Stein Transition
Gov.-elect Josh Stein has added more people to his transition team to lead committees on various areas of government. Like last week’s announcement, this news also includes a former Republican lawmaker, someone from the administration of outgoing Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, and people from the Department of Justice.
Current or former state government leaders:
- Chuck McGrady, a Henderson County Republican and former member of the state House from 2011 to 2020. He serves on the state Board of Transportation as an at-large member.
- Charlie Perusse, former state budget director for Cooper
- Libba Evans, former secretary at the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources
- Lee Lilley, director of Economic and Pandemic Recovery in the Cooper administration
From Stein’s current agency, the Department of Justice:
- Laura Brewer, deputy chief of staff at DOJ
- Kindl Detar, public protection section director at DOJ
Local government leaders:
- Shinica Thomas, chair of the Wake County Board of Commissioners
- Jonathan Barfield, member of the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners
- Janice Cole, county manager for Hertford County
- Avery Crump, district attorney for Guilford County
- Raleigh Police Chief Estella Patterson
Cherokee Chief:
- Michell Hicks, Principal Chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians
Transition team members from the private sector:
- Sarah Bolton, The Raben Group managing principal
- Tracy Doaks, MCNC president and CEO
- Reg Henderson, Lowe’s vice president of government relations
- Frankie Jones, Lincoln Financial Group vice president and managing director
- Sam Metzler, Quality Oil executive vice president of retail operations
- Gerald Roach, Smith Anderson firm chair
- Sallie Shuping-Russell, former managing director at BlackRock
- Sepi Saidi, TranSystems board member
Hurricane Recovery Probe
With state lawmakers set to question officials overseeing recovery efforts after hurricanes Florence and Matthew, North Carolina’s federal representatives are also calling for accountability. At the beginning of November, eight Republican members of North Carolina’s congressional delegation — all except for Rep. Patrick McHenry — sent a letter to Rae Oliver Davis, the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, requesting an investigation into the use of federal HUD funds by the state’s Office of Recovery and Resiliency (NCORR).
This follows a request for additional funding by this state agency, which is tasked with rebuilding Eastern North Carolina homes damaged by Matthew in 2016 and Florence in 2018.
NCORR was created in 2018 by the GOP-led legislature and is overseen by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. The agency is also known as Rebuild NC. It received about $779 million in HUD funding for recovery efforts for both hurricanes, which is spread out among programs, with most going to the program for rebuilding homes.
Meanwhile, on Monday, Laura Hogshead, chief operating officer of NCORR, and Pryor Gibson, deputy legislative counsel to Cooper, who has been assigned to monitor NCORR’s operations, have been called to testify before state lawmakers in a hurricane response and recovery subcommittee.
NCORR said this month it could have to pause aid to Matthew and Florence survivors unless it gets more funding. That comes as the state starts recovering from a new, even more devastating storm. The remnants of Hurricane Helene impacted Western North Carolina in late September, causing historic flooding and devastating damage. Recovery in the region will likely take years. State lawmakers are coming back on Tuesday to Raleigh and may allocate additional funding for Helene recovery efforts.
NCORR has been under fire continuously due to delays in getting people home, but most recently, scrutiny intensified after the agency announced a $175 million shortfall in funding. As of early November, there were 1,523 families accepted into NCORR’s homeowner recovery program but still waiting. Over 2,000 were back home or had received a reimbursement. State lawmakers, through a bill funding Hurricane Helene recovery efforts, provided an extra $30 million for NCORR. However, NCORR told The News & Observer in early November that while the $30 million helped, without additional funding the state would have to pause aid for hundreds of Eastern North Carolina hurricane survivors.
It also told The News & Observer that in 2018, the state requested $1.1 billion from Congress in funding for housing through federal Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) in connection with Hurricane Florence but received only $542 million.
Cooper spokesperson Jordan Monaghan said then that “recovering from natural disasters requires a long-term commitment from state, local, and federal leaders” and that “the long-term need for additional funds has been identified since the program’s inception in 2018.”
North Carolina’s congressional delegation is requesting a “full” inspector general report in light of the $175 million budget deficit, says the letter, which adds that while the office already conducted an audit two years ago, “this latest revelation underscores the need for a comprehensive investigation of NCORR.”
