The white man's port of the future; Mississippi governor mismanages funds meant for housing recovery--again.(GULF COAST UPDATE)

LAST FALL, the Mississippi State Port Authority convened a hearing to listen to nearly 100 comments about Gov. Haley Barbour's controversial plan, ironically named "Port of the Future." The proposal would divert $600 million from rebuilding housing destroyed by Hurricane Katrina to expanding a port in Gulfport, Mississippi, instead.

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"It is morally unacceptable in light of the fact that there are thousands of Mississippi households that have not recovered," said Roberta Avila, the head of the Mississippi-based advocacy group Interfaith Disaster Task Force, on a local television station.

Ten days after the public hearing. Port Authority officials adopted the plan as their roadmap for economic development in the state. For many community advocates, it was the latest in a long line of offenses since Hurricane Katrina hit.

Back in December 2005, with the Bush administration's bungled rescue and recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina fresh in the nation's memory, Congress gave Mississippi $5.5 billion for housing recovery and economic development, with a federal mandate that at least half of the money benefit primarily low and moderate-income residents. The money was much needed for the more than 100,000 Mississippians who had been displaced by the storm, many of whom lived in poorly built homes still badly damaged from Hurricane Ivan in 2004. (FEMA alone estimated it provided emergency shelter to 105,000 residents of the state in the year following Katrina.)

But in the hands of Gov. Barbour, the first attempt at disbursing home-recovery money failed. It offered ...