December 29th marked the four month anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in Southeast Louisiana. Still, many neighborhoods lie dormant without any evidence of life or indication that repairs to the many thousands of residences damaged by the storm will soon be underway. The majority of New Orleans’ residents remain displaced and there seems to be no realistic plan for their return. Though Mayor C. Ray Nagin has traveled to many parts of the country in his post-Katrina tour, he has shown no such initiative to work, here at home. His pleas for residents to return fall on cautiously optimistic ears, but those who do come back find that life here is no bed of roses; in fact, a bed of any kind, or a place to put one, is difficult, if not impossible, to locate.

Bickering between various local governmental entities has stalled the placement of FEMA trailers throughout the city. New Orleans City Council members have maintained that they want to have input on where trailer communities are placed. Mayor Nagin continuously refuses to involve council members, thus creating a stalemate situation. Earlier this month, council members passed, unanimously, an ordinance giving them a say in trailer placements, a measure later vetoed by the mayor. Not to be dissuaded, the council overturned his veto unanimously—legally enacting the ordinance. Think this battle was over? No, the mayor’s legal department issued a statement declaring that only the mayor, not the council, has the right to call the shots in times of emergency. Last week, the mayor made his first real decision following the disaster—to approve the locations of trailer sites throughout the city. In this release, Nagin declared that the “not in my back yard” mentality would be fruitless. Of course, tempers flared among both the city council members and the residents of communities slated for encroachment. Now the Mayor’s Office is taking a cautious step back, putting the city, once again, at step one.

Leadership has been severely lacking throughout Louisiana, but this was the case even before Katrina. This disaster could not have happened during the administrations of any less competent leaders. Prior to Katrina, neither Governor Kathleen Blanco nor Mayor Nagin could point to any sincere successes during their terms in office, at least ones that truly empowered and improved the lives of their poorest constituents. Both talked the talk, but neither did anything more than hold fruitless meetings on important issues. The same sort of inaction by committee is going on today, through Governor Blanco’s Louisiana Recovery Authority and Mayor Nagin’s Bring Back New Orleans Commission. Neither team has a true leader and both seem equally dysfunctional. Of course, they contain members of the local aristocracy, who seem to only have their own best interests at heart. Well, this is Louisiana.

So here we are, stagnant at the origin of a long, winding road. Still, no one has drawn a line in the sand and has become entrenched in a leadership role. Both Louisiana’s governor and New Orleans’ mayor seem content to poke a dot in the sand and continuously run around it. Stupefied kingpins will get us nowhere and will only succeed in our ultimate ruination. No one knows exactly where this road will end, but we must, at least, start the journey.