General Assembly overrides governor’s veto of controversial flood relief bill
Richland Creek, in Waynesville, flows past an apartment complex on Sept. 27.
Cory Vaillancourt photo
After decades of paying for hurricane recovery operations along the North Carolina coast, Western North Carolina taxpayers finally had a reason to ask the rest of the state to return the favor in the wake of Hurricane Helene. On Dec. 11, the rest of the state answered with a resounding “no.”
Senate Bill 382, rich — not with badly needed aid for small businesses — but instead with myriad unrelated and controversial proposals, has become law without including any meaningful flood relief.
The region’s last best chance to head off potential economic hardship now stands solely with Congress, after initial opposition to the bill from the three westernmost Republican Party legislators failed to materialize on the day of the veto override vote.
HOW WE GOT HERE
Prior to the vote, legislators attended a meeting of the House select committee on Helene Recovery, chaired by Republican Rep. Dudley Greene, who represents Avery, McDowell, Mitchell and Yancey counties, and Wayne County Republican Rep. John Bell, who visited Haywood County after deadly flooding from Tropical Storm Fred in 2021.
Mark White, of the state’s fiscal research division, provided a brief recap of the General Assembly’s hurricane relief appropriations to date, totaling $1.13 billion.
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The first relief bill, enacted Oct. 10, included a $273 million transfer from the savings reserve to the Helene Recovery Fund. Notable disbursements included $250 million for state matching funds for federal disaster assistance and $16 million for educational support to replace school nutrition employees’ lost compensation.
The second relief bill, enacted Oct. 25, consisted of a larger transfer of $604.2 million from the savings reserve to the Helene Recovery Fund for emergency response, recovery grants to local governments and education-related support. Specific allocations included $130 million for state matching funds for federal programs, $50 million for capital recovery in schools, additional funding for mental health services and emergency grants for community colleges.
But that second bill alarmed a number of elected officials and administrators in Western North Carolina because it didn’t contain any direct grant assistance for business owners still underwater with SBA loans from the Coronavirus Pandemic and Tropical Storm Fred, which killed six and unleashed a half-billion dollar tragedy on eastern Haywood and western Buncombe counties in 2021.
Gov. Cooper had proposed $475 million in direct grant assistance as part of his $3.9 billion relief proposal but was ignored.
On Nov. 20, alarm turned to outrage after it was revealed that the third relief bill was, in fact, a sham — a partisan power grab that contained no actual flood relief. A paltry $225 million was transferred from the state’s savings reserve for Helene recovery but will not be spent “until appropriated by an act of the General Assembly,” probably next year. No direct grant assistance, as was requested by local officials, was included.
The bill passed the Senate on a strict party line vote and subsequently sailed through the House, over the objections of three western reps, Mike Clampitt (R-Swain), Karl Gillespie (R-Macon) and Mark Pless (R-Haywood).
Cooper vetoed the bill on Nov. 26, but the Senate voted to override his veto on Dec. 2. North Carolina’s westernmost Sen. Kevin Corbin (R-Macon) voted in support of the override, namely because of child care funding he’d asked for, but he told The Smoky Mountain News that he “didn’t particularly care for” some aspects of the bill.
During the committee meeting, Clampitt implored White to restate the obvious, for the record.
“Are there any directed grants to some of the small businesses that [are] already underwater with loans?” Clampitt asked. “They don't need any more loans, but are there directed grants available to them?”
White reiterated that there was no direct grant assistance for small businesses in any of the legislation passed by the General Assembly.
Later, Bell elaborated, saying there were a number of privately funded grants available from entities like the Dogwood Health Trust and that he’d provide Clampitt with a list.
“Thank you, Mr. Chair, that'd be very good,” Clampitt said. “I've just got a text from a small business out of Marshall saying that her entire stock has been completely wiped out, and I have other businesses that are having issues. They're not meeting ‘the criteria’ for any kind of loan because it was only like 50% loss, but 50% loss for a small business of a quarter million dollars can put some of those businesses out of business permanently.”
Kristin Walker, from the office of state budget and management, gave a presentation breaking down the $53.6 billion in estimated storm damage and said that even if Cooper’s full request had been granted, and even if the state comes away with the $25 billion requested of the federal government by North Carolina Sens. Thom Tillis and Ted Budd, there would still be about $17.8 billion in unmet needs.
