Answering critical published reports, Republican state Treasurer Brad Briner said Tuesday his office has created from the ground up a program for cashflow distribution to local governments in North Carolina needing the $100 million appropriated for Hurricane Helene recovery.
It’s a task the freshman Council of State member has owned for his department. He confirmed earlier in the week that the money was yet to be distributed, and he gave more insight as to why on Tuesday at the meeting of the 10 members of the executive offices and in a release.
“Our staff has performed Herculean work in short order to build the architecture of the cashflow loan program from the ground up,” Briner said. “We are eager to begin approving loans later this month to potentially more than 140 local governments that were shattered by Helene. They have shown irrepressible grit as they continue to pick up the pieces. These loans will give them a cash infusion sorely needed to accelerate the road to recovery.”
Government help in challenging situations comes with a double-edged sword, as evident from past natural disasters and COVID-19. FEMA, the federal arm helping recovery, is an easy punching bag because of bureaucracy and red tape, yet there’s also the documented fraud that happened with pandemic funding.
While Republican President Donald Trump wishes to roll back or even do away with the Federal Emergency Management Agency that didn’t come into existence until 1979, pushing relief leadership to the states, it is North Carolina and former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration that shows no route is flawless. His decision to create the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency after Hurricanes Matthew (2016) and Florence (2018) was noble in idea, poor in execution.
That office, with failed leader Laura Hogshead already having fallen on a resignation sword, rang up a budget deficit of a quarter-billion dollars, owed $37 million on completed projects, and accomplished projects for only 2,800 of 4,200 families – from storms six and eight years ago.
Democratic Gov. Josh Stein has not opted to continue it, instead creating the Governor’s Recovery Office for Western North Carolina, or GROW NC. Trump created a federal Council to Assess the Federal Emergency Management Agency, naming multiple North Carolinians to help and asking Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley to oversee organizational efforts for Helene recovery in the state.
Briner said local governments must provide damage assessments to the state Department of Emergency Management no later than Friday of next week. Assessments will be used to calculate loan amounts. Once the amounts are determined, the governing board of local governments will be required to vote on acceptance.
Money could flow in three weeks on Feb. 24.
