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I just want to be clear with the deducible and documented facts: as of June 9th, 2005, Orleans Parish School Board buses were not available for the City Of New Orleans to use in its hurricane evacuation plan.

Nagin is clearly incompetent and indecisive, why would you guys expect him to accept the burden of monetary liability for school buses he wasn't authorized to use? It's clear he's not a man to take responsibility for his actions.

I'm also saying there are plenty of additional parties to blame here, and it's all documented in black and white in the June 9th School Board minutes, by name and title. The minutes indicate that yet another Louisiana Landrieu crony was running the Board meeting, and it was she who was throwing a monkey wrench into the negotiations. That's another reason there were no drivers available: the School Board hadn't gotten a commitment from the City to pay them, and so they simply dismissed them from work before Katrina.

By the way, the minutes indicate this issue had been in discussion for at least one year.

Sorry, I can't make Nagin the sole scapegoat for a system-wide conspiracy of bureaucratic bungling.

"the minutes indicate this issue had been in discussion for at least one year"

...and Nagin had been Mayor during all of that time! I agree that there are others who bear responsibility to different degrees, but it still seems clear to me that if he were any kind of "the buck stops here" executive he could have (1) made sure that the proper financial guarantees were made to the School Board (with action by the City Council if that were required to authorize), and (2) made sure that the existing emergency plan DID allow for use of all available buses and had provisions for having drivers available, etc., and (3) made sure that the proper personnel were designated, trained, and available to run not only the evacuation but also public safety and shelters, etc. NOLA and LA were obviously grossly unprepared for the emergency that every official there had many years of warnings about. I do realize the logistics of getting the different players "on board" can be difficult, and obviously the local officials just couldn't get their act together, but I still maintain it is absurd for anyone to place MORE blame on federal officials than upon local (and state) officials for matters that are best handled at the local level.... AND that in our constitutional system have to be handled at local and state levels. Pres. Bush has no authority to arrange or commandeer buses in NOLA or LA. Nagin and Gov. Blankhead each COULD have made all the necessary arrangements but failed to do so.

"as of June 9th, 2005, Orleans Parish School Board buses were not available for the City Of New Orleans to use in its hurricane evacuation plan"

If there were the slightest evidence that Nagin had done anything before Aug. 29, 2005 to ensure that the buses WOULD be available then I might look at it differently. He could/should have (1) worked the 'political' issue so that the school board felt compelled to support the emergency evacuation plan that was obviously necessary for NOLA; (2) worked the financial issue so that the Orleans Parish School Board had the necessary financial guarantees that the city would take responsibility for costs of an emergency evacuation. A big part of the reason the School Board seemed to be ensnarled in obstacles was that they had none of the necessary guarantees from the city about reimbursements of costs, etc. And I'm not imagining that a city like NOLA has any extra pots of money sitting around (other than all that's lost to corruption and salaries for non-existent police officers, etc.). It would have taken real leadership to ensure that the city could make the necessary financial guarantees to the school board, but that's what leadership IS.... seeing something important that needs to be done and getting it done through the relevant players..... clearly the prospect of a catastrophic hurricane hitting NOLA always seemed relatively remote each year, but over a substantial period of time it became just about inevitable.