Louisiana Recovery News 09.26.06 To navigate this document, please open your bookmarks to the left.

NATIONAL NEWS 1. The New York Times, An Emotional Recovery, Lee Jenkins, September 26, 2006 2. The New York Times, With All Due Respect, ESPN Shows Its Softer Side, Richard Sandomir, September 26, 2006 3. The New York Times, New Orleans Hopes to Make Superdome A Home Again, Lee Jenkins, September 25, 2006 4. Washington Post, In New Orleans, a Reassuring Voice; Longtime Saints Announcer Will Be in Place for NFL's Return to Superdome, Les Carpenter, September 25, 2006 5. Houston Chronicle, The Superdome Reopens: A home game like no other; 13 months after Katrina, Saints and their fans settle in at restored dome with a win, David Barron, September 26, 2006 6. Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Back home in the dome; Special homecoming symbolizes rebirth of New Orleans, Charean Williams, September 26, 2006 7. The Wall Street Journal, Murphy Oil to Pay $330 Million In Katrina Class- Action Suit, Betsy McKay, September 26, 2006 8. CongressDailyAM, House Likely To Pass Surplus Insurance Lines Bill Today, Bill Swindell, September 26, 2006 9. Chicago Tribune, New Orleans comes home to Chicago; Crescent City's wandering jazz artists reunite to let good times roll at Symphony Center, Howard Reich, September 25, 2006

LOCAL NEWS 1. New Orleans CityBusiness, Tsunami recovery outpaces Katrina rebuild, N.O. delegates say, Richard A. Webster, September 26, 2006 2. New Orleans Times-Picayune, WHAT A SHOW! Electrifying Saints Rout Falcons; Now 3-0, Jeff Duncan, September 26, 2006 3. New Orleans Times-Picayune, Network on top of Saints' return to Dome in the aftermath of Katrina, and city's recovery, undying spirit, Pierce W. Huff, September 26, 2006 4. The Shreveport Times, Reopening of Dome marks major turning point for New Orleans, John Hill, September 26, 2006 5. The Shreveport Times, Superdome reopening honors first-responders, John Hill, September 25, 2006 6. Associated Press Newswires, Fans Celebrate Superdome Reopening, Mary Foster, September 26, 2006 7. Associated Press Newswires, Louisiana down 175,100 jobs in year after Katrina, Alan Sayre, September 25, 2006 8. New Orleans Times-Picayune, Architects asked for riverfront inspiration; N.O. to 'reinvent' 4.5-mile section, Bruce Eggler, September 25, 2006 9. The Shreveport Times, Average teacher salary tops $42,000, Mike Hasten, September 26, 2006

OP-EDS/EDITORIALS 1. The Baton Rouge Advocate, Editorial: No quick fix for housing, September 26, 2006 2. New Orleans CityBusiness, Editorial: Saints fans savor historic rally, September 25, 2006 3. Bayou Buzz, Op-Ed: New Orleans Saints Superdome Win: An American Dream, Steve Sabludowsky, September 25, 2006

NATIONAL NEWS An Emotional Recovery The New York Times September 26, 2006 By Lee Jenkins

NEW ORLEANS -- When Jimmy and Marilyn Felder walked into the Superdome at 5 p.m. on Monday, they were like anyone else trying to find their seats.

But the Felders were not simply looking for the seats where they would watch the football game. They were also looking for the seats where they lived last August.

On the morning of Aug. 29, 2005, as Hurricane Katrina peeled back the Superdome's 9.7- acre roof, the Felders were curled up in the field level, trying to sleep with little success. They could not block out the stench or the noise in the stadium. They could not stay dry with the rainwater dripping through the roof.

They returned Monday, as new Saints season-ticket holders. The Felders, who fled the Superdome one day after the hurricane, wading through knee-high water to escape, were among the first fans rushing into the stadium when it reopened.

''A lot of people who were here are going to be afraid to come back,'' Jimmy Felder said. ''But we wanted to be here.''

Ninety seconds into Monday's game, the Saints rediscovered the meaning of home-field advantage. A reserve cornerback named Curtis Deloatch picked up a blocked punt in the end zone, and a year's worth of pent-up noise came pouring out.

The Saints' victory over the Atlanta Falcons, 23-3, set off a Mardi Gras in September. Tom Benson, the owner who threatened to move the team to San Antonio last fall, danced under a parasol with the cheerleaders.

The game ball was initially given to Avery Johnson, the Dallas Mavericks' coach, who grew up six blocks from the Superdome. But Johnson, who instructed the Saints before the game to ''seize the second,'' thought Benson deserved it more.

The crowd of 70,003 was perhaps louder than U2 and Green Day combined. The two bands, which performed together before the game, tested the strength of the Superdome's new roof when they belted out a remake of the song ''The Saints Are Coming.''

As if on cue, the Saints came charging out of their tunnel, and the rock concert gave way to pure heavy metal. The crowd quieted only for a brief video presentation that included footage from Hurricane Katrina.

The Felders were hoping to see the Saints beat the Falcons, but they also hoped to replace the image of the Superdome they had been carrying for more than a year.

Back then, the stadium was a shelter that smelled of sewage. Now, it smells like a new car. Back then, two out of every three lights were out. Now, every bulb is new. Back then, chaos ruled. Now, chaos is limited mostly to the football field.

On Atlanta's first possession, the Superdome sounded the way it did in the days of Pat Swilling and Rickey Jackson, when the Saints were famous for their defense. The Falcons ran three plays, then failed to get off a punt.

''It was like an explosion,'' said Deloatch, who recovered the blocked punt. ''It was like I just gave New Orleans a brand-new city.''

Each New Orleans touchdown was jammed with significance. The Saints scored on a double reverse in which the most devastating block was thrown by Drew Brees, a quarterback who is coming off shoulder surgery. Devery Henderson, who scored the touchdown, was knocked to the ground in the celebration.

That block by Brees, surprising and defiant, may come to symbolize this season in New Orleans. With a 3-0 record, the Saints have already won as many games as they did all of last season, staking an early claim to first place in the National Football Conference South.

Standing on the Saints' sideline Monday evening was Will Howland, an Army medic who was among 150 first-responders to be honored. Howland still has nightmares about the six days he spent in the Superdome. He said that some of his colleagues were still ''unable to function in real life.''

Then Howland pointed to the plaza section behind one end zone. That is where he treated a man who jumped 50 feet to his death.

''I dreaded this at first when they asked me to come back,'' Howland said. ''But I realized, having seen so much negative here, I had to see some positive.''

When the stadium doors opened, fans charged into the concourses, hollering as if their team had already won. Some wore construction helmets with Saints logos. Others carried parasols. One dressed as a nun. The most common sign: ''No Place Like Dome.''

Locals lined up Poydras Street on Monday afternoon, waiting to get into the Superdome, just as they had before the hurricane. They stood outside Gate A, just as they had before the hurricane. In the distance, the Hyatt Hotel was still missing windows.

This time, no one was seeking refuge. They were heading to see the Goo Goo Dolls. The concert was held on a stadium ramp where evacuees stood last August, watching helicopters take off and land, transporting the sick and the elderly.

''The word homecoming will be redefined tonight,'' said Paul Tagliabue, a former National Football League commissioner.

But only six miles from the Superdome, the Lower Ninth Ward was quiet. Besides a few construction workers, a couple of homeowners and a group from the Red Cross, no one seemed to be outside.

The juxtaposition between the gleaming Superdome and the ravaged Lower Ninth Ward is evidence of two different New Orleans.

Asked about the evacuees who had been in the Superdome during the hurricane and decided to come back to the stadium, receiver Joe Horn said: ''I was feeling their emotion. That's where my tears came from.''

The Felders are from New Orleans East, and when they could not bear the conditions at the Superdome, they walked through a parking lot, found dry land on Loyola Street, and were picked up by friends who drove them down to Baton Rouge.

It took a football game Monday night for them to find their way back.

With All Due Respect, ESPN Shows Its Softer Side The New York Times September 26, 2006 By Richard Sandomir

One test of ESPN's many hours of pre-''Monday Night Football'' coverage of the Saints' return to New Orleans last night had to do with its level of sensitivity.

Would the hype-driven ESPN show up at the Superdome or would it demonstrate a grasp of the dichotomy between the signs of French Quarter revival seen by tourists and what remains devastated as if Hurricane Katrina had struck a week ago?

The need to show respect was stressed by Chris Rose, a columnist for The Times- Picayune, in an open letter on Sunday to the ESPN analyst Joe Theismann.

''We've got bigger issues than the Falcons to deal with,'' he wrote. ''We've got life. And a lot of our life depends on what all you sports guys tell the world about us.'' Katrina survivors ''kind of freak out when the message goes out is that a tiny and interesting place called the Lower Ninth Ward got wiped out but everything else is O.K.''

If ESPN hadn't already received the message, Rose delivered it.

The coverage tilted to the somber with anchors like Stuart Scott and Bob Ley reminding viewers of how much work is left to be done, that many had died, that thousands more are homeless and dispersed, and that football in a repaired Superdome can inspire for a few hours at a time, but cannot rebuild a city.

''The perception tonight is the city is back,'' Tom Jackson, an ESPN analyst, said early in the afternoon. Insightfully, he added that the resonant images of Katrina's destruction ''will challenge what we see tonight.''

The reporter Jeremy Schaap showed a cemetery where flood waters emptied or destroyed the crypts; he interviewed relatives who now had twice lost their kin. Joe Horn, the Saints receiver, visited a neighborhood where a fan, joyful to see him, showed the spot on a wall of his wrecked home where pictures of Horn once hung. Reggie Bush, the Saints' No. 1 pick, was seen at a high school field that his cash and Adidas's helped refurbish. They also contributed to help save a school for learning-disabled children from closing.

During morning and afternoon replays of Sunday night's ''SportsCenter,'' Spike Lee, the director of an epic documentary on HBO about Katrina, ''When the Levees Broke,'' said in an interview: ''As Americans, we know Reggie Bush is not FEMA, Michael Chertoff, Blanco or Nagin, but he means something to this city, he means something to this state.''

