Governor Josh Stein issued five executive orders for Hurricane Helene recovery in North Carolina, but the speaker questions their substance. Temporary housing depends on FEMA approval, and rebuilding private roads has no clear funding source, with one bid at $816,000 for a road serving 20 homes. The speaker calls for state control over recovery instead of federal bureaucratic delays.
It's Thursday, January 2nd, 2025, and yes, that means we're almost at week 11 after Hurricane Helene. And we finally have action from the state of North Carolina because Governor Cooper couldn't be bothered to do anything on his lame duck time in office. So we had to wait for Governor Josh Stein to take his little oath and jump in. So first of all, gratitude. Thank you, Governor Stein, for making Western North Carolina your priority. We're just so very grateful. And so in these 5 executive orders, I was reading through to figure out what exactly North Carolina is going to do. The first thing I noticed is that our state of emergency expires in March of 2025. Spoiler alert, y'all, the state of emergency is not going to be over in March, so they're going to extend it. And the question is, what are they going to do with that? Well, in these 5 executive orders, there's one for temporary housing, but in Section 2 of Executive Order 1, you're going to notice that the only thing they can do relies on what FEMA gives them permission to do. Tell me once again why the state of North Carolina has to do what some unelected bureaucrats in a federal agency decide in a cubicle in Washington freakin' D.C. Oh no, wait, they're going to decide it in their very fancy commercial office building in Durham, which is nowhere near western North Carolina and where there's money being spent that could be used to replace the road that I'm working with some people on because they need money to get their road going because 20 houses depend on that road. So I was excited to read Executive Order Number 2, which talks about the rebuilding of private roads and bridges. And luckily in North Carolina, thanks to the Realtors, we have a roads database so we could see who's responsible. I said, well, for what? Well, the bid that my people got is $816,000, and so I read this executive order trying to figure out where's the money going to come from, and all it says here is that the division is directed to enter a memorandum of understanding for the state agency to secure assistance with administering state assistance. So it's word salad and double talk for the government, but it doesn't say who's going to provide the money nor how much has been allocated, just that they're going to make the process easier, provided that in Section 2, FEMA says yes. So once again, why do we have to wait for FEMA's approval to do anything with a road or bridge in freaking North Carolina when it's a road that serves 20 houses? So we have to get this fixed, y'all. When am I going to see the state legislature push back on FEMA? When are we going to see our congressional reps tell FEMA to sit down and shut up? And when are we going to have a lawyer and a plaintiff that are ready to go full Chevron Doctrine on FEMA? It needs to happen. It needs to happen now. This is week 11 and people should not be walking 2 miles to get to food and supplies, and that's still happening in the North Carolina mountains today.
