Gov. Stein seeks $13.5 billion for Hurricane Helene recovery efforts
Gov. Josh Stein announced Monday that he is requesting nearly $13.5 billion in new funding from Congress for Hurricane Helene recovery.
Members of the Governor’s Advisory Committee on Western North Carolina Recovery joined Stein in Flat Rock to support the request. Those dollars would go toward restoring homes and small businesses, supporting local government services and rebuilding roads and bridges, Stein said.
Next week marks the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Helene striking North Carolina, causing nearly $60 billion in damage.
So far, North Carolina has received federal recovery dollars equivalent to 9% of the total damage. Stein said states that were similarly impacted following Hurricanes Katrina, Maria and Sandy saw 70% of the damage covered by federal funding, with the average federal assistance for billion-dollar storm events sitting between 40% and 50%.
“We need more help,” Stein said. “The next stage of recovery is going to require a new commitment from Congress and from the Administration to not forget the people of western North Carolina.”
Stein’s proposal calls for $8 billion from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery funding to rebuild homes and small businesses.
“With the CBGDR grant model, we can get building right away without the cash flow problems of reimbursement programs,” Stein said. “HUD has been a good partner to North Carolina and I want to build on that success.”
The governor is also requesting nearly $2 billion from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Special Community Disaster Loans, which help local governments finance police and fire protection, revenue collection, hazard insurance, trash collection and public facilities maintenance.
“Western North Carolina towns and cities were forced to spend money that they didn’t have to rescue people from disaster,” Stein said. “With so many people displaced and business activity diminished, there’s no such thing as a stable source of revenue for these local governments.”
A similar loan program was established for towns in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Stein said a large majority of small businesses have not returned to pre-Helene revenues in the aftermath of the storm. The proposal asks for $400 million from the Small Business Administration to offer more forgivable loans to business owners trying to regain their footing. Over 2,100 small businesses have already received grants through the Western North Carolina Small Business Initiative, but Stein said the demand for the grants far exceeded the supply.
The request also includes $2 billion from the U.S. Department of Transportation to restore roads and critical infrastructure, including I-40. More than 97% of state-maintained roads closed due to the storm have been reopened.
Stein said a number of reimbursements above $100,000 have been approved by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, but the state still does not have access to the money due to another bureaucratic level of review coming from a Department of Government Efficiency committee.
“All of this is slowing down the reimbursements, which means these local governments do not have cash flow,” Stein said. “It’s taking way too long.”
The General Assembly has passed two bipartisan packages this year appropriating more than $1 billion toward housing recovery, bridge repair, infrastructure upgrades and crop loss in the aftermath of Helene.
“The Legislature will continue to work together and work with Gov. Stein to keep recovery efforts moving forward,” said Sen. Kevin Corbin, R-Macon. “However, we do need the federal government to continue to partner with us in this effort.”
Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer said recovery efforts are pivoting to a long-term focus. She said unemployment rates have not recovered to pre-storm lows and damage to parks and playgrounds enjoyed by thousands are in need of repair.
“We still need to get rid of debris and destroyed structures that linger on private property and make our city look much less welcoming to visitors and locals alike,” she said.
On Wednesday, the governor will travel to Washington, D.C., to meet with federal officials about the importance of these resources to Western North Carolina’s recovery.
“The people of Western North Carolina are not asking for a handout,” Stein said. “They are asking for a hand up to get back on their feet … One year after this terrible tragedy, it’s time for our federal government to meet the needs of the people of Western North Carolina.”
Transportation Secretary
Joey Hopkins had planned to retire last winter as state secretary of Transportation. More than 30 years with the N.C. Department of Transportation was a good career, and the end of Gov. Roy Cooper’s tenure in office seemed like a good time to move on. But after Hurricane Helene handed NCDOT the greatest challenge in its history, Hopkins was persuaded to stay.
Now, with initial repairs to roads and bridges in Western North Carolina nearly complete, Hopkins will retire on Oct. 1. His successor will be deputy secretary Daniel Johnson, who also serves as NCDOT’s general counsel.
Gov. Josh Stein announced the change late Friday. “We have much work ahead to strengthen our infrastructure in Western North Carolina, as well as to lead our entire state into the future of transportation,” Stein said in a statement. “With his record of public service, leadership, and expertise in transportation, Daniel Johnson is the right person for the job.”
