The 100 Day Non-Plan

Today marked 100 days since Nagin announced his 100-day plan to put New Orleans back on track. The only apparent progress is that we managed to pick up some trash, and that we had to bring in the National Guard to combat a burgeoning crime wave.

The other significant progress is that journey home offices have been opened in a couple of cities, and the city is going to start a website so we can monitor the pathetic progress ourselves from afar. Interestingly, according to nola.com, an office to coordinate recovery in the next few months. I'm not sure what this office is going to do, but shouldn't we have started something like this a long time ago?

But when you put all this together, the starkest issue is that despite all this back-slapping on progress (apparently New Orleans is better off now than when Nagin was sworn back into office--things could hardly have been worse could they?), there is going to be no rebuilding plan until at least the end of the year. So all those people monitoring the website, or going to the journey home centres, or just deciding how to spend their paltry FEMA cheques, still won't be able to make informed decisions for another 4 months. Presumably that plan will take several more months to be adopted and longer to be implemented.

Nagin promised a plan after 100 days. What we got was yet another plan for a plan. Let's check back with Mr Nagin in another year.