One key assumption is that the state needs to preserve its savings to be able to meet matching requirements for federal aid. Typically, the feds would contribute 75% of the funding and the state would be responsible for 25%, however President Joe Biden recently made the state match easier by upping the federal cost share to 90%.
Buncombe Democrat Lindsey Prather asked Walker to elaborate on the state’s fiscal reserves.
"Right now, we have $9.1 billion unappropriated in reserves across a variety of accounts," Walker said. "The governor's request would have pulled just about $3.5 billion out of those reserves, so you'd be left with about five and a half billion still in still in reserve funds right now."
That figure is far more than the widely quoted $4.7 billion "rainy day fund" legislators have been using to fund the first two Helene relief bills.
Walker also pointed out that in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence in 2018, the state contributed 26% of all recovery costs for a storm that was only a third the size of Helene, but for Helene, that figure currently stands at about 2%.
In response to another question, Walker said that not all of the FEMA match is needed immediately, and that the cost-matching process will take years. Indeed, the North Carolina Department of Transportation is still waiting for a small amount of federal reimbursement from Hurricane Florence.
THE VOTE
Three hours after the committee meeting adjourned, the House was supposed to reconvene and begin deliberations. When that time came, Republicans had not emerged from their 1:30 p.m. caucus meeting and wouldn’t for another hour.
Once they did, rules committee chair and likely incoming House Speaker, Rep. Destin Hall (R-Caldwell), defended the state’s disaster relief efforts while speaking in favor of overriding Cooper’s veto and waiting around for help from Congress.
“I spent all day yesterday in D.C. talking to our federal delegation, including both of our U.S. senators. We've got every indication that help is on the way and on the way very soon, probably by Christmas,” Hall said. “By the end of this month, we anticipate getting maybe $25 billion or so, and that's the kind of money that it's going to take to make a material impact on the disaster in Western North Carolina.”
When Prather got her chance to speak, she opted for a cold open — simply repeating the names of area businesses that had already closed. Continuing with an anecdote about a Grove Park Inn employee who’d been out of work since Sept. 27 and wouldn’t go back until Dec. 19.
“Five of her colleagues have already moved away from Western North Carolina because they simply could not afford to wait for help,” Prather said.
Prather’s fellow Buncombe County Democrat, Eric Ager, like Prather, has been outspoken about what they perceive as the bill’s shortcomings and said that the bill didn’t meet the moment or North Carolina’s values.
"Our state's motto is something that I've always tried to live up to — esse quam videri, ‘to be rather than to seem' — and this bill just ‘seems’ to do something to help; it doesn't actually do it. And that's the real problem,” Ager said. “The people of Western North Carolina, as you've heard here and have heard yesterday and today, people need help, and this bill just doesn't get it to them.”
Ager went on to say that the people of the west were tired of hearing, “Help is on the way.”
“I struggle every day wondering what I'm supposed to tell my friends, my family, my neighbors when I go down Food Lion to pick up groceries, the only grocery store in my little community,” he said. “Do I just tell them what they already suspect, that we're just too far away from Raleigh for the state to really pay attention? That's what they already think. That's what that's what people in Western North Carolina think.”
Greene, a Republican, shared his own emotional experience of fleeing his home during the storm, and took exception to assertions that some victims hadn’t received the help they needed because he had.
“Volunteers, church groups, faith-based places, organizations were there. Help was there,” he said. “I've heard help’s not coming — it has been there in Western North Carolina and in my yard, hauling off debris. In my house, helping me get my appliances out. Help has been there.”
The motion to override Cooper’s veto passed 72-46. All three dissenters, Clampitt, Gillespie and Pless, dropped their initial opposition and voted yes.
Pless issued a statement shortly after the vote.
Editor's note, the emphasis in the statement is Pless'.
“Senate Bill 382 came to be three weeks ago," the statement reads. "At that time the bill was rushed to the floor for consideration. The bill did nothing for hurricane Helene victims of Western North Carolina. I disagreed with the bill and subsequently voted no to the bill. Since that day, I have spent hours examining the bill to understand the content and explore options to get funding to the hurting people of Western North Carolina. I have discussed needs with numerous elected leaders, local state and federal. I am convinced there is a path forward and money will be available quickly to provide help [for] the people of Western North Carolina.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates in The Smoky Mountain News, online and on newsstands on Wednesday, Dec. 18.