Johnson joined NCDOT in 2017 after working as a lawyer in private practice and as an assistant district attorney in Wake County. He previously served as a surface warfare officer in the U.S. Navy, where he received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, the highest non-combat decoration awarded for heroism. Johnson is a native of Hickory and earned undergraduate and law degrees from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
Dorm Costs
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is building a new dorm for the first time in decades, and taxpayers are footing the $110 million bill. The project will include two buildings for 700 students in the area of Jackson Hall on the north side of campus.
For comparison, Raleigh’s FNB Tower, a 22-story luxury skyscraper on prime real estate with 239 apartments, retail, office space, a gym, yoga studio, outdoor pool, and a dog-washing station, cost $116 million when it was built five years ago.
The last time UNC built dorms on its main campus was back in 2002. That project produced four dorms housing a combined 960 students for about $47 million. Today, 20 years later, UNC will spend more than double the money to house about two-thirds as many students.
“We were kind of shocked with the pricing being over $100 million for 700 beds,” said Marty Kotis, who chairs the university’s Budget and Finance Committee and works professionally in real estate development.
The math breaks down to more than $150,000 per bed or more than $300,000 per dorm room, since most are doubles. It’s close to the cost of buying a home in the Triangle. Triangle MLS data shows the median sales price was $424,700 in August 2025 for central North Carolina’s 19 counties.
Kotis said the rising costs are partly due to regulations. “We talked about a need for reform and regulation regarding some of the requirements that are imposed on the university by state and federal regulations and how that can drive the cost higher,” he said.
Among those costs are LEED-certified green building standards and participation from the Office of Historically Underutilized Businesses [HUB], which requires a portion of the work to be done by minority-, women- or disabled veteran–owned businesses.
Additionally, UNC says it takes a 50-year approach to construction, which means spending more on materials and design up front to ensure durability. This is a higher standard than most private projects.
But Kotis pointed out one major difference from the private sector is how public institutions negotiate costs.
“In the private sector, you might meet with a variety of contractors and architects and discuss how to cost-effectively build your project,” Kotis said. “In the public sector, you don’t discuss pricing much at all. You don’t discuss their fees.”
It’s part of a system called “qualification-based selection.” Universities hire teams before negotiating price. Since UNC sets its budget based on past university projects, at Chapel Hill and elsewhere, the price isn’t set by local demand. It’s based on what other schools were willing to pay.
However, UNC maintains that it’s staying on trend with national benchmarks. The university shared a document showing other dorm projects with similar costs, including a $33 million dorm at Virginia Tech, a $118 million dorm at the University of Texas at Austin and a $326 million project at the University of Florida.
NC is ground zero for calls to reform FEMA
When the remnants of Tropical Storm Fred flooded Canton’s town hall and police department in 2021, the town spent more than $1 million on temporary trailers to house them, with FEMA assuring them reimbursement would follow. Four years and another major storm later, the money still hasn’t arrived. On top of that, Canton is also waiting on FEMA’s repayment for more than $300,000 spent clearing debris after Helene.
With an economy battered by the closure of the town’s paper mill in 2023 and a budget of $17.5 million, Canton can’t borrow and spend its way into recovery, its mayor, Zeb Smathers, said. They need federal support, Smathers said, but the system is broken. “The current way that we handle disasters at the federal level cannot sustain itself,” he said.
Nearly a year after Helene killed 108 people and caused severe damage to communities across Western North Carolina, several municipalities are still waiting to be reimbursed for funds spent on recovery efforts made weeks after the storm. As of Sept. 4, the state was waiting on $64 million — an improvement from the $115 million North Carolina was due before Gov. Josh Stein put pressure on the federal government last month.
The FEMA reimbursement process has always been notoriously slow. But local and state leaders say recent measures meant to mitigate waste and fraud in the federal government have made this historically slow process even slower – causing funds already green-lighted by FEMA to sit for months before making their way to the state.
This, combined with pre-existing issues with FEMA – webs of red tape and a revolving door of guidance – contributes to a lack of efficiency plaguing the organization and fears of major delays to the recovery process, leaders say.
Western North Carolina leaders want reform at the federal disaster agency that would ensure other communities that face disasters don’t have the same experience. Smathers said state politicians from both sides of the aisle have advocated for change to the system, but they can only do so much.
“They are running up against a system that is not producing for the people and giving us the resources and respect that we need,” he said.
