State lawmakers voted unanimously Wednesday to spend $273 million to begin the recovery process in western North Carolina.
The funding bill aims to meet the immediate needs in counties affected by Helene, and lawmakers are planning to return to Raleigh again later this month to pass a second round of funding.
Much of the funding in the bill will help local governments apply for and match federal recovery money. A $16 million allocation will help local school districts continue to pay their nutrition staff while schools are closed.
The bill also extends the current state of emergency declaration until March.
The recovery process is expected to take years, and lawmakers stressed that this week's legislation is just the first step. Republican Sen. Ralph Hise is from Spruce Pine, one of the hardest-hit areas. He notes that the water treatment facility in Mitchell County has been destroyed and will take a long time to rebuild. He says the bill is a good first step.
“There's a lot of distrust in the areas I have, but I hope we can begin to show that North Carolina is stepping up to its responsibilities, and we are here for the people of the west,” he said.
Sen. Tim Moffitt, R-Henderson, said the state’s western counties have sometimes felt neglected by Raleigh leaders in the past, but he’s seen strong support in the past two weeks.
“This is the first action, the first chapter of a very long book to rebuilding the mountains and bringing western North Carolina back to some semblance of where we were two weeks ago,” Moffitt said.
The bill also includes $5 million for voter education and outreach. That outreach will be needed as the legislation expands a State Board of Elections policy that allows polls to be moved in 25 affected counties.
Some polling places and early voting sites have flooded or aren't accessible.
“Much of what we're doing with the legislation today will be a codification of what the State Board did” earlier this week with a resolution, Senate leader Phil Berger said. Some of the flexibility provided in the resolution will be offered to 25 counties, up from 13 in the initial action.
“The hurricane has dealt a serious blow to what may very well be the ability to conduct elections in the disaster-related counties, and so the State Board of Elections made a good effort at helping address those problems,” Berger added.
One provision would allow state employees to serve as fill-in poll workers without having to use their time off from work.
The Republican lawmakers who spoke during Wednesday’s press conference largely avoided criticizing the initial response from state and federal agencies — even as the GOP’s embattled candidate for governor, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, has been calling the response “abysmal” during campaign events and blaming Gov. Roy Cooper.
Rep. Mark Pless, R-Haywood, said he’s heard concerns about the initial state and federal government response in his community, but it’s not yet time to assess the response and cast blame.
“I'm concerned, just like everyone else, that we didn't do everything correct,” he said. “I'm not going to dismiss everything I've heard as being misinformation, but I am going to say there's a time and there is a place for us to figure out what went wrong.”
While lawmakers hadn’t been scheduled to come back until November, they’re now scheduling an Oct. 24 session to pass a second round of storm recovery funding.
Berger said the $273 million in this week’s legislation is just a fraction of what North Carolina will ultimately spend on recovery, but legislators are awaiting further action at the federal level.
“As far as the total that the state is going to expend, no, this is not all of it, not by a long shot,” Berger said. “A lot of what will be needed for recovery will be funded at the federal level by the folks at FEMA, and the state's obligation is generally for a match of some sort.
"We don't want to get too far ahead of the federal government on that, because we don't want to supplant those federal dollars with state dollars if we're not required to.”
The bill also acknowledges that Helene wasn't the only natural disaster to hit North Carolina this fall. It sets up a new recovery fund for the storm that led to major flooding in Brunswick County and the Carolina Beach area in September, although it says a dollar figure for that will be set "after appropriate damage assessments are completed." A similar provision is in the bill to address a tornado that hit Rocky Mount during Helene, damaging buildings and causing injuries.
The bill now goes to Gov. Roy Cooper, who's expected to sign it into law.
