Lawmakers made right call on relief

When the North Carolina General Assembly voted unanimously on Oct. 24 to appropriate another $604 million for disaster relief, Gov. Roy Cooper said it wasn’t enough.

He was obviously right — and very wrong.

Included in the $3.9 billion package the governor proposed two days earlier were massive programs to rebuild infrastructure; repair or replace government facilities; and aid households, farms, and businesses. Much of Cooper’s plan makes sense, conceptually. Hurricane Helene gave western North Carolina a mighty wallop, devastating communities, rerouting streams, and reshaping the landscape. The costs will, indeed, number in the many billions of dollars, and state taxpayers ought to pick up a significant part of the tab.

But pitching a nearly $4 billion package with an expectation of immediate enactment was unrealistic and, frankly, pointlessly insulting to lawmakers who — while hardly perfect in the managing of taxpayer money — have demonstrated a keener grasp of fiscal policy than the governor has during his tenure.

If he’d gotten his way years ago, North Carolina wouldn’t have had a nearly $5 billion rainy-day fund as well as billions of dollars in other reserves to finance emergencies such as Helene reconstruction. Both before and after his election in 2016, Cooper criticized the Republican-led General Assembly for building up such reserves, complaining that the money would “just be sitting there” rather than doing good.

Moreover, when it comes to the management of disaster-relief funds, the Cooper administration has an unimpressive track record. At the same time it was pitching its hastily assembled $3.9 billion package, the administration revealed a $175 million deficit in the Office of Recovery and Resiliency, which has yet to assist some 1,600 victims of Hurricane Florence (in 2018!) find permanent housing.

Gov. Cooper has no business lecturing lawmakers about the rapidity of hurricane relief.

As House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger pointed out, the General Assembly will come back to Raleigh shortly after the election to appropriate more funding for Helene expenses. There are many unanswered questions at the moment — about damage estimates, federal funding, insurance payouts, and the best way to structure grant and loan programs. We’ll get some of those answers over the next couple of weeks. Others will take longer.

If you’ve followed state politics for any length of time, you’ll recall that governors and legislatures can, in fact, make bad calls in the immediate aftermath of natural disasters. They can overfund some programs, underfund others, and get the details wrong. Just as the General Assembly has a clear responsibility to expend the billions of dollars necessary for the state to cover its share of Helene relief, it also has a clear responsibility to manage the public’s money with prudence and foresight.

The $604 million in spending approved last week includes $102 million for educational institutions, $71 million for health and human services, $139 million for environment and natural resources, and $130 million for public safety.

Berger argued that the legislature had prioritized “immediate things” that have “time sensitivity” while subjecting longer-term investments in public and private infrastructure to more careful analysis.

“This will be a long recovery, and the legislature will not lose sight of rebuilding the region and fixing the damage,” Berger said. “Our second relief package puts the General Assembly’s total commitment so far at almost $900 million, and that will only grow as we continue to evaluate and repair the damage.”

History shows this to be the responsible approach. And since North Carolinians are about to elect a new governor, legislature, state superintendent of public instruction, state treasurer, and other key state and local offices, there’s even more reason to approve Helene funds and programs in batches rather