The pregame coverage was not only about Katrina's aftermath, so there was plenty of other football news and highlights. The strategy made sense, but how many times did we need to hear about Jeremy Shockey's criticism of Giants Coach Tom Coughlin? But some of the Saints coverage was repetitive, with the same sound bites surfacing at different times. Still, at around 6:30 p.m. Eastern, ESPN showed the Superdome reopen to a crowd of exuberant fans, then returned from commercials with highlights when the reopening needed more coverage.

As New Orleans kicked off to start the game, Mike Tirico sounded the right note: ''A moment that was unimaginable 13 months ago is here.''

The game against the Atlanta Falcons began with the kind of moment that demonstrated how emotional the Saints were: a blocked punt and touchdown scored by Curtis Deloatch. ''Look out!'' Tirico shouted. ''Breakthrough!''

Tony Kornheiser, maybe hastily, labeled the defensive score a signal action, but who knew what would happen later? ''For those people who look to the New Orleans Saints as something that will uplift them, uplift this city, uplift the entire gulf region,'' he said, ''they just had it.''

An event like last night's, if it went according to the inspirational script, would help fans forget Katrina for a few hours. That's what sports do, then life goes on. The fans cheered more than usual, more than the Saints historically deserved. Then, a few minutes after Deloatch scored, ESPN cut to a shot of the Lower Ninth Ward, still a horrible mess.

With that vision alive, the Saints struck once more, and it was difficult to reject Kornheiser's assessment. Devery Henderson scored on a double reverse, and Kornheiser said, ''I know there are social issues we should talk about here and cultural issues, but what a start by New Orleans.'' He added that the Saints were ''a cause, and people want them to do well.''

This might have been a night for fans to forget, but ESPN quite properly did not. Kornheiser talked about driving through some of the worst areas victimized by Katrina, where the ruins of the houses had been carted away, and only the lots remain, looking to him like ''unmarked gravestones in a community that no longer exists.''

Tirico then promoted an exhibit of photographs, ''Katrina Exposed,'' at the New Orleans Museum of Art. The booth threesome then interviewed Spike Lee, who put the game's impact in the perspective of some fans.

''It's four hours and back to your FEMA trailer,'' he said.

ESPN, often a bastion of excess, was showing its best side.

New Orleans Hopes to Make Superdome A Home Again The New York Times September 25, 2006 By Lee Jenkins

NEW ORLEANS-- As the granddaughter of the man who owns the New Orleans Saints, Rita Benson LeBlanc grew up watching football games at the Superdome, wondering how concrete walls could always feel as if they were shaking.

''I remember a lot of excitement,'' Benson LeBlanc said. ''And a little bit of fear.''

The shaking starts again Monday night, along with the conflicting emotions.

On one side is overwhelming excitement, because of the reopening of the Superdome, the home debut of Reggie Bush, the Saints' startling 2-0 record and the promise of an unprecedented pregame tailgate party.

On the other side is a thin layer of apprehension, because of the horror that occurred in the Superdome less than 13 months ago, when the stadium became a shelter from Hurricane Katrina and a symbol of human suffering.

''I realize that it may be hard for some people to come back here,'' said Kathleen Blanco, the governor of Louisiana. ''But I believe that the very best thing those people can do for their inner healing is to walk this walk again, and let those memories fall out.''

A crowd of more than 68,000 is expected to heed her call. For the first time, the Saints have sold out all of their season tickets, an obvious sign that excitement has taken an early lead on apprehension.

The most striking aspect of the new Superdome -- beyond the white roof and the leather seats and the L.E.D. video boards -- is the lighting system that makes the field look as bright as a showroom.

On Aug. 29, 2005, when hurricane winds peeled off part of the Superdome roof and took out most of the power, this stadium was seen around the world as a dim and frightful place. One man apparently committed suicide by jumping off a catwalk. One National Guardsman was shot in a locker room. Bodies were stored in a refrigerator.

''Our intention was mainly to help people forget what happened,'' said Sal Palmisano, a Saints season-ticket holder who oversaw part of the construction effort. ''It was sort of like, 'If we can't rebuild our own house, let's try to rebuild this one.' ''

The mission for the Saints, more than beating the Atlanta Falcons on Monday night or qualifying for the playoffs this season, is to change the image of their home field, from a place where people suffered to a place where people can cheer.

No football team is capable of rebuilding neighborhoods or recruiting families or making small businesses viable again. But with a couple of long touchdowns, the Saints can turn the Superdome from a shelter back into a stage.

''Some of the negative emotions will be erased once you see those fans and hear them screaming for us,'' Saints running back Deuce McAllister said.

To keep his team from experiencing emotional overload at kickoff, Coach Sean Payton put the Saints through their first practice at the Superdome on Friday night. When it was over, he gathered the players in a semicircle at the 50-yard line and turned off the lights.

One of the video boards played a movie about Hurricane Katrina -- houses leveled, neighborhoods ruined, a stadium torn asunder.

''I got a tingling sensation over my whole body,'' defensive end Charles Grant said. ''We talked for a while afterward about everything we have seen in the past year. We want to make this stadium home again.''

The transformation will begin Monday night with performances by U2 and Green Day. Former President George H. W. Bush, who was nominated at the Superdome in 1988, will flip the coin. News media outlets will include Al Jazeera. Archie Manning, patriarch of New Orleans football, will broadcast for the Home Shopping Network, which is selling N.F.L. merchandise with part of the proceeds going to Katrina relief.

If the Saints were 0-2, locals would still compare this game to Super Bowls and Final Fours. But because the team is 2-0, facing a traditional rival for first place in the National Football Conference South, the hurricane is only part of the backdrop. The outcome actually matters.

''To be honest,'' Manning said, ''I think most of us were just hoping to be 1-1.''

The Saints look a lot like a fantasy football team, with two excellent running backs (Bush and McAllister), a top receiver (Joe Horn), a pedigreed quarterback (Drew Brees), and not much else.

At this time last year, they were playing in San Antonio and dressing in a locker room with cockroaches. Their fans were scattered across the country. No one was allowed inside the Superdome without wearing a biohazard suit.

While Tom Benson, the Saints' owner, was threatening to stay in San Antonio, his granddaughter was reading letters from displaced season-ticket holders from New Orleans.

Benson LeBlanc, the team's executive vice president, remembers most of the letters starting the same way: ''I've lost everything. My tickets are my only asset. I don't know what to do. But when you get back, I'll be back.''

The ones who did not come back had to be tracked down. Benson LeBlanc and her staff played detective, finding season-ticket holders who had relocated and persuading them to return. They offered a season-ticket package for as low as $14 a game.

The long-term problem for the Saints is not selling those $14 tickets. It is selling the luxury boxes and corporate sponsorships, hallmarks of big business. For the Saints to stay in New Orleans, they need more than fans wearing face paint.

''I think it can work,'' said Arnie Fielkow, a member of the New Orleans City Council. ''But it's going to take New Orleans coming back as a corporate community so suites and sponsorships will follow.''

Fielkow has intimate knowledge of this issue because he used to be the Saints' executive vice president. He was fired last October, after urging Benson not to abandon New Orleans. One of Fielkow's allies in the cause was Roger Goodell, now the N.F.L. commissioner. Goodell wanted to know when the Superdome could be ready for a game. Doug Thornton, who oversees management of the stadium, provided his best estimate: Dec. 1.

That was not good enough. To preserve the future of football in New Orleans, a game had to be played in September. ''Roger didn't want us to worry about all the suites and meeting rooms,'' Thornton said. ''He just told us: 'Give me a football stadium.' ''

The Superdome underwent a rapid $185 million makeover, leaving the suites relatively bare. Most are decorated with folding tables and patio chairs. Fans who want carpeting and couches can bring their own.

This ranks among the least of all inconveniences in New Orleans. Squeezing into a cramped seat and watching the Saints play football is still a luxury.

''I just get such a thrill from walking into that building,'' said Dave Dixon, known as the Father of the Superdome. ''I never get tired of seeing it. I love it. I really do.''

Dixon earned his nickname for helping to negotiate the building of the Superdome in 1968. Since then, New Orleans has celebrated just one playoff victory, but few cities have a stronger bond to their stadium.

During construction this summer, a small cardboard sculpture was sent to the workers at the Superdome. On one side of the sculpture was a rendering of the dome. On the other side was the rendering of a house. The dome was completed. The house was still damaged.

Connecting the dome to the house was a set of angel wings.

In New Orleans, a Reassuring Voice; Longtime Saints Announcer Will Be in Place for NFL's Return to Superdome Washington Post September 25, 2006 By Les Carpenter

NEW ORLEANS -- There is beauty in the tarnished dome. Jerry Romig sees it from the street outside, gazing up at its golden steel skin that curves toward the sky. He feels it inside, under the gigantic roof where hidden treasures like the four giant party rooms, each capable of holding more than 1,000 people, are tucked away from public view.

The Voice of the Superdome stands on the floor of the building he loves, staring up at the peak of the roof, 27 stories up.

"You can't appreciate the scope of this building," he said.

For all of the Superdome's 31 years he has checked in at the main gate, walked to the elevator and made the ride up three floors to the press box, where he has a special booth that sits even with the back of northwest end zone. Here he has been present for every Saints game in this building, climbing onto a stool, pulling on a headset, pushing a button and hearing his words boom off the ceiling and rattle through the seats.

It's a job he adores.

And yet 13 months ago he sat in a borrowed house in Baton Rouge watching helplessly as thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees huddled in their Superdome seats as huge swaths of metal thundered down from above and he wondered if he would ever see his beloved booth again, if there would ever be a Superdome again.

"I was so scared that we had lost it," he said.

Instead they rebuilt the stadium, with $144 million in repairs, most of the money coming from state and federal funds and a small contribution from the NFL. And in less than a year after the building stood as a symbol of all that had gone wrong in New Orleans, it has become an example of what can be rebuilt, with a new roof, new seats, new field and glistening scoreboards that glowed in the semi-darkness one recent morning.

Tonight the Superdome will be on display for America when the Saints play the Falcons on "Monday Night Football." And Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) has already hailed the reconstruction "nothing short of a miracle." Saints owner Tom Benson said "it's going to inspire the people of Louisiana even more."

For Romig, once a television newsman now in his mid-seventies, it is something more.

