'Shouldn't have to fight your own government': Stein criticizes FEMA over funding delays

Hours after U.S. Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) used a procedural move to hold up some of Republican President Donald Trump’s nominees in a protest over slow-moving Hurricane Helene aid, he got a call from Democratic Gov. Josh Stein thanking him for sticking his neck out.

“We need our representatives to fight for North Carolina, and I was pleased to see that,” Stein told WRAL News in an exclusive interview Wednesday morning, following Budd’s action on Tuesday in Washington.

Budd’s gambit worked. Almost immediately, $12 million in funding was sent to western North Carolina for Helene relief from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Stein used a similar name-and-shame strategy last month, WRAL News reported exclusively at the time. He sent a series of letters to Kristi Noem, the Trump administration leader of the Department of Homeland Security, who oversees FEMA.

Stein asked Noem why she hadn’t been allowing money to flow into western North Carolina and why FEMA was months late in allowing states to apply for 2025 disaster preparedness grants. Within days of Stein’s second attempt to get her attention, those grant applications had opened up and North Carolina had also received $96 million for Helene relief.

Noem has instituted a policy that no spending orders within DHS for more than $100,000 can happen without her personal approval. The multi-billion-dollar agency oversees FEMA as well as immigration and border control efforts, counter-terror work and more. National media have reported that her need to personally approve even relatively small spending proposals has massively slowed down disaster aid. Stein and some of his top Helene recovery aides have echoed those concerns in recent months.

On Tuesday, Budd joined the growing chorus of critics, telling CNN that “choke-holding this thing, or stonewalling states that are hurt by hurricanes, is not the way to get rid of waste, fraud and abuse.

FEMA officials did not immediately respond to WRAL News' request for comment on Wednesday.

Budd told CNN he would continue holding up DHS nominees in Congress until he got results for western North Carolina.

“It’s been very slow,” he said. “But going back to December is when we appropriated the money, when we voted for the money and approved it there. But now here we are, nine months later, we still haven’t seen the reimbursements.”

Stein said he called Budd to thank him for using his position in the Senate to take a stance on the issue and get results.

The two don’t agree on much politically. But Stein said he doesn’t plan to let off on the pressure on the Trump administration to work more quickly on Helene aid, and he’s glad to see Budd working toward the same goal.

“You shouldn't have to fight your own government to do right by the people of western North Carolina,” Stein said. “But if that's what it takes, that's what we will do.”

It will mark one year since Hurricane Helene later this month. So far, the federal government has paid for less than 10% of the estimated damage from the record-breaking storm.

That pales in comparison to typical storms — in which the federal government often covers about half the costs — and for bigger storms like Helene, when even more costs are typically covered. After Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the federal government covered more than 70% of the cost of responding to the damage.

WRAL Documentary: A year after Hurricane Helene, stories of heartbreak and hope

WRAL documentary: 'Helene: What we've lost, what we've found'

During the summer of 2025, WRAL reporters Eric Miller and Cristin Severance and photographers Sean Braswell and Dwayne Myers spent a week in the mountains, talking to people about the progress made and work still to be done almost a year after Hurricane Helene.

Reporters and photographers visited with dozens of people and visited towns from Fairview to Chimney Rock, Swannanoa to Marshall.

The WRAL documentary "Helene: What we've lost, what we've found" will debut at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 25 on WRAL-TV.

You can stream it everywhere you find WRAL.