A 2022 audit by HUD’s Office of the Inspector General said it could not provide “reasonable assurance” that nearly half of federal expenditures it reviewed had been spent properly due to lacking documentation. It called on HUD to require the state to provide adequate documentation for more than $2.5 million in questioned spending or repay it. HUD’s inspector general’s office is an independent organization that conducts and supervises audits related to the department. HUD is the agency responsible for taking action following the report. At the time, Dwrena Allen, a spokesperson for the inspector general’s office, told The News & Observer that the issues were common.
The letter shared with McClatchy also says that this May, U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis requested that Hogshead provide an update on progress, and that “at no point” in her response did Hogshead “make any indication that the agency she has headed since its establishment in 2018 was in financial peril and on a course to renege on its promise to rebuild or repair thousands of families’ homes.”
In January, Hogshead unsuccessfully attempted to secure $20 million in COVID-19 funds from the North Carolina Pandemic Recovery Office and requested a $5.4 million loan from the State Disaster Relief Fund, says the letter.
Inside Climate News reported that NCORR needed that loan because contractors had not been paid in more than a month from homeowner recovery funds. The loan was approved, which Rebuild NC then repaid with HUD funds, according to Inside Climate News.
“State officials only publicly admitted to the pressing budget shortfall after investigative reporting revealed such,” says the letter.
On Tuesday, Congress is holding a hearing with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Deanne Criswell “to examine the agency’s preparedness and response to recent disasters, including Hurricanes Helene and Milton.”
Helene Repairs
The destruction of U.S. 19W by the remnants of Hurricane Helene is extraordinary but also typical of what the storm did to many roads in Western North Carolina. U.S. 19W snakes about 22 miles from near Burnsville through the isolated northwest corner of Yancey County up to the Tennessee state line. For most of its route, it follows the Cane River, which was turned into an unrecognizable torrent on Sept. 27 after Helene dumped two feet of rain in the mountains.
The river and the debris it carried destroyed bridges and washed away miles of pavement and the earth underneath it. In that respect, the damage was similar to what happened to hundreds of roads along mountain streams and rivers after the storm. But among the long list of roads that need fixing, U.S. 19W stands out, both because of the extent of the damage and the estimated cost to rebuild it. Along a 14-mile stretch beside the river, the highway simply disappeared in several places, replaced by piles of rocks and sand or gleaming, newly exposed bedrock.
“Right now, we have crews just building the road back from nothing,” said Chris Deyton, the deputy engineer for N.C. Department of Transportation’s Division 13, which includes Yancey and six other counties.
NCDOT expects to spend $1 billion to rebuild the two-lane highway. That’s nearly the same as the most expensive post-Helene road repair, the reconstruction of the eastbound lanes of Interstate 40 through the Pigeon River Gorge.
Overall, NCDOT estimates it will cost roughly $5 billion to restore state roads, bridges, and other transportation infrastructure damaged by Helene, according to Emily McGraw, the director of Highway Operations.
In contrast, McGraw said, NCDOT spent about $700 million on repairs from all previous storms combined since 2016, which includes two hurricanes, Matthew and Florence, that devastated the eastern part of the state.
Where the money will come from is not yet clear. The department has enough on hand to help cover initial costs, while the Federal Highway Administration sent $100 million as a down payment on federal help to follow.
NCDOT will ask the General Assembly for more money as well, said Secretary of Transportation Joey Hopkins. It will be a long recovery, Hopkins told members of the Board of Transportation this month.
“We can’t afford to spend $5 billion in 18 months, so it will have to be spread out,” he said. “It’s probably not unrealistic that we’re wrapping this up six to eight to 10 years from now.”
NCDOT says it has been able to reopen more than 1,000 roads that were closed by fallen trees, landslides, and flooding from Helene. About 100 more have partial access. But nearly 300 remain closed, many of them like U.S. 19W with sections that must be rebuilt from scratch. The goal in most cases is to build temporary roads to serve the often isolated residents and communities that depend on them.
Deyton hopes NCDOT and its contractors can have at least a basic gravel road in place along the Cane River by Christmas if the weather holds. “But I know any day the weather’s going to change on us,” he said. “We’ve been very blessed to have good weather after the storm, because that’s been a big difference.”