"It is such a symbol of what the Superdome brought us," he said. "It brought us the NFL. Without this building the NFL would have left. The average New Orleanian would not quibble with the effort to restore the place."

Romig seems excited to be back in the Superdome as he bounces through the halls, saying hellos to the workers who still mill about carrying ladders and cans of paint trying to finish last-second tasks before the great reopening. If he is nervous about going back inside a building that had been the site of so much suffering, he won't show it. Instead he walks up to his booth, sits in his seat and plays with the controls of his microphone.

He is terrified of making a mistake or, worse yet, saying something while the microphone is still on. He did this in Jackson, Miss., at a Saints' preseason game. There was a call on the field he considered to be dreadful and, well, he is a fan, he likes to say, so he turned to the man next to him and said "that was a horrible call." It was with horror that he discovered his words were at that moment rattling through the stadium.

He's been in trouble with the league for such things before. A few years ago, when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were in town, he fell into the habit of trying to encourage fans in critical situations. When Tampa Bay had a big third-and-six play, Romig waited until the Buccaneers had broken their huddle and then announced "it's thiiiiiird and six!" in a tone dripping with urgency. Down on the field, he could see Tampa Bay Coach Jon Gruden snarling as always with his mouth simple to read even from such a far distance. "Tell him to shut the [expletive] up," the coach apparently said.

Romig laughs.

He looks around at the renovated stadium and decides it looks nicer than he could have imagined. The new scoreboards glisten in sharp colors. He thinks they are spectacular. He loves the way the dome seems to sparkle.

And there is so much history in the building. He points out that his booth is in such a bad location because the building's designers had huge ambitions for the city. They believed they could lure Major League Baseball to town so they built the press boxes at the northwest corner figuring they would be able to adequately house both baseball and football media.

Like many in the city, he lost his home in Katrina, everything disappearing below murky waves when the canal broke in his Lakeside area. A few days after the storm, he tried to find the home on a satellite photo he saw on line but all he could see was water. The flood had risen so high you couldn't see the roofs of the houses.

Romig tells this story devoid of much emotion. Rather he repeats it in a matter of fact way like many of the people here do. How else can they repeat it? Several of his children lost their homes too in areas around New Orleans. He lives in an apartment now and while it's not home, it is better than nothing. Plus, the Superdome is like a home anyway.

Last fall he drove from Baton Rouge to San Antonio to be the public address announcer at the Saints games there, worrying that Benson was going to keep the team in Texas, forever shuttering the Superdome. In fact, he was sure the Saints were gone, almost until Benson was coerced to come back, most likely by Paul Tagliabue, then the NFL commissioner.

The Alamodome in San Antonio was a comfortable building with many modern conveniences. He liked it.

"But it's not the Superdome," Romig said with a wink.

Then he smiled. The stadium microphone sat on the table in front of him. It had been left on by one of the technicians. With a small amount of prodding, he picks up the microphone and barks his signature touchdown call, laced with a twinge of Cajun twang.

"Teeeech-down Saiiiiiintssssssss."

The words bounce around the empty arena, stopping the workers and clearly disturbing an interview a Superdome official was conducting on the field. Seconds later, in Romig's booth, a technician's walkie-talkie crackles.

"Could you please refrain from doing that?" a man's voice implores.

And in the heady days before the new Superdome is revealed, scrubbed of all the bad memories of the autumn before, there is a giddiness in the stadium announcer's booth.

"I think this is a testimony to the recovery of the city," Romig said. "It's the first sign that New Orleans is recovering, can recover and will recover."

He stood up and began to walk out of the booth, satisfied. His stadium is beautiful again.

The Superdome Reopens: A home game like no other; 13 months after Katrina, Saints and their fans settle in at restored dome with a win Houston Chronicle September 26, 2006 By David Barron

NEW ORLEANS — Who dat, you ask?

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the New Orleans Saints, home at last Monday night for the first time since December 2004 at the Louisiana Superdome, restored to full working order one year and one month removed from the horror of Hurricane Katrina.

New Orleans has two messages for you this Tuesday morning:

•The Superdome is up and running, and the city is open for business. •The Saints are a pretty good football team, too. The latter was evident from the opening possession, which culminated in a punt blocked by Saints safety Steve Gleason and recovered in the end zone by Curtis DeLoatch, who dunked the ball over the crossbar as 70,003 fans screamed in collective glee and their rebuilt stadium shook, literally.

And the Saints kept marching. Defensive end Charles Grant and linebacker Scott Fujita led a defense that held elusive Falcons quarterback Michael Vick in check.

Saints quarterback Drew Brees, the free-agent acquisition who believes fate led him to New Orleans, completed 20 of 28 passes. John Carney kicked three field goals, including a 51-yarder.

And, yes, Texans fans, rookie running back Reggie Bush ran for 53 yards and was the middle man in a double reverse that produced the unbeaten Saints' second touchdown in a decisive 23-3 victory.

Scoreboard aside, Monday's game was a win for the 850 workers who delivered the $184.4 million Superdome reconstruction ahead of schedule and under budget.

It was also a win for thousands of fans who streamed down Poydras Street toward the stadium hours before kickoff, pausing along the way for impromptu celebrations, shouted the familiar "Who dat" cheer as the team took the field and churned out triple-digit decibel ratings as easily as the Saints mowed down the Falcons.

"Tonight at kickoff, we win. We win for Saints fans, for New Orleans and for the entire Gulf South region," said Rita Benson LeBlanc, the team's executive vice president and grand-daughter of team owner Tom Benson.

Thousands of fans turned out in full black-and-gold Saints regalia to welcome the Saints and rechristen the Superdome. In fact, if you had picked up a buck for every Bush jersey in the crowd walking toward the Dome, you'd have had enough cash to fund a postgame table for 10 at the French Quarter restaurant of your choice.

Alana Barker, 37, showed up wearing fishnet hose, a gold blazer with tails, a feature boa and, of course, a Bush jersey. She evacuated the city after Katrina, spending a week to get to Atlanta and returning home nine weeks later.

"I wasn't going to miss anything tonight," she said. "I cried a lot last year. I'm a crier. I'm sure I'm going to cry again, but it will be the best tears of my life."

Longtime fans mixed with newcomers like Dave Shirley, 52, of Miami, a hotel executive who came to the city to coordinate housing efforts at New Orleans hotels after Katrina.

"The spirit in their hearts has made me a New Orleans fan for life," Shirley said. "I wasn't a big NFL fan before. But I have my Saints season tickets now. There's no spirit like I've seen the last year."

The game had all the trappings of a Super Bowl, including an emotional per-formance by Green Day and U2.

Celebration and loss mingled, too, in the mind of fans like David Boutte, who owns a landscaping and power-washing company, as he thought of the 30,000 who crowded into the Superdome as a refuge of last resort as Katrina approached and kept coming as broken levees flooded streets and neighborhoods.

"This is where people slept and had nightmares about everything that happened. Now it's where we turn everything around," he said.

Those emotions were shared by Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and by former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, whose post-Katrina leadership helped ensure that the Saints would remain committed to New Orleans and that the Superdome would be rebuilt with the help of a $20 million contribution from the league.

"What a proud day for Louisiana this day is," Blanco said during a morning luncheon. "The Louisiana Superdome is now seen as a sign of hope and a sign of promise. It rises as a symbol of progress, a symbol of renewal."

Tagliabue said during a news conference, "I guess I can say that I feel like we threw a Hail Mary pass and someone showed up to catch it. That someone was the New Orleans Saints (organization), but most of all it was the people and the fans and the public of this region."

Skeptics may believe New Orleans has done a disservice to its residents by pouring time and resources into a sporting palace while so many neighborhoods remain in ruins.

But WWL radio talk show host Garland Robinette, whose emotional conversation with Mayor Ray Nagin was one of the unforgettable moments of the hours after the levees gave way, said he spoke for many listeners in welcoming the Saints back home and marveling at the Superdome's restoration.

"Some of them aren't here. A lot of them died after I spoke with them," Robinette said. "But this is huge. This doesn't happen in Louisiana — $180 million spent, 850 Louisianans working on it, beat the deadline, no corruption.

" ... To see the amount of work and the quality of work on the Superdome, this is gigantic for New Orleans."

Back home in the dome; Special homecoming symbolizes rebirth of New Orleans Fort Worth Star-Telegram September 26, 2006 By Charean Williams

NEW ORLEANS -- At first, Marilyn Felder wasn't sure she wanted to come back. She and her husband, Jimmy, had endured two days in the Superdome with 30,000 other New Orleanians during Hurricane Katrina.

But as she walked through the turnstile Monday -- one of the first Saints fans inside the refurbished building -- the smell of human feces and rotting garbage, the noise, the heat, the chaos and the fright were distant memories.

The 31-year-old Superdome, the lasting image of so much misery during the storm, has come to symbolize the rebirth of the city.

"It's beautiful," said Felder, who, along with her husband, spent $1,200 for a pair of season tickets. "It's 100 percent beautiful to walk through those doors....I know a lot of [evacuees] may be afraid to come back in, but I'm ready. I'm ready for my city to regain its status. There's no place like home."

In their 39 seasons, the Saints have hosted four playoff games and played in two others. None was bigger than Monday night's nationally televised regular-season game against the Atlanta Falcons that drew more than 1,000 media members and a raucous crowd of 70,003.

There were performances by U2, Green Day and the Goo Goo Dolls; a pregame ceremony honoring the first 150 responders who participated in the relief efforts; and a coin toss by former President George Bush.

"This is the biggest game in team history," said former Saints quarterback Archie Manning, the team's all-time passing leader. "The only thing that compares was our first playoff game [in 1987]. ...This town is as excited as they can get."

New Orleans took on a Mardi Gras feel early Monday. Under a cloudless sky, Saints fans, many of them wearing rookie Reggie Bush's No. 25 jersey, crowded the streets around the Superdome hours before kickoff. They ate, they drank, and they chanted "Who dat?" until they were hoarse.

Then the party began.

The Saints rode the wave of emotion, getting a blocked punt for a touchdown only 1 minute, 30 seconds into the game on their way to an easy 23-3 upset of the Falcons, who were four-point favorites.

