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NEW ORLEANS — When Mayor Ray Nagin jetted off to Cuba recently, the buzz around town and on the Web had little to do with trade opportunities or disaster preparedness, the jaunt's stated mission.
Instead, chatter focused on motivation and cost. Many top administration officials — and Nagin himself — will be out of office in months and seemingly unable to do much with any useful information they picked up from the Cuban government.
And with little discernible results for the city from Nagin's other overseas travels, a potential $68 million city budget deficit next year and allegations a businessman who had ties to the city's technology office paid for at least part of some Nagin trips — including a 2005 family vacation to Jamaica — there was a lot of public skepticism.
Nagin has only himself to blame.
The mayor's press office gave no advance notice of the Cuba trip. It had done so for earlier trips, to South Africa, Panama, China and Australia. Word Nagin had left with a group, including the police and fire chiefs and other city department heads, went out the morning of his departure, Oct. 16.
Communication problems will likely be part of Nagin's legacy after he leaves office in May, said Peter Burns, associate professor of political science at Loyola University. Nagin has been criticized as keeping too-low a profile, particularly as the city has struggled to recover from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and his approval ratings have slipped to abysmal levels. The mayor has shrugged this off, saying he's focused on laying the foundation for a robust recovery.
The handling of the Cuba trip, Burns said, "again fits very conveniently into the trend of why people have negative feelings about Nagin."
University of New Orleans political scientist Ed Chervenak offered a different take: "I just really believe that they're politically and psychologically exhausted at City Hall, and they don't care what the media or the City Council think."
Nagin, whose colorful, off-the-cuff remarks have garnered negative press (remember "chocolate" city?), was in vintage form while in Cuba. In an interview with The Associated Press, he seemed to praise the communist nation's approach to major hurricanes. This drew a rebuke from a New Orleans-based leader of a Cuban exile group.
During Katrina, Nagin said, "The president and the governor were going back and forth. ... in Cuba you don't have that problem. The government says, 'This is what we're doing, these are the resources we are going to deploy,' and it pretty much happens."
He also said Cuba does a better job of "knowing their citizens at a very, very detailed level." Its neighborhood watch system aids in evacuation and social services but also is supposed to report behavior deemed subversive.
"I honestly find what he's saying, I think the only word I can use (for it) is peculiar, because we certainly don't want that in the United States," said George Fowler, a New Orleans lawyer and vice president of the anti-Castro Cuban-American National Foundation.
"He says that, in Cuba, the people do what the guy at the top says. The guy at the top is a dictator," Fowler said. "So, yes, when he speaks, people listen or they get on the bus or whatever. In a communist dictatorship, sure you can round people up quicker because they have no constitutional or political rights."
A spokeswoman for Louisiana's emergency preparedness agency declined comment on whether Cuba had lessons to share. The state managed the evacuation of nearly 2 million people from south Louisiana ahead of Hurricane Gustav last year. The state-directed, city-assisted evacuation of New Orleans was considered almost total. She called the trip a "local effort" about which the state had no details.
President Barack Obama's visit to New Orleans on Oct. 15 interfered with the original plan, to take part in an international conference on disasters and health, and pushed the trip back two days, City Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell said. In a statement, she said she questioned still going, given the city's financial situation and the fact the group was missing most of the conference, but was told the travel costs had "already been incurred." She said she was reimbursing her costs.
A Nagin spokesman said the trip is part of 2009 budgeted expenses and that there's "much to be learned from Cuba, an internationally recognized leader on hurricane protection and disaster response." He also noted administration efforts to resolve the projected shortfall.
While Chervenak labeled the trip a "full-fledged junket," Burns saw value, particularly if the visit builds relationships that would benefit the city if the U.S. government further eases its long-standing trade restrictions with Cuba.
Nagin's itinerary included meetings with the Cuban Chamber of Commerce, tourism and port authorities.
"I think politicians on the way out want to show people they're not just lame ducks," Burns said. "What we might be seeing is, Nagin is still trying to show he's still working, he's still in charge. I think Nagin would use this to show New Orleans is back, New Orleans is a viable place to do business."
