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Lafayette Daily Advertiser EDITORIAL - Orleans group: Keep spending cap May 24, 2007 Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans, a grassroots coalition of more than a thousand [20,000+] citizens, is actively involved in the current legislative session, doing battle on issues members consider critical to the New Orleans area and the state. In the last session, the coalition was instrumental, along with such organizations as the Business Council of New Orleans and the River Region, in reforming the state's levee board system and in bringing about consolidation of seven Orleans Parish tax assessors' offices into one. We believe the organization's agenda for this session also touches some of the state's most important issues. Chief among them is promoting fiscal responsibility. "We must not increase the spending cap to allow any increase in recurring expenses or to increase the cap for future years," members of the coalition say. Noting the vast amount of one-time money from hurricanes Katrina and Rita that has created multi-year state budget surpluses, the Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans Web site proclaims spending the revenues for recurring expenses will cause a crisis in future budgets. "Louisiana must be fiscally responsible and have the discipline to strategically invest the one-time funds," the organization says, because "failure will further damage our national image and injure future requests for support from Congress." We believe this attitude is supported by responsible citizens throughout the state. It is a message the Legislature should heed. The coalition urges surplus money be invested in infrastructure required to support first-class, modern metropolitan regions, "initially targeting the things that have been broken or substandard for years or were badly damaged by the hurricanes, and that pose an immediate threat to a region's functionality or ability to retain and attract productive families and businesses."These would include flood protection, levees, utilities, streets, sewerage and drainage systems, hospital and medical facilities and the public safety infrastructure, according to the Jefferson and New Orleans Business Council position paper. The non-recurring revenue should also be invested in less basic assets that would bring the infrastructure to world-class status and in projects to make the state more economically competitive. There is appropriate emphasis on using funding to promote New Orleans regional recovery. Jay Lapeyre, president of the Business Council of New Orleans and an active supporter of Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans, says groups "recognize the importance of New Orleans' recovery to the state's long-term economic future." Lapeyre says funding for rebuilding New Orleans sewerage and water infrastructure, reducing crime, attracting regional insurers and improving higher education are all on the list of needs. We supported the agenda of the forward-looking coalition in the last session. We find their goals in the current session equally compelling. Hopefully, legislators will give positive consideration to each of them. |
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Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans: 2005-2008 | Register | Contact Us |