Saints coach Sean Payton presented the game ball to the city of New Orleans via Mavericks coach Avery Johnson, a native of the city.

It was a scene many New Orleanians thought they would never see again.

The Saints last played in the Superdome on Aug. 26, 2005, in an exhibition game against the Baltimore Ravens. Three days later, the building served as a last refuge for storm victims. Ten died in and around the Superdome, including one from an apparent suicide.

"The Dome they play in was really down," Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco told the Star- Telegram on Monday. "It was a place that saved lives but also turned into a place of misery. It looked like it might have to come down. But this is a building that Louisianans love."

More than 70 percent of the Superdome's roof failed during the storm, allowing 3.8 million gallons of water into the building. The renovation cost $185 million, including $20 million from the NFL and $116 million from FEMA.

Although critics have questioned spending so much on a sports facility when the Lower 9th Ward, only a few miles away, remains mostly untouched and uninhabited, the Saints have rejuvenated the city.

Rita Benson LeBlanc, the team's owner and executive vice president, said she rarely goes a day without someone thanking her for bringing the Saints home.

"The message I'm getting from around the city is you've got to believe in something," said Terry Julien, a longtime season-ticket holder. "You have to have faith; you have to believe that things can be better. The Saints have done that for us."

Signs outside the Superdome read: Our home. Our team. Be a Saint.

After playing home games in San Antonio, Baton Rouge, La., and East Rutherford, N.J., last season, the Saints returned to their roots Monday. It was a long time coming.

"The word homecoming has real meaning in college and professional sports, but I think tonight the word homecoming will take on a new meaning and will forever be redefined by what is happening here in the Superdome," former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue said Monday.

Murphy Oil to Pay $330 Million In Katrina Class-Action Suit The Wall Street Journal September 26, 2006 By Betsy McKay

Murphy Oil Corp. agreed to pay $330 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by Hurricane Katrina victims whose homes and businesses were inundated with floodwaters that carried nearly 1.1 million gallons of crude oil from a company storage tank.

The refinery-tank spill in Meraux, La., a working-class suburb of New Orleans, caused some of the worst environmental damage from the hurricane. Owners of about 6,200 homes and businesses in Meraux and adjacent Chalmette were involved in the suit against the company's Murphy Oil USA Inc. The case was set to go to trial next week.

Terms of the proposed settlement call for Murphy, based in El Dorado, Ark., to compensate affected home and business owners for property damage, the diminished value of properties damaged by the spill and "mental anguish and inconvenience" resulting from the incident, according to a joint statement from lawyers on both sides. In addition, Murphy said it will offer to purchase "at fair market value" as many as 600 homes and businesses in an area next to the refinery that was heavily affected by the spill.

As part of the settlement, a company-funded cleanup under way and being supervised by federal and state regulators will continue. The deal must be approved by a U.S. District Court judge in New Orleans. A hearing is scheduled for Oct. 10.

Murphy said it expects insurance to cover all settlement costs except for the purchase and remediation of damaged properties. That will cost an estimated $55 million and be incurred as a capital expenditure, a spokesman said.

The oil came from a storage tank that floated off its foundation during the storm. The spill and debate over whether it was being properly cleaned up were the subject of an article in The Wall Street Journal in January. Murphy had offered settlements to residents that ranged from $11.50 to $12.60 per square foot of their homes, depending on the damage, plus $2,500 per person in each household. Company officials have insisted that most of the crude oil was cleaned up quickly and poses no health threat once it is removed from homes and lots. Murphy still faces a number of individual suits related to the spill.

House Likely To Pass Surplus Insurance Lines Bill Today CongressDailyAM September 26, 2006 By Bill Swindell

The House is expected to pass legislation today to revamp regulation of surplus lines of insurance -- which provide property and casualty coverage for risks not available or affordable in the traditional market, such as for amusement park rides and some coastal properties -- in a vote that will mark the most significant congressional attempt to overhaul the nation's insurance market.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Fla., would streamline rules for reinsurers, such as providing a uniform standard for solvency. Currently, brokers who sell policies for surplus lines must obtain licenses and pay premium taxes in jurisdictions where the insured properties are located. Under the Brown-Waite bill, the broker would need only to get a license and remit premium taxes of the home state of the insured.

The measure has the support of House Financial Services Capital Markets Subcommittee Chairman Richard Baker, R-La., who is looking to move narrowly tailored bills to update insurance regulation after securing widespread industry support.

Baker is running against Financial Services Financial Institutions Subcommittee Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., to replace retiring Financial Services Chairman Oxley.

Baker's approach contrasts with a proposal that would allow insurance companies to select whether to continue being regulated by states or opt for supervision by a new federal agency.

Sens. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., and John Sununu, R-N.H., have sponsored legislation to that effect.

Much of the industry supports the Brown-Waite bill, claiming it would provide a step toward a national insurance market standard and clarify conflicting state regulations.

"We believe that the approach taken in this bill, federal standards to modernize a state- based system, is the only way to garner both broad industry and bipartisan support to modernize insurance regulation," said Charles Symington Jr., senior vice president for government affairs for the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America.

The Consumer Federation of America raised concerns about the bill. Travis Plunkett, legislative director for the federation, said the bill "would establish a feeble and complex oversight regime that will provoke states to compete against each other, to weaken oversight in some cases, and that could leave consumers who have been harmed by insured companies vulnerable in the event of a company's insolvency."

The bill has Democratic support: Reps. Dennis Moore of Kansas and Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida played a key role in helping bring the bill to the floor, which will be considered under suspension of the rules.

The House bill will likely not receive much Senate consideration because of the timing of its passage, but Baker hoper to set a marker on which he can build upon next year. Sununu has been critical of Baker's approach, calling it "extremely pre-emptive" of state regulation. But a push for a House companion bill has not picked up steam.

According to one lobbyist, Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., is likely to unveil this week a bill that would establish an optional federal charter.

Royce does not have any Democratic co-sponsors but has been in talks with Financial Services Capital Markets Subcommittee ranking member Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., according to the lobbyist.

New Orleans comes home to Chicago; Crescent City's wandering jazz artists reunite to let good times roll at Symphony Center Chicago Tribune September 25, 2006 By Howard Reich

The city of New Orleans may never return to its full cultural glory, with so many of its artists still unable to return home more than a year after Hurricane Katrina.

But the spirit of the place -- its buoyant rhythms and blues-tinged melodies and ancient tribal chants -- transformed Symphony Center over the weekend. For nearly three indelible hours Friday evening, several of the city's greatest performers turned the buttoned-down home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra into a gilded New Orleans roadhouse.

Exuberant parade music and raunchy blues tunes, rowdy street marches and sweet jazz nocturnes attested to the enduring power of the music of New Orleans, even as that city languishes.

In making only scant mention of Katrina and focusing, instead, on the cultural legacy of their city, Crescent City stars such as trumpeter Nicholas Payton and pianist Ellis Marsalis essentially defied the realities on the ground back at home. As long as the music keeps playing, they seemed to be saying, New Orleans endures -- at least in the souls of those performing these distinctive sounds, and those lucky enough to hear them.

Uncounted tributes to New Orleans have unfolded in the months since last year's disaster, but few have matched the artistic integrity of this evening, aptly titled "The Big River Concert" (and recorded for future broadcast on Dee Dee Bridgewater's NPR radio show, "JazzSet"). Organized by New Orleans transplant Peter Martin, a St. Louis pianist who escaped to Missouri after the hurricane's wreckage, the event addressed a sweeping range of New Orleans music.

Simply convening such formidable players as reedist Victor Goines, drummer Herlin Riley and bassist Reginald Veal -- each a New Orleans treasure in his own right -- represented a feat of scheduling.

"We New Orleans musicians hardly ever get to see each other, because we're always on the road," pianist Marsalis told this writer a couple of weeks ago in New Orleans. "So, I can't wait to get to Chicago -- to see all my friends."

That feeling of Crescent City camaraderie pervaded the "Big River" show, with musicians either born in New Orleans or deeply associated with it parading on and off the stage.

Trumpeter Payton long has been compared with New Orleans jazz immortal Louis Armstrong, but many listeners wondered whether Payton on this night could produce the clarion tone that represents a stylistic link to the great Satchmo. Having suffered an auto accident earlier this year, Payton had taken several months away from performing.

His "Big River" work represented a quantum leap forward. Performing in a Goines original, "Home," Payton produced the radiant, golden tone that long has been his signature, as well as a fast-flying virtuosity.

Joined by Goines, Veal, Riley and Martin, Payton fronted what amounted to a state-of- the-art New Orleans quintet. Listeners likely will long remember singer-instrumentalist Don Vappie conjuring the ghost of Jelly Roll Morton in "I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say," and Goines rekindling the purling sound of clarinetist Sidney Bechet in "Petit Fleur."

Yes, we now know what it means to miss New Orleans.

LOCAL NEWS Tsunami recovery outpaces Katrina rebuild, N.O. delegates say New Orleans CityBusiness September 26, 2006 By Richard A. Webster

NEW ORLEANS — It wasn’t supposed to be like this, said Viola Washington. One year after Hurricane Katrina, her community was not supposed to be a ghost town. Yet when she walks out the front door of her Gentilly home, she is surrounded by abandoned houses and barren sidewalks.

Washington figured the promised federal aid would have lifted her neighborhood up by now. But not a single check from the $10 billion in “Road Home” funding has made its way into the hands of the residents of Gentilly, the Lower Ninth Ward or eastern New Orleans, where much of the devastation occurred.

With recovery moving so slowly here, Washington and a delegation of community leaders traveled to Thailand three weeks ago to study how Third World fishermen along the coast of the Indian Ocean rebuilt their villages in the wake of the 2004 tsunami that killed more than 350,000 people and destroyed 2.5 million homes.

The level of recovery from the tsunami has far outpaced what has taken place in New Orleans. When a delegation of Indonesian residents visited the Crescent City in June, they were stunned that 10 months after the storm parts of New Orleans still looked as if they were hit by a bomb, said Brad Paul, executive director of the National Policy and Advocacy Council on Homelessness in the Lower Garden District.

“They were amazed at the lack of progress in these neighborhoods a year out,” Paul said. “They looked around and said, ‘How is this possible that in a country so wealthy you could have this type of devastation and lack of progress?’

