Can this city be saved?

Galveston really needs help.

Officials pleaded with a state legislative panel today for sales tax rebates, emergency loans and other steps to keep this island city functioning as it struggles to rebuild after Hurricane Ike.

Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas and City Manager Steve LeBlanc asked that the Legislature refund all or part of the state's 6.25 percent share of the 8.25 percent sales tax for two years to help the city provide basic services. LeBlanc also asked that the state put some money into its disaster recovery fund so that Galveston and other storm-stricken communities could apply for loans.

State Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, who chairs the House Select Committee on Hurricane Ike, said the Legislature created the fund but never appropriated any money for it.

Almost four months after Ike made landfall, LeBlanc said, cash flow is Galveston's most pressing need. Layoffs of city employees are imminent, he said, even after the city has slashed spending and cut employee pay by 3 percent.

"I'm getting to the point of being, in a sense, desperate for help," LeBlanc said, citing sharp reductions in sales and property taxes and other revenue sources. "It's becoming very difficult to serve our citizens."

I don't know what there is to say to this. Either you believe the city of Galveston is worth saving, or you don't. Either you believe that this kind of last-chance safety net is a viable and necessary function of government, or you don't. Either you think this is something we need to spend money on, or you don't. If you fall into the latter camp, I truly don't know what to say to you.

And the same goes for UTMB and the UT Board of Regents, which seems hellbent on doing its part to make Galveston non-viable.

Galveston itself had become economically dependent on UTMB. On the eve of Hurricane Ike's arrival, the city's population was more than 57,000 people; UTMB employed around 12,500. With so much at stake, the enmity between the residents of Galveston (an eccentric lot in the best circumstances) and the regents in Austin (a little insensitive in the best circumstances) flourished predictably. Once UTMB president David L. Callender and UT System interim chancellor Kenneth I. Shine started initiating changes that heralded program cuts and layoffs, the long-standing rumor that UT wanted a medical center in Austin--and might kill UTMB to get it--spread across the Island with, well, hurricane force.

Then the real hurricane hit.

[...]

[I]n a closed meeting of questionable legality held in El Paso on November 12, the regents drew a line in the sand: To staunch the bleeding, the university would lay off up to 3,800 UTMB employees, everyone from clerks to world-class surgeons. (As this article went to press, a lawsuit was being filed on behalf of the Texas Faculty Association alleging that the regents had violated the Texas Open Meetings Act.) A reserve fund would be used to pay staff salaries, but that money would run out by April or May if the remaining 10,000 employees remained on the payroll. Promises of dubious value followed: Yes, John Sealy Hospital would reopen, the UTMB administrators announced--but in a scaled-down state, with 200 beds instead of the 550 available before the storm. The trauma center would also reopen--but only for emergency medical services. Care for the indigent and the uninsured would be restored--eventually. The regents publicly declared support for UTMB, but to many in Galveston, and to Senator [Steve] Ogden, this plan looked suspicious at best. "UT is using the hurricane as an excuse to do what they've wanted to do for a long time, which is to reduce their presence in Galveston and go somewhere else," he says.

The choice is ours. Do we value it, or do we kill it? There's no middle ground.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on January 08, 2009 to Hurricane Katrina