RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina House members advanced Wednesday a Republican package to boost state recovery funding after Hurricane Helene as committees fleshed out details on how best to spend another $500 million to address the historic flooding.
The House’s budget-writing committee voted for the latest spending proposal, which would emphasize repairs for damaged homes, private bridges and roads, assistance to farmers who lost crops and rebuilding infrastructure adjacent used by small businesses.
GOP House leaders had unveiled a version last week, but several amendments adjusted the measure in a special Helene recovery committee on Tuesday. A House floor vote is expected next week, said Rep. John Bell, the House rules chairman and co-chairman of the recovery committee.
The package remains less than half of the $1.07 billion that new Democratic Gov. Josh Stein sought in new recovery spending earlier this month from legislators.
Stein’s package contains several initiatives the House plan currently lacks, including money to recompense local governments in the mountains for lost or spent revenues and for two business grant programs designed to help small businesses directly.
Senate GOP leaders will have their own competing spending ideas that will figure into negotiations with House counterparts. Both Stein and Republican lawmakers want to get more Helene spending out the door early this year to address immediate needs. Additional funds are expected in the two-year state budget that would take effect July 1.
The legislature already has appropriated close to $1 billion since last fall for Helene aid in the weeks after it made landfall in late September.
“This is just the next step in this process,” House Speaker Destin Hall told Tuesday’s committee meeting. “Somebody asked me earlier, ‘How many bills are we going to need to do this?’ And my answer is — and I know you all feel the same — it’s going to be as many as it takes for us to get it done to rebuild western North Carolina.”
North Carolina state officials reported that Helene damaged 74,000 homes and thousands of miles in both state-maintained and private roads, bridges and culverts. State officials projected the storm caused a record $59.6 billion in damages and recovery needs.
Congressional legislation approved in December and other federal actions are projected to provide over $15 billion to North Carolina for rebuilding.
The state House proposal seeks to maximize federal matching funds, avoid mistakes from previous storm recovery efforts and prevent the distribution of too much money to programs ill-equipped to get it out the door, Bell said.
“This body is very strategic in what we’re trying to do,” Bell said Wednesday.
Adjustments that House Republicans made this week to their preliminary bill included shifting $75 million to create a state Agriculture Department program to address agricultural crop and infrastructure losses.
Another $60 million initially earmarked for repairs of state facilities would be used for other purposes. Nearly all of it — $55 million — would help small businesses, although not in the form of direct payments, as Stein and other Democrats want.
Instead, the proposed infrastructure grant program would allocate money to local governments to repair “qualifying infrastructure needs” like utilities, broadband and sidewalks that would benefit small businesses trying to reemerge from the storm. Bell said Wednesday that a grant program could be open to abuses by businesses that aren’t located specifically in the damaged region.
With Republicans falling one seat short of retaining a veto-proof majority in the General Assembly after the November election, Stein and Democratic allies may be able to yield more leverage to fashion a package to their liking.
For example, Democratic Rep. Eric Ager of Buncombe County offered an amendment Tuesday to create a direct payment program to small businesses that Stein sought, running it through the state Revenue Department.
“We’re losing businesses in western North Carolina every day and we’ve got to find a solution,” Ager said, adding that it “would really go a long way in keeping some folks solvent through to the summer when business picks back up again.”
While Ager pulled his amendment before a vote because earlier committee action took away his funding source, Bell suggested to Ager and later to reporters that new language to help small businesses may be considered.