“In Asia where the tsunami hit, in some of the communities where people have nothing, there’s already more progress than here. They were blown away.”

Going it alone

In December 2004 the most devastating tsunami in recorded history hit Thailand, Sri Lanka, India and Indonesia, according to the National Institute of Oceanography. The giant wave, caused by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean with a magnitude of 9, killed 175 times more people than Hurricane Katrina and destroyed 10 times as many homes.

Two weeks ago, the National Policy and Advocacy Council on Homelessness, which organized a tsunami survivors trip to New Orleans in June, sent four community leaders to Thailand to study how the fishing communities rebuilt villages with little government assistance.

A report by the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights described what it was like to witness 25 villages re-emerging along an 8-kilometer stretch of coastline in the Udeep Beusaree Network in Thailand where the tsunami had simply obliterated entire communities, wiping them off the face of the earth like the hand of God.

“Suddenly, the shiny galvanized tin roofs of hundreds of new houses appeared out of the gloom and stretched along the horizon. Everywhere, there were crews of people laying bricks, hammering up roof frames, sawing timber joists, pouring concrete, bending iron reinforcing bars.

“These are the villages that just 12 months earlier had been totally leveled by the tsunami. But these are also the villages which had defied the government’s original decree forbidding rebuilding within 2 kilometers of the sea, who marched out of the relief camps and back to their land, where they began rebuilding their ruined houses and villages.”

The effort is part of a community-driven project to rebuild 3,500 earthquake-resistant houses, roads, water and sanitation systems, dikes, electricity. Work includes an eco- development program to restore mangroves and create barriers between the sea and villages.

Construction began in July 2005, seven months after the tsunami. As of June, 2,751 houses costing $4,200 each had been completed.

The work is paid for through private funds, charitable donations and loans. Housing costs are reduced since most labor is provided by the families themselves or the community at large, said Paul.

Self-sufficient rebuilding

Endesha Juakali, an activist for the St. Bernard Housing Development and a member of the New Orleans delegation to Thailand, said he will use the lessons learned from projects like the tsunami recovery to rebuild his hurricane-battered home.

“I would say the people in Thailand and Indonesia are probably a whole lot more self- sufficient than we are because they’re not relying on anything or anybody but themselves,” Juakali said. “I want to experience that because I really believe that’s where we’re going to be in New Orleans. Forget about the government and try to make things happen ourselves.”

Thai villagers who lost their homes, communities and livelihoods received little government support and were prohibited from rebuilding, in some cases, in favor of commercial real estate or tourism ventures, said Paul. The Thai government discussed which neighborhoods should be rebuilt or allowed to perish.

When the Asian delegation toured New Orleans, it took note of the chain link fences surrounding many public housing projects, preventing former residents from returning.

“A lot of people (in Thailand) lived on the beaches with these fishing villages and when they got wiped out by the tsunami, the government put barriers there to make sure they couldn’t go back,” said Juakali. “They found a lot of similarities here in New Orleans.”

ACHR Secretary General Somsook Boonyabancha, who toured New Orleans, said people can only do one thing when denied the right to return to the land they occupied before a natural disaster.

“The most important thing is that you have to go back to your land where you stayed before, even if you don’t want to return,” he said. “Then you start rebuilding your houses or even simple shelters, because you need somewhere to stay, some place to protect your family. And then by actually going back to that land, you have begun your negotiation to keep that land from a position of occupation.”

New Orleans similarities

It is similar to the plan of action carried out by the Vietnamese community in eastern New Orleans.

The Rev. Hungdung Van Lukenguyen of the Mary Queen of Vietnam Church and a member of the New Orleans delegation to Thailand, said his community began to return a month after the hurricane as it reportedly was being targeted for bulldozing.

First he heard their homes were going to be lost to green space, then an airport and finally an industrial park. Decisions were being made for his community without input from the people.

“When we return, we came to rebuild,” Lukenguyen said. “We wonder why the city has not decided anything yet but we have to move on without the government’s help. We do as best as we can to re-establish and reclaim our place. They have meetings and meetings and meetings and people show to protest but we can’t wait long for the government so we do ourselves for the community we’ve been building for 30 years.”

When the Thailand group visited in June, Lukenguyen said they saw how quickly his community had rebounded compared with the rest of the city.

What happened in eastern New Orleans is representative of what is happening in Thailand and what should happen in the Lower Ninth Ward, Gentilly and all of New Orleans, said Paul.

“If federal housing money doesn’t reach down to the poorest communities, and it sure doesn’t seem to be going in that direction, then it’s obviously going to be at the individual and neighborhood level where meaningful rebuilding decisions are made. This is why studying and learning from the kind of grass roots, people-driven approach of the tsunami experience is so valuable to my mind.”

If NPACH can raise additional money, Paul hopes to continue to send New Orleanians to Thailand and expand the program to include other disaster-effected areas like Mozambique which was devastated by floods in 2000.

WHAT A SHOW! Electrifying Saints Rout Falcons; Now 3-0 New Orleans Times-Picayune September 26, 2006 By Jeff Duncan

Packed among the crowd of 30,000 black-and-gold-clad faithful on the apron of the Superdome, Charles Burnell and Toby Bergeron couldn't wipe the smiles from their faces as they walked shoulder to shoulder with 148 fellow uniformed officers through a confetti shower at the doors of Gate C and officially reopened the rebuilt stadium.

"This is wonderful," said Bergeron, 38, a paramedic from Lafayette and lifelong Saints fan. "I can't believe it."

Thirteen months ago, a similar-sized crowd packed the same concourse in the horrific days after Hurricane Katrina, the images of desperate and suffering storm victims broadcast to a worldwide audience.

As members of the Acadian Ambulance medical team that air-lifted hundreds of storm victims to safety a year ago, Burnell and Bergeron witnessed firsthand the crisis as it unfolded at the Dome. And in those dark, dreary days, they never imagined a sight like they witnessed Monday night.

"When we left here a year ago, I said there's no way they'll rebuild it," said Burnell, 38, an emergency physician who treated dozens of patients at the Dome. "But they did it. It's a total metamorphosis. It's great."

On a night when U2, Michael Vick, Green Day and Reggie Bush headlined the ticket, the biggest star was clearly the Superdome, which debuted its more modern features and fan- friendly improvements to the home crowd, part of a multiphase $185 million renovation that began in March.

Even by New Orleans' big-event standards, it was a night that will be remembered for years to come, not only for the spectacle but also for the emotion and spirit, which at times made the gathering feel more like a church recital.

The sellout crowd of 70,003 chanted "Who dat?" randomly throughout the night and sang in unison several times during the pregame musical performance by Green Day and U2.

The nine-minute pregame performance by the two rock supergroups energized the stadium in the minutes before kickoff. The highlight was the special remake of the 1978 Skids song, "The Saints Are Coming," which spurred many in the stands to sing along to the anthem-like lyrics. Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong also drew a roar of approval with an impromptu riff from the Animal's classic, "House of the Rising Sun," remaking the opening lyrics: "There is a house in New Orleans, they call the Superdome."

Former President George H.W. Bush, who handled the pregame coin toss; Gov. Kathleen Blanco; New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin; filmmaker Spike Lee; rappers Snoop Dogg and Lil' Jon; and Dallas Mavericks coach Avery Johnson were among a host of VIPs and celebrities in attendance.

"This is a tremendous evening," Blanco said earlier in the day. "It's been a year of really hard work. It's a miracle that this building is up and running. The Superdome is one of the most beloved buildings in Louisiana. It was a place that saved a lot of lives."

Blanco and Nagin spent several minutes before the game talking on the sideline to former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, whose leadership and commitment to New Orleans in the days and months after Katrina played a key role in the Saints' return to the city and reopening of the Superdome. Under the guidance of Tagliabue, who retired in July after 17 years as commissioner, the NFL committed $20 million to the Dome renovation, scheduled the game for national television and helped the Saints arrange the star-studded musical lineup.

"The word 'homecoming' has a real meaning in college and professional sports, but I think tonight the word 'homecoming' will take on a new meaning and will forever be redefined by what is happening here in the Superdome," Tagliabue said.

Tagliabue's successor, Roger Goodell, credited members of the Saints organization, including owner Tom Benson and owner-executive Rita Benson LeBlanc, as well as SMG, the company that manages the Superdome, for their collaborative effort to ready the stadium and plan the event.

"This obviously represents a lot of hard work and a lot of strong vision, and, most importantly, a lot of spirit, and we can see and hear that tonight with all the people here," Goodell said.

Benson LeBlanc said the night was the culmination of a lot of hard work by staff in the Saints organization, but most of all it was a tribute to the team's loyal fans. The club sold out its entire season ticket allotment for the first time in the club's 40-year history.

"Throughout this process we have worked toward one common goal, getting this team back and playing in the Superdome," she said. "This has been a daunting and unprecedented task. Tonight we win. We win for the Saints fans, New Orleans and the entire Gulf Coast region."

Notoriously late for games, New Orleanians on this day came early. Tailgaters started to pitch tents and park SUVs along Poydras Street north of the stadium and Loyola Avenue to the south well before noon. Dome officials said lines began to form outside the doors of ground and concourse levels at 3 p.m., 4 1/2 hours before the kickoff.

By 4 p.m., the throng had become so large on the concourses where the free music and interactive fan entertainment was staged, the crowd spilled out onto Poydras, blocking traffic to and from downtown. The scene became so hectic south of the stadium, police interrupted a free Cowboy Mouth concert, sponsored by WDSU-TV, and stopped the band for 20 minutes in the middle of its set to ask for its permits and allow the streets to clear.

Around 5 p.m., a large contingent of fans gathered at the front entrance of the stadium where Saints players were entering from Poydras on a black carpet. With the arrival of each luxury vehicle, loud chants of the names of the crowd's favorite players drowned out the music from the Goo Goo Dolls concert on the concourse above.

The largest cheers were reserved for rookie running back Reggie Bush and star receiver Joe Horn, who arrived resplendent in a gold three-piece suit and black felt fedora. Saints officials hope the coordinated players' entrance, which debuted Monday night, will become a traditional game-day event.