In his 23-year career in emergency management, Don Campbell said the FEMA reimbursement system is the most bureaucratic process he’s ever encountered. Make no mistake, FEMA has always been slow, said Campbell, the chief of staff for North Carolina Emergency Management. But additional layers of approval from U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and the Department of Government Efficiency are causing even more delays, Campbell said.
Normally, communities hit by disaster would only have to wait for their reimbursement claims to be approved by FEMA – a process that typically takes months. Now, because of a new layer of approval introduced by Noem in June, all contracts and grants over $100,000 awarded by Department of Homeland Security agencies — such as FEMA — have to be signed off by her personally before release.
After municipalities waited months for their reimbursement claims to make it through the laborious FEMA approval process, their requests were sent to Noem’s desk pending her signoff — and were sitting there for months, Campbell said.
In an Aug. 29 press release, FEMA denied that Noem’s review has slowed the process, and said the approval process became 126% faster since Trump took office. “By personally reviewing every grant and mission assignment over $100,000, Secretary Noem is returning accountability to a federal government that has long needed it,” the release said.
Once funds received signoff from Noem, they ran into another hurdle: DOGE, Campbell said.
Earlier this year, DOGE introduced the “Defend the Spend” program, which requires payment justification from the recipient and the awarding agency. “Even though it had already gone through all of the 30 rounds of FEMA approvals ahead of time, (Defend the Spend) was a whole new set of having to sort of relitigate the entire project completely over,” Campbell said. “For quite some time, we had (funds for) projects that were waiting to be physically sent to the state of North Carolina … that were sitting for 30 to 90 days. And normally that takes 24 to 48 hours, prior to (this) process.”
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has called for addressing disaster funding problems by ending FEMA and giving more responsibility to states. His administration’s cuts have already shrunk the agency’s staff. More than 180 former and current FEMA employees signed a letter accusing Trump and Noem of undermining the organization’s capabilities and ignoring mandated responsibilities.
Tony McEwen is the Carolinas director for the American Flood Coalition, which advocates for flood resilience policy on the local, state and federal level. While McEwen said he recognizes the need to mitigate wasteful spending, there have to be ways to do so in an efficient manner, he said.
“You don’t want to waste taxpayer resources by setting up a situation that’s vulnerable to fraud,” he said. ”But you also don’t want to set up a situation where you’re wasting taxpayer resources because you’re not getting resources to communities in an expedited manner. There’s waste and misuse of resources on both sides of that equation.”
In April, U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards sent a 62-page report to Trump and the FEMA Review Council that detailed ways to make FEMA more efficient. Edwards, a Henderson County Republican, says he believes the Trump administration has taken his recommendations to heart. As for the slow reimbursement rate, Edwards said the blame can be pointed in several directions.
“Every time a municipality brings one of these specific cases to me, I start digging underneath why the reimbursement might be lacking,” he said in an interview with the Charlotte Observer. “In some cases, it’s because of the failure of that very municipality to adequately address the questions of FEMA. In some cases, the reimbursement is lacking because of the state response. In some cases, it’s the sheer volume of the claims that are being made of FEMA. There are lots of entities that are involved, and there’s plenty of blame to go around.”
In July, Edwards introduced the FEMA Reform Act, which aimed to reinstate the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program that the Trump administration has attempted to end. Edwards says restoring and reforming the program would ensure rural communities have more equitable access to funding meant to protect against disasters.
This bill advanced out of a House committee in September. Edwards said rather than funds flowing through FEMA, he wants to see Congress appropriate funds to the state through a block grant and allow North Carolina to handle the application process.
McEwen said his organization gives credit to the Trump administration for being open to ideas on how to bring change to FEMA. One desired change he’s heard from communities grappling with the FEMA process is a need for upfront funding. When contemplating FEMA reform, he said, Western North Carolina must be at the table. “This can’t be something that’s done behind closed doors,” he said. “The lived experiences from those on the front lines of Hurricane Helene have to be at the table for this once-in-a-generation, or once-in-a-multi-generation, opportunity to reform FEMA.”
Canton residents “deserve better than excuses and delays,” Smathers said. They’ve weathered the COVID-19 pandemic, Fred, the mill closure and now Helene. ”I’m tired for a lot of reasons,” Smathers said, “but I’m just tired of the broken promises.”