of that. I’ll tell you that one of the little peculiar situations for us that before Katrina we had very few Spanish speakers. Those that were here primarily worked in the chicken plants, you know where the poultry is processed. But since Katrina, there has been a enormous influx but it is in an area on the Coast where a lot of the people who have lived there all their lives are displaced. They are still down on the Coast but they are not where they were. They may be with relatives or they may be living in a FEMA trailer. The point of that is it makes it much harder to look at census data; it makes it much harder to have a real mathematically accurate understanding of the population down there. As I say, it’s harder to keep up with the people who have been there 50 years and we will see that in this year’s election. One of the issues will be trying to get people reregistered to vote. GCN: How about the impact on hospitals and law enforcement? Barbour: No question that in the Coast area since the storm crime has spiked up, but I am not sure all of that is attributable to people who have come into the area from outside the country. There are people who have come into the area from neighboring states that are part of that problem. About the Author.....
Contact the Author: arielsquarefour@hotmail.com
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worth mentioning because of the marked differences in the way Louisiana
and Mississippi conducted themselves immediately before and after the
stand in sharp contrast to the devastation wrought on Mississippi.
the prospects for towns west of Gulfport would appear grim; Waveland, Bay
Saint Louis, Long Beach, and Pass Christian are all suffering.
Hancock
County and the four towns you mentioned had the worst of it from the storm
with the exception for East Biloxi (Point Cadet) which you know is part of
Biloxi. Rebuilding, particularly residential rebuilding, accelerated
first on the eastern side of the Coast, and a little bit inland, and the
last place you will have residential reconstruction on the Coast, up to
where we want it, will be the farthest south and the farthest west because
that was the worst hit. But I find the financial condition of these local
governments is strained but improving and that they have some debt for
awhile, but it really won’t be very many years before they are back in
reasonably good shape. They are going through a trough right now but if
they forgave the community disaster loans that would be a big plus.
fast enough.
So, in the
first phase of our homeowner grant program, for people who lived outside
the flood zone which wasn’t an eligibility requirement, they had to carry
homeowner insurance. And congress understood they were outside the flood
zone that’s why they didn’t have flood insurance. And they allowed this
program because they said people who didn’t have flood insurance was
because the government said they were outside the flood zone so they
didn’t need flood insurance. But they wanted to make sure that
irresponsible people who didn’t have any insurance so one of their
requirements for eligibility was that they had insurance.
We still have
people who can’t get all their family members to sign the documents for
whatever reason. I don’t know why, but a lot of people on the Coast lived
in houses they didn’t own by themselves; it belonged to the whole family.
And if you own half the house, Perry, I can’t give your brother all the
money without you saying he can have my half. We still have maybe 500
applicants that are hung up on that house stuff.
guard of
other states. We very quickly we had 11 thousand National Guard on the
ground in Mississippi.
The 800 page bill would have opened the flood gates possibly bringing in
an additional 100 million or more immigrants potentially needing
substantial public support.
illegally.
They came here on a visa that expired and just didn’t leave. And the
Government doesn’t know if they are in California or South Carolina.
Perry Hicks
is the senior writer and Washington correspondent for GCN. He is a former Mississippi Coast resident and was a correspondent for the old
Gulfport Star Journal. He has appeared on Fox News Channel. Perry has also hosted his own radio talk show on the auto
industry with a mix of politics. Perry is a frequent contributor to
GCN writing on stories of national importance with local interests. His articles can be found in the