"We should do this every week," Horn said as he walked to the locker room. "I'm just overjoyed for the fans, the people of this city. The icing on the cake will be the butt- whooping we put on the Falcons tonight."

Not everyone in the crowd had a ticket to the sold-out event and ticket brokers worked the neighboring street corners from noon until kickoff.

Colin Krieger, a 30-year-old Saints fan from Columbus, Miss., used a grass-roots approach to fight the competition and seize the attention of interested sellers. Walking the streets in a white John Fourcade Saints jersey, Kreiger taped dozens of white paper flyers to street posts and telephone polls: "I NEED ONE TICKET. Cheap nosebleed, will include beer &/or firstborn child. OK to call until halftime. Nothin' too pricey."

Krieger eventually found a seller, and had two tickets for $50 each a full two hours before kickoff, which was good news for his wife, Desiree, who is due Jan. 9 with the couple's first child.

"I have only missed one home game since 1992, and I definitely wasn't going to miss this one," said Krieger, a pizza parlor manager and New Orleans native who lost his home in Biloxi, Miss., to Katrina. "I haven't cried about New Orleans once since Katrina, but this was it for me. I cried like a baby when I got in here."

Network on top of Saints' return to Dome in the aftermath of Katrina, and city's recovery, undying spirit New Orleans Times-Picayune September 26, 2006 By Pierce W. Huff

The message from ESPN during its day-long coverage of Monday's Saints-Falcons game was simple: "New Orleans remains a city in recovery from Hurricane Katrina with plenty of work to do, and this football game is a way to escape and rejoice for everyone who was affected by the storm."

And for the most part, ESPN got that message across without a hitch and hit the perfect tone for the day, the game and the importance of the festivities. The network even managed to stay away from the tired-old voodoo cliché that broadcasts have used for years to portray New Orleans as a city of mystery.

The Saints-Falcons game got the Super Bowl treatment from ESPN that it deserved, complete with plenty of hosts and analysts and scenes of New Orleans pre- and post- Katrina.

It all started with the broadcast of ESPN's "Mike and Mike In The Morning." Host Mike Greenberg said the festivities surrounding the game had a "Super Bowl-type aura." Greenberg and co-host Mike Golic expressed what came across as a heartfelt desire to being in New Orleans. The best moment came when Monday Night Football analyst Joe Theisman said he was upset that the government couldn't do more to help the needy people of the area who are still dealing with loss from Katrina.

From there, ESPN2's "Cold Pizza" did a solid job of building its show from New Orleans and did a good job setting the tone for the game. The program talked to almost everyone it needed to interview to tell the story of present-day New Orleans, including Governor Kathleen Blanco. The decision to re-run a "Sunday Conversation," a great interview of filmmaker Spike Lee by host Jay Crawford, was a superb idea.

The SportsCenter Special Edition: Monday Night Kickoff was good. It was a smart move to have New Orleans natives Michael Smith and Stan Verrett talk about the city. Verrett, a former WDSU Channel 6 sports anchor, had the quote of the show when he said: "We have our diversion. Now we need our direction."

ESPN's "NFL Primetime" was fun. Former Saints Coach Mike Ditka hit a home run when he said Saints fans are "the most resilient fans." It was a nice touch to show the celebration of the first people entering the Superdome.

Reporter Marc Schwarz did the two best stories during ESPN Monday Night Countdown on Saints receiver Joe Horn and the rebuilding of the Superdome. Bob Ley asked all of the pertinent questions of former President Bush during a brief interview, including if his son, President George W. Bush, deserved some of the blame in the aftermath of the hurricane.

At the beginning of the game broadcast, ESPN announcer Mike Tirico said: "Tonight was the most significant New Orleans Saints game ever." And he was right.

New Orleans is on its way to making a complete recovery from Katrina, and Monday night in the Superdome was one of the most important steps to making that happen. It's something that everyone has been talking about for months, and ESPN made that message come to life.

Reopening of Dome marks major turning point for New Orleans The Shreveport Times September 26, 2006 By John Hill

NEW ORLEANS -- Kevin and Rachel Hood, dressed in white fleur-de-lis Saints shirts, pushed a stroller through Jackson Square on Monday afternoon, celebrating the return of the Louisiana Superdome and their beloved Saints.

The two 26-year-olds had dressed their 2-month-old son, Kyler, is a Saints shirt with No. 25 and Reggie Bush's name.

"We're getting him started early," Rachel Hood said.

"It's great getting the Saints back in the Dome," Kevin Hood said. His wife chimed in: "It means the city is coming back."

Throughout the streets of downtown New Orleans and the French Quarter, the mood was celebratory, upbeat and playful, with most downtown shutting down early for Monday Night Football's nationally televised reopening of the re-christened, renovated iconic Superdome.

Paid for with $115 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, $15 million from the NFL, $13 million in state funds and $41 million from refinancing of the Superdome bonds, with $25 million for operating the building, the Superdome was remodeled in a record nine months due to an executive order by the governor expediting the construction process.

"This building is as recognizable around the world as the Eiffel Tower or the pyramids," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said. "I haven't been this excited since LSU won the national championship in the Dome."

City government and the court systems shut down at noon, as did many offices, as traffic in the downtown area near the Superdome snarled like a Mardi Gras crowd. Revelers set up tailgating in downtown parking lots Monday morning.

The Superdome is as significant to New Orleans as the World Trade Center was to New York, said Dave Dixon, 83, the New Orleans businessman who sold former Gov. John McKeithen on the idea of building the dome back in 1965. The dome, costing $138 million opened in August 1975 with a Saints exhibition game.

"This building symbolizes to me the greatness of mankind," Dixon said, standing on the new soft-turf floor, looking around at the new zippy digital scoreboards. "This was a great human accomplishment."

The dome, Blanco said, "symbolized everything that went wrong last year. Now it is a symbol of all that is going right. Our people need a symbol of recovery. This is our rainbow of recovery."

Besides the excitement of the building's reopening, fans were turned on by the fact that both the Saints and the Atlanta Falcons, longtime rivals, both went into the game with 2-0 records. Bourbon Street bartenders were gearing up for a late-night crowd.

Former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, whose leadership forged the Saints' staying in New Orleans with a remolded dome, was an honored guest. So was former President George H.W. Bush, who tossed the coin.

At a French Quarter restaurant, Nicole Boisdore and her husband Scott Levanway dined on oyster po-boys with their 4-year-old son Nicholas and Nicole's parents, John and Sally Boisdore, who lost their Lakeview home to the levee failures that inundated New Orleans.

The reopening of the dome, "means everything," Nicole Boisdore said. "This is bigger than the Superbowl. This is bigger than Mardi Gras."

Sally Bosidore said the reopening was more than just a game. "We've been through so much. It's just made the city come alive," she said.

The Saints-Falcon game brought more than just a sea of black and gold "" the Saints colors "" said Mel Ziegler, general manager of the Old Opera House, a live music venue on Bourbon Street.

As the band inside played "When the Saints Come Marching In," Ziegler said the Dome's reopening has stimulated the economy.

"The crowds are more like a Friday before Mardi Gras," Ziegler said. "It's nice to see so many people on the street. They are all saying they love the entertainment and they love the food."

The hotels, Ziegler said, reported they were 70 to 90 percent booked, with about half from southeast Louisiana and southern Mississippi.

On Bourbon Street, four Atlanta Falcon fans dressed in their red and black team colors exchanged good-natured exchanges with Saints fans.

Andrew Richardson, of Macon, Ga., said while downtown New Orleans and the French Quarter were lively and fun, he was shocked driving through the still-devastated parts of the city. "It was breathtakingly bad," he said. "I served in the military, and if we can rebuild in Iraq, we ought to be rebuilding here."

The influx of visitors caused K-Paul's Louisiana Restaurant, celebrity Chef Paul Prudhomme's famous eatery, normally open only for dinner, to open at 2 Monday afternoon.

Outside the Superdome, a carnival mood prevailed. From 3 p.m., bands played from a big stage on Superdome Plaza: The Hot Eight band, the Storyville Jazz Band, the Goo Goo Dolls and the Rebirth Brass Band entertained the thousands who gathered. Three NFL Experience stages set up monitors for those who did not have tickets. Fans parked as far away as the Convention Center, also refurbished by the state with FEMA funs quickly, and walked to the Dome.

Rebecca Rome, 39, took the day off for work to join a group of 25. "It's a new beginning, a celebration," Rome said. Just last week, she finished the reconstruction of her Westwego home just across the river. "This shows everyone that there's life after death," Rome said.

Paula Kass, 29, a Kaplan native now living in Covington, was tailgating with eight friends outside the dome.

"It's so exciting and overwhelming," Kass said. "It feels more like a Superbowl. This is a very festive, once-in-a-lifetime experience."

Superdome reopening honors first-responders The Shreveport Times September 25, 2006 By John Hill

NEW ORLEANS -- The first people through the gates at the Louisiana Superdome this afternoon were 150 first-responders who helped save lives inside structure a year ago.

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco played host to the honored first-responders, who were due to line up at the door when the Saints came marching into the refurbished dome, with sideline seats on the dome floor.

The first-responders were invited by Blanco to represent the thousands of Louisiana National Guard troops, state police and other state employees who saved lives in the dome and the city following Hurricane Katrina.

"The Saints are marching home tonight against the (Atlanta) Falcons just as families continue to come home to Louisiana," Blanco said.

Baton Rouge architect Trey Trahan, who led the team that has completed $144 million of the $185 million in Superdome improvements, said as proud as he is of the New Orleans crews who finished the dome in record time and on budget, he is awed by the returning first-responders.

"It's terribly emotional for me. I can't imagine what it's like for these people who were in the dome during Hurricane Katrina."

The executive order the governor issued in December putting in emergency procedures that allowed the dome project to be broken down into 78 contracts and bid procedures expedited was essential in repairing the dome on time, Trahan said.

Among the honored first-responders are:

Louisiana National Guard Cpl. William Howard, a medic who worked in the dome during evacuations.

Specialist Cullen Stagg of Jennings, a soldier who volunteered to work Hurricane Katrina support after returning from Iraq.

Randy Ewing of Columbia, a state Wildlife and Fisheries Department technician who helped evacuate flooded parts of New Orleans.

