Editorial: A false War Between the States

There is a particular sadness with which we consider the offensive launched against Mississippi survivors of Hurricane Katrina on the very somber second anniversary of the awful day in which the great storm devastated our state and caused a civil engineering failure of vast and deadly proportions in Louisiana.

On Aug. 29, 2005, South Mississippi and Southern Louisiana, geographic and cultural members of the family of Gulf Coast States, were united by a bond of common suffering forged in the destructive assault against our people and property.

In the days that followed, a coalition of political and social assets possessed by these neighbors was arrayed in a united effort to gain federal support for the recovery of a region that had suffered the greatest natural disaster in American history.

By most objective analyses of this strategic effort, Mississippi, though a poor state with meager resources, possessed the superior congressional team with Sens. Thad Cochran and Trent Lott situated especially well to spearhead the fight for the billions that would be necessary to help citizens of the Gulf recover and rebuild.

Louisiana seemed to recognize the value of the neighboring leaders, and gladly accepted the additional role that Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour played in obtaining the relief funding.

This newspaper has from the very beginning of the debate supported New Orleans and Louisiana as an ally and a friend in the full meaning that term implies.

Over the course of the two years since Katrina we have listened to the occasional signs of partisanship that have rumbled across the border but have remained silent, choosing to stay focused on our own knitting, understanding the frustration with many aspects of the difficult environment in which our neighbors were existing. But we must express concern about the emerging narrative put forward by Louisiana newspapers that suggest there is a competition for federal Katrina dollars, and that Mississippi has received an unfair share of those funds.

Much of the Louisiana storyline in the discussion is crafted around a set of numbers apparently compiled by the Louisiana Recovery Authority, numbers cited around the anniversary date to show that Mississippians received a disproportionate share of the funds.

The leading number cited by the newspapers involves the number of damaged homes, and the number is outrageously in error. The numbers, cited both in a chart accompanying a Times-Picayune editorial headlined "Treat us fairly Mr. President," reported that in Mississippi Katrina severely damaged only 15,610 homes and only 61,386 homes were damaged at all.