NC lawmakers unanimously approve $604M Helene relief bill. Measure now goes to Cooper

The North Carolina legislature unanimously approved a new $604 million relief bill Thursday — the latest step aimed at helping western North Carolina counties ravaged by Hurricane Helene last month.

The measure passed with a 46-to-0 vote in the state Senate and 108-0 in the state House of Representatives — adding to the $273 million that was approved and signed into law earlier this month.

The total of both measures is the equivalent of more than $30 million per day in state funds since President Joe Biden declared a disaster in western North Carolina. And it likely won’t be the last infusion of state money, state Sen. Michael Lee said during debate on the chamber floor.

“There will be a lot more to do,” said Lee, R-New Hanover. “It takes time to know what the needs are and how we should be responding. I think we are responding as quickly as we can with the information that we have.”

The bill, which now goes to Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, is a fraction of the $3.9 billion proposal Cooper put forth Wednesday. Republicans have a supermajority in the legislature, though, so they control the state’s purse strings.

Cooper is expected to sign the bill in the coming days, and lawmakers are expected to return to Raleigh in a few weeks to consider more funding.

The $604 million passed by lawmakers would come from the state's reserves. The bill, which was introduced Thursday morning, would allocate:

• $100 million for water and wastewater infrastructure repair loans
• $100 million for cash flow loans to local governments
• $75 million to match federal disaster relief funds
• $50 million to help local and state governments address “unmet needs” not covered by insurance.
• $50 million for repairs to damaged public schools
• $50 million for bridge loans for small businesses.

Democrats said Thursday the GOP-authored bill didn’t go far enough.

State Sen. Julie Mayfield, D-Buncombe, fought back tears as she described the problems her constituents are facing in the Asheville area. She said people are receiving eviction notices at a time when there are few places to go in the region. 

“Speed matters,” Mayfield said. “The people and the economy of our region hang in the balance of this moment — not in November, not in December, not next year.”

Mayfield said the amount of state money going to affected businesses amounted to a life preserver “when they need a lifeboat.”

State Rep. Eric Ager, D-Buncombe, said investing in businesses would help the region rebound. Asheville “drives the economic fortunes of the region,” he said.

“People from all over western North Carolina come into Asheville every day to work and, right now, there’s just not that work available,” Ager said. “So we need to get that business engine back up and running, and we need to do it as quickly as possible.”

Helene was the most economically damaging natural disaster to ever hit North Carolina, in addition to the deadliest. It is estimated to have caused about $53 billion in damage in the state, according to the North Carolina Office of State Budget and Management — triple the damage incurred by Hurricane Florence in 2018.

In a bipartisan effort earlier this month, the legislature swiftly and unanimously passed the initial $273 million disaster relief bill, which Cooper signed into law. Leaders in both political parties said multiple times that was only a first step, and that the legislature would approve more aid once the state had a better grasp on the scope of the damage and where the biggest needs have arisen.

Republicans reiterated their commitment to that strategy Thursday.

Ralph Hise, who chairs the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, said state lawmakers are doing more than they ever have for hurricane victims. The Mitchell County Republican described the bill as “a great second step” toward addressing a long term problem for which there are no “short term fixes.”

“The budget of the state of North Carolina cannot be the solution,” Hise said. “There isn’t enough here to recover from this hurricane.”

Still, Democrats lamented that the state couldn’t do more — and that they weren’t involved in the bill-drafting process.

"This second disaster relief package for Western North Carolina is sorely needed," House Minority Leader Robert Reives, D-Chatham, said in a statement before the House met to consider the bill.

"However, I am disappointed that House Democrats were not directly involved in writing this legislation," he said. "I hope that our next round of disaster relief funding is more robust and includes more than just a small handful of people drafting it."

House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, told reporters that his office received input from Republicans and Democrats but that the bill-drafting was led by staff.

“Just about all of the Republican members, except for maybe two, myself included, the first time they saw this — even a draft — was last night,” Moore said.

He said the point of the process wasn’t to exclude people’s ideas but to focus on addressing the most pressing needs as quickly as possible. Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, also said their actions Thursday weren’t necessarily a rebuke of the ideas in Cooper’s proposal.

“The amount the governor is asking for us to deploy on such a short timeline is somewhat problematic,” Berger said. “We want to make sure, when all is said and done, that we don’t fully deplete the rainy day fund.”

Republican leaders have criticized the state and federal governments’ response to helping people get their homes rebuilt or repaired after Hurricanes Florence and Matthew, saying it was too slow. And on Wednesday, at the same time Cooper was unveiling his disaster relief request, Berger’s office issued a statement blasting Cooper for “mismanagement and financial carelessness” during the state’s disaster recovery efforts after Florence and Matthew.

But lawmakers are open to Cooper’s ideas, Berger said. Cooper’s plan, which focused on many of the same things as lawmakers’ plan, called for $50 million for incentives for developers to build more affordable housing and $43 million for increased mental health services, among other ideas. The GOP-authored bill includes $5 million for mental health services for students, families, and school personnel at schools affected by Helene.

Cooper also called for $475 million for business grants.

Under Cooper’s grant proposal, businesses could receive grants of up to $50,000 or 25% of taxable sales based on last year’s tax returns. To be eligible, businesses would need to have had at least $8,000 in taxable sales in last October and November or $37,500 in gross receipts from 2022.

“I don’t know that there’s anything that’s a definite ‘no’; there are things that we’ve never done before,” Berger said of Cooper’s proposal.

“For instance, the idea of small business grants. We’ve done loans in the past,” Berger said. Except for distributing federal funds during the covid-19 pandemic, “we’ve not done small business grants.”

A large chunk of the spending Cooper proposed Wednesday was aimed at getting the rebuilding process started sooner by giving people money that’s not tied to the federal government’s more cumbersome processes, he said. “This proposal, built on the assessment of damage sustained and lessons learned from past storms, would give western North Carolina a jump start on recovery,” Cooper said Wednesday.

The federal government is also expected to spend billions of dollars on Helene aid — largely to rebuild homes and roads, plus cover other costs such as aid for farmers and emergency loans for small businesses, to keep local economies from collapsing in the aftermath of the storm. Insurance companies will also likely pay out some claims, but more than 90% of homes in the area lacked flood insurance.

There are costs that neither insurance companies nor the federal government will cover — something Berger and Moore acknowledged Thursday and Cooper mentioned while introducing his plan on Wednesday.

Cooper’s budget director Kristin Walker said that of the $53.6 billion in estimated damages in North Carolina, the state anticipates that the federal government will cover about $13.6 billion and insurance or other private sector payments might total about $6.3 billion. That leaves $33.8 billion in losses still unaccounted for.

“We don’t have that, and we’ve been very fiscally-disciplined,” Moore said Thursday when discussing Walker’s estimates. “And we’re one of the most solvent states in the country right now.”

Cooper’s $3.9 billion suggestion would drop the total amount unfunded to just under $30 billion, if the state’s estimates on expected payments from insurance and the federal government are correct. Walker said Wednesday that, while it’s possible that the exact numbers will change in the future, “I don’t think anyone anticipates that anywhere near the full $53 billion would be covered.”