Greg Crawford of Columbia, a wildlife and fisheries agent who helped with boat rescues of stranded New Orleanians in Katrina's aftermath then did the same in the Lake Charles area following Hurricane Rita.

Tyron Banks of Broussard, Narrie Edgar of Jennings and Ernest Green of Youngsville, who were among Louisiana Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control agents who assisted New Orleans police in boat rescues, search-and-recovery operations and restoring security to the city.

Fans Celebrate Superdome Reopening Associated Press Newswires September 26, 2006 By Mary Foster

NEW ORLEANS - Martha Brown stared at the field in the Louisiana Superdome, tears streaming down her face, her sister's arm around her shoulders.

"Tonight wipes out a lot of hurt," she said.

Like so many others in the newly renovated stadium Monday night, Brown hoped to erase some of the bitter memories that the Superdome had come to symbolize -- the images of misery and suffering of a city plundered by a devastating storm.

"My mother and father, my sister, her husband, my nieces and nephews were all brought here after their house flooded," Brown said. "I was in Atlanta seeing it on television. I thought they should tear this place down, but I'm so glad they didn't."

More than 68,000 jammed the Superdome to celebrate its rebirth and continued the revelry long after the New Orleans Saints wrapped up a 23-3 victory over the Atlanta Falcons. Saints owner Tom Benson danced on the stadium's sidelines, capping a festive day rarely seen since Hurricane Katrina flooded the city more than a year ago.

By midnight, Bourbon Street was awash in Saints jerseys, T-shirts and the team colors of black and gold.

"What a day," said Michael Fox, joining the party inside the Old Opera House bar before returning to his tiny government-issued trailer. "I had forgotten what fun felt like."

Saints fans had not only suffered through a year of recovery, but also through a football season of seeing their team play its home games in Baton Rouge, San Antonio, and at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. They were ready for some hometown football.

"Everything has been life or death, totally serious," said Alfred Robair Jr., who was unable to return to the city until late October. "This feels really good. It's nice to be emotional about something else."

The Saints and the Falcons were both undefeated at 2-0 going into the game. The victory left the Saints -- who finished last season 3-13 -- in first place in the NFC South.

The $185 million restoration project left the Superdome in better shape than before the storm. New scoreboards flashed graphics, messages and pictures. A fresh field covered the playing surface. And everyone, from the people cleaning up to the security officers, seemed really pleased about the return.

"I never thought they'd be able to bring the building back," said Donald Griffin, 47, a postal service worker. "But it's truly beautiful."

The crowd chanted, cheered, and waved white handkerchiefs. Most stayed long after the final seconds ticked off the clock, wanting to prolong their enjoyment. Fans were good- natured and orderly, Superdome spokesman Bill Curl said.

"We needed this, said Lionel Hotard, 53, who said he was still running from Katrina this time last year. "We needed something to cheer about and this is it. This puts life back in the city and boy do we need it."

The Saints had last played in the Superdome in a 2005 preseason game a few days before Katrina.

After the storm, the Saints became the NFL's traveling show, establishing a base in San Antonio amid speculation that owner Tom Benson might not bring them back to New Orleans.

Even now, a high-rise hotel, an office tower and an upscale shopping center stand empty just a few hundred feet from the stadium, with white boards covering blown-out windows. A few miles away, entire neighborhoods are wastelands of decaying houses.

Amid the desolation, some residents could not bring themselves to celebrate the team's return.

Irma Warner, 71, and her husband Pascal, 80, live in a suburban apartment while working six days a week to restore a home flooded by seven feet of water in New Orleans' Lakeview neighborhood.

"We rode around through the Ninth Ward yesterday," Irma Warner said. "When I saw that, I thought, how can they spend $185 million on the Superdome. What about all these poor people?"

Louisiana down 175,100 jobs in year after Katrina Associated Press Newswires September 25, 2006 By Alan Sayre

NEW ORLEANS - A year after Hurricane Katrina, the state has 175,100 fewer jobs than before the storm with virtually the entire toll coming from the hard-hit New Orleans region, the state Labor Department reported Monday.

But there was a silver lining: job figures for August were above their lows for the past year. At its low point last fall, the statewide job total was down more than 234,000 jobs. Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005, followed by Hurricane Rita on Sept. 24, 2005.

Metropolitan New Orleans had 173,400 fewer non-farm jobs in August 2006 than in August 2005, an indication of a painfully slow recovery in the area. The only other major Louisiana market that had a year-to-year loss was the Lake Charles area, which was hit by Rita. That region had 2,200 fewer jobs than a year ago, the Labor Department said.

Economist Loren Scott, who tracks Louisiana's employment picture, said New Orleans has regained about 42,000 of its pre-Katrina jobs, but "it is really not a hot growth rate."

Despite the massive reconstruction, construction jobs are still down 31 percent from a year ago in New Orleans, but up 23 percent in Lake Charles. Scott said that is probably due to the housing crunch in New Orleans, where vast neighborhoods were destroyed by Katrina.

The Baton Rouge area, which took in thousands of refugees from Katrina, had 12,500 more jobs in August than in August 2005. All of the state's other metropolitan areas also showed employment gains, including Shreveport with 5,600 jobs, Lafayette with 3,900, Alexandria with 2,600, Houma with 1,200 and Monroe with 1,000.

Architects asked for riverfront inspiration; N.O. to 'reinvent' 4.5-mile section New Orleans Times-Picayune By Bruce Eggler September 25, 2006

Some of the world's best-known architects, from Frank Gehry and Rafael Violy to Rem Koolhaas and Norman Foster, could have been forgiven a look of puzzlement when they opened their mail one day last week.

There before them was a large black box containing pralines, a can of French Market coffee and chicory, an Emeril Lagasse cookbook, a history of New Orleans' "urban landscape," an iPod full of New Orleans songs and -- of all things -- "Da Mayor in Your Pocket," a device that plays recordings of six of Mayor Ray Nagin's more memorably colorful comments.

The collection was intended to help get the architects into a New Orleans frame of mind as they looked over the city's invitation to get involved in planning a major redevelopment of parts of the riverfront.

Nagin has chosen the New Orleans Building Corp. to oversee the redevelopment planning, and a note to each architect from Sean Cummings, the agency's executive director, said, "We come bearing gifts and an uncommon invitation, one infused with excellence and high aspiration. . . . We welcome you to this city, and we invite you to help reinvent our riverfront."

What might the reinvention involve? Cruise ship terminals, hotels, parking garages, museums, maybe an amphitheater or an opera house or a planetarium, according to the terms under which the port and city agreed to open the area up for redevelopment. Perhaps the plan's highest aspiration is to allow for a riverfront park or green space that would facilitate pedestrian access to the waterway that was responsible for New Orleans' birth and growth, but that for much of the city's history has been almost invisible to many residents.

A work in progress

Cummings' goal is to transform the 4.5-mile stretch of east bank riverfront, the swath of outmoded wharves from Jackson Avenue to the Industrial Canal, into a "21st century urban landscape that will become a model of design excellence."

As he talks about enticing "the world's design community" into guiding that transformation, he grows animated, sculpting his visions in the air with his hands and rattling off other cities' signature waterfront projects from Sydney to New York.

Calling New Orleans' share of the Mississippi River "potentially the greatest riverfront in North America," Cummings said the city's goal is "the revitalization, the reinvention of the crescent in the Crescent City."

City leaders have talked about such goals, about "reclaiming the riverfront," since at least the 1970s, and the process already has resulted in French Quarter and Central Business District attractions such as the Moonwalk, Woldenberg Riverfront Park, the Aquarium of the Americas and the Riverwalk shopping mall.

The goal of the latest effort is to extend the opening of the river both upriver and downriver. Its foundation is a cooperative endeavor agreement recently agreed to by city and Port of New Orleans officials that spells out what east bank wharves the port will continue to need for maritime activities and what areas will be available for public, non- maritime redevelopment.

Park planned

Among other things, the agreement envisions "an uninterrupted and continuous linear green space or riverfront park" along the entire stretch from Jackson to Poland avenues, a "world-class performance venue" at the Louisa Street Wharf or another riverfront site, a hotel and expanded cruise ship terminal at the Julia Street Wharf, and a garage and cruise ship terminal at the Erato Street Wharf.

The agreement envisions that the Trust for Public Land, which has been working with the port for years on plans for a riverfront park upriver of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, would develop and operate that park.

It says the city would get 75 percent and the port 25 percent of all rent or other proceeds derived from non-maritime development of the old wharves.

But Cummings said $10 million a year in direct rent would be only the tip of the city's potential windfall. He envisions $1 billion in construction and millions more in increased taxes.

The deal between the city and the port opens the way for such investment and development by ending historic conflicts between the two arms of government that often have prohibited coherent planning and discouraged developers, he said.

The New Orleans Building Corp., an agency created to increase the city's revenue from some of its unused or under-used properties, has set aside as much as $500,000 to pay for the riverfront planning process.

October deadline

Cummings said he hopes to get a lot of responses to the request for qualifications and proposals issued last week, with out-of-town firms likely to respond in partnership with local architects and planners. The deadline to respond is Oct. 25.

A committee of four city officials and three outsiders is expected to choose three to six finalists, who will be asked to submit further information, including how much they would charge. The goal is to choose a winning firm or joint venture by Nov. 29 and to have the final riverfront plan in hand within a year.

The goal, Cummings said, is to come up with "a specific development plan, with specific projects at specific sites, and specific solutions to transportation issues" and to questions such as how to balance development with public access to the river. "It will be much more than just a vision or a conceptual plan," he said.

Average teacher salary tops $42,000 The Shreveport Times September 26, 2006 By Mike Hasten

BATON ROUGE "" Thanks to a $1,500 across-the-board pay raise to teachers this year, the average salary for Louisiana K-12 educators is $42,100, a state panel said Monday.

That will come as a shock to many teachers, says Steve Monaghan, president of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers.

"I will get a lot of calls from teachers saying 'I'll never make $42,000 a year,'" Monaghan said. At least 23 school districts, especially those in the Delta Region in northeast Louisiana, don't pay that much for teachers with doctorate degrees and 25 years experience.

