Editor: Baton Rouge must now focus on needs, not wants

Humans have an amazing capacity for ignoring the root causes of their problems and focusing strictly on the symptoms, says Business Report Executive Editor JR Ball in his latest column. Those in Baton Rouge and Louisiana are clearly no different than anywhere else, he says. “For example, instead of dealing with the underlying reasons for Baton Rouge’s horrendous traffic (decades of poor planning decisions, the lack of a working street grid and an over-reliance on the automobile), we prefer instead to attack the symptom of roads disguised as parking lots by simply making those roads wider,” Ball says. “We do this because it’s less painful and less expensive than a systemic overhaul, and it satisfies our need for immediate gratification. The problem, however, is that by failing to address the root causes of traffic, that overcrowded four-lane road soon becomes an overcrowded six-lane road.” And with the state’s ability to spend steadily declining “as a result of massive tax cuts, ever-increasing tax incentives, rampant public pension liability, a tread-water economy, the phasing out of post-Katrina federal largesse, and an abhorrence of new taxes by the governor and strict-letter fiscal conservatives,” Ball says, the money no longer exists to fund our wants. It’s time to focus exclusively on our needs. Read the full column here; and send your comments to editors@businessreport.com.