The New York Times ran an article yesterday regarding how cleanup efforts are going on the Mississippi Gulf coast almost four months after Katrina:
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Harrison County, the home of Biloxi, and Jackson County, where Pascagoula is located, each had about 10 million cubic yards of debris to clean up. Both counties took up the federal government on its offer to foot the bill.
But while Harrison County and all but one of its cities hired contractors on their own, Jackson County and its cities, at the urging of the federal government, asked the Army Corps to take on the task. Officials in Jackson County said it was a choice they had regretted ever since.
The cleanup in Jackson County and its municipalities has not only cost millions of dollars more than in neighboring counties, but it is also taking longer. The latest available figures show that 39 percent of the work was complete in Jackson County, while 57 percent was done in Harrison County and its cities that are managing the job on their own, according to federal records.
The article clearly makes the implication that private contractors are getting the job done far more efficiently in Harrison County than the Army Corps of Engineers is in Jackson County. That doesn’t surprise me, unfortunately — the federal agency, free from profit pressures has less incentive to have an efficient infrastructure, and I’ve got to believe political pressures and budgetary vagaries aren’t exactly conducive to streamlining a bureaucracy.
However, the article might be a shade unfair. First, Jackson County was closer to the center of Katrina than was Harrison County. One should expect that, all other things being equal, cleanup would take longer in Jackson than in Harrison. Second…well, Biloxi is a “sexier” place than Pascagoula. (Although “sexy” is not exactly a term I’d use to describe pre-Katrina Biloxi….) Higher profile locales tend to get rebuilt faster after disaster than lower-profile areas. Just watch what happens in New Orleans for an example.
I am somewhat amazed at the idea of Biloxi and Harrison County allegedly being rebuilt more cheaply through private contractors than Jackson County is. I would have thought, given the demand surge being seen in that part of the country, that private contracting would be far more expensive than using government talent pools.