"In many parishes, the top salary is $31,000. There's an $18,000 difference between the highest and lowest paying parishes," he said.

Using figures supplied by the American Federation of Teachers and the National Association of Educators, the state Education Estimating Conference adopted $42,100 as the official estimate, which places Louisiana's salaries in the upper 95 percent of states in the Southern Regional Education Board. The SREB average, which includes 18 states throughout the south from Texas and Oklahoma up the east coast to Maryland and Delaware, is $44,219.

"I am glad that the Legislature agreed with my proposal to give our deserving teachers a meaningful pay increase this year," said Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who recently completed a term as chair of the SREB. "We are now closer than ever to the SREB average. Our teachers work very hard and they deserved this raise. We have set the stage to reach the Southern average and I will keep working to get there."

Monaghan said the problem with averages is "if you have $2 and I have none, we average $1 each, but I can't still buy a candy bar."

Wayne Free of the Louisiana Association of Educators, said that since the projected increases "" up to $44,800 by the 2009-10 school year "" include requiring school systems to put 50 percent of new money into teacher salaries, the conference should keep close watch on the Legislature.

The language in the state funding formula was altered this year to say that school systems that already pay at or above the SREB average don't have to use any new money for salaries. This year, four school systems didn't use the new money for raises and Free said he's concerned that more will come under the exception new year if the Legislature retains that provision.

George Silbernagel, a member of the estimating conference and budget analyst for the House Appropriations Committee, said that instead of using the SREB average, which includes Maryland's $53,200 and Delaware's $52,000 salaries, he considers it a better gauge that Louisiana is at 98 percent of the average of the six neighboring states, the ones it has to compete with to retain teachers.

Another factor that has to be considered, Silbernagel said, is that a growing number of Louisiana's teachers have only bachelor's degrees and typically earn a lower salary than teachers with graduate degrees. Having 69 percent of teachers with bachelor's degrees, and thus lower salaries, "" compared to 64 percent in 1995-96 "" makes it tougher to keep up with other states with higher-paid teachers.

"It makes the administration's chore (reaching the SREB average) harder," he said. "They have to overcompensate."

"We're moving closer but the average is constantly changing" as states grant pay raises, said Raymond Brady, an independent analyst hired to work for the conference.

Using the 1993-94 school year as a base, Brady's calculations show Louisiana average teacher salary has climbed almost $16,000. The average salary in 1993 was $26,287 "" 86 percent of the SREB average of $30,647.

"Louisiana has really invested in its teachers over this period of time," he said. It's been hard to catch up because "Louisiana was so far behind."

Going from 86 percent of the SREB average to 95 percent "is significant for a state that has had to do a lot of other investments," Brady said. "The SREB includes states that have no relevance to us."

Since 1993, Louisiana's teacher salaries have gone up 62 percent, while the SREB average went up 42.3 percent. At the same time, the Consumer Price Index went up just more than 40 percent.

Veronica Howard, the governor's education adviser and chair of the conference, said the report show "in the perspective of the administration, we are headed in the right direction."

The Education Estimating Conference was created by the Legislature to "develop such official information relating to the state public educational system, including forecasts of student enrollment, the availability of qualified teachers and average teacher salaries."

Besides setting the average teacher salary, the conference adopted enrollment figures that will be used to distribute state funding to public schools.

The conference meets periodically at the direction of the Governor's Office.

OP-EDS/EDITORIALS Editorial: No quick fix for housing The Baton Rouge Advocate September 26, 2006

“Housing is expensive, and poor people are poor.”

William Apgar of Harvard University summed up in a sentence the issues facing efforts to find basic shelter for millions of Americans in poverty.

Apgar and other experts speaking to the National Housing Conference in Washington, D.C., said the problems of public housing, as federal aid flattens or declines in housing programs, will require more attention from local governments and foundations in the years ahead.

Hurricane Katrina exposed the huge problems of Americans living in poverty-ridden neighborhoods, said Stacey Stewart, president of the Fannie Mae Foundation and sponsor of the conference. “These people were victims before Katrina hit the shore, and they became victims again,” she said.

Katrina and its images of the poor huddled in the Superdome and other shelters “provoked the most significant debate” about poverty since the 1960s, said Stewart’s colleague Jim Carr. “It blew aside misconceptions about the equality of opportunity in America.”

The problems of the working poor are prevalent far beyond the Gulf Coast.

Apgar noted that 14 million renters in America have less than $20,000 in annual income. “It’s not that they don’t work; it’s that work doesn’t pay,” he said. Apgar heads the Joint Housing Center at Harvard.

Nationwide, new building of apartments — as seen in Baton Rouge recently — is adding higher-end rental units. The units that the working poor are able to rent often are poorly maintained. Apgar said the nation is losing about 200,000 units a year through demolition. In New Orleans, he added, Katrina just about wiped out the inventory of affordable housing.

The problems of housing the work force for rebuilding the Gulf Coast already are apparent, and if there is a silver lining, it is that government and the private sector are making an effort to ensure that ordinary working people can find affordable places to live. The Louisiana Recovery Authority is committing $1.6 billion to restore rental housing, focusing on neighborhood landlords, LRA Chairman Norman Francis said. He said the LRA hopes to leverage that grant money with tax credits available in Louisiana for hurricane recovery. The investment in affordable housing could total $3.3 billion, he said.

The philanthropic sector also is active in the city, with diverse groups such as the Rockefeller Foundation, the AFL-CIO and the Catholic Church’s housing arm seeking to design and build affordable housing.

And the experts at the housing conference unanimously endorsed the idea of rebuilding the hurricane-afflicted areas better, not just as they were.

One New Orleans problem exposed by the storms was the concentration of poverty that bred social ills and contributed to a multigenerational culture of low achievement and low expectations. The answer is to build neighborhoods, not just housing, by mixing land uses and seeking to mix incomes in neighborhoods.

Atlanta is one of the role models for this approach.

Renee Glover of the Atlanta Housing Authority said her city has torn down 11 deteriorated public housing projects and replaced them with a mix of apartments and townhouses, paying some of the costs with market-rate rentals in the new neighborhoods.

New schools have been built nearby, and student achievement is rising in neighborhoods formerly racing to the bottom on test scores, she said.

While there is urgency to replace housing units in New Orleans, the rebuilding process also should be about revitalization of the neighborhoods. “There is no quick fix,” Glover said. “If you do it for the short term, you’re going to be redoing it quickly.”

It’s vital to take the time to make new, affordable housing part of sustainable neighborhoods, she said. “If you do it quick, you do it wrong.

Editorial: Saints fans savor historic rally New Orleans CityBusiness September 25, 2006

It’s the greatest comeback by far in 40 seasons of New Orleans Saints football.

Before there’s even a coin flip Monday night at the Saints-Falcons football game, the simple presence of the beloved New Orleans franchise in the Superdome has upset the oddsmakers who doubted Owner Tom Benson would ever bring the Saints back from San Antonio.

Braced by a firm administrative shove from the National Football League, which ponied up $15 million to help rebuild the Superdome, here come the Saints again giving us an irreplaceable and irrepressible black-and-gold rush.

Our battered city, with barely more than 200,000 residents able to return out of our 460,000 population pre-Katrina, has outshone all other National Football League franchises by selling out virtually every contest even before the first home game.

The astounding display of community backing for the Saints has been noticed nationally.

Tourism will also gain a powerful shot in the arm as the TV appearance on Monday Night Football once again fixes the spotlight firmly on the dichotomy that is New Orleans — far too much devastation remains but progress is slowly showing encouraging gains. The symbolism of the Saints playing in a rejuvenated Superdome is worth millions to the New Orleans tourism sector.

The sting of the slow slog of recovery has been salved a bit by the Saints’ unprecedented 2-0 start with both wins coming on the road. The Saints have never pulled off that trick play before.

As an added plus, Coach Sean Payton has given the team a new, more professional look. He’s trimmed from the roster or traded a few disinclined prima donnas unwilling to buy into his philosophy. Those who remain don’t commit the sloppy penalties characteristic of the Saints under the previous coaching regime. For example, the Saints committed just two penalties in rallying from a 13-0 deficit for a 34-27 win over the Green Bay Packers at historic Lambeau Field.

Holdover stars like Deuce McAlister and Will Smith have meshed well with new talent like Reggie Bush, Drew Brees and Marques Colston to give the Saints the look of a quality football team. It’s early but it’s highly encouraging. Two wins over two sub-par teams haven’t earned the Saints a playoff berth but they have shortened the road to the postseason.

So as the city welcomes its returning heroes Monday in what’s certain to be an emotionally charged event, revel in every moment. Win or lose against division rival Atlanta, the Saints have overcome daunting odds to continue playing in front of the fans who love them best.

Op-Ed: New Orleans Saints Superdome Win: An American Dream Bayou Buzz September 25, 2006 By Steve Sabludowsky

New Orleans didn’t just beat the Atlanta Falcons in the Superdome. They destroyed Atlanta 23 to 3.

In doing so, they played with emotions of all citizens who have been fighting for FEMA trailers, kicking at flimsy levees and screaming at inept government agencies. .

They showed that New Orleans and Louisiana had a yet, beating heart. Despite the broken neighborhoods, the political acrimonies, and the deep wounding memories of everything going wrong after Katrina, they won one for the City and the State.

The Saint game was full of tears, beer and the burning desire to share joy with those who have lost hope.

Although the Saint-Falcon game was only a football match, in reality, there was so much more. It was a stroke of confidence in the future of the city. It was historic in a building of histories.

And, it was a match where a smothering defense, a very “special” special team and a diverse offense has put the now Amazing Saints in a 3-0 position--only one year from being a team without a home.

The victory at the Superdome showed that good things can happen to people who persevere under the most enduring circumstances. It showed that people throughout the country want a good ending to a horrible experience. It was a game of brute strength and burning spirit.

More than anything, it was the beginning of a new American dream reflecting that the country cares for a people that has suffered unspeakable losses. For one short evening the New Orleans Saints and the people of Louisina felt it was truly connecting with the rest of the U.S.A. New Orleans, a City of music was playing when the Saints come march in with its entire soul and its every essence of a beat. In the end, the New Orleans Saints did march down the field of life making everyone in its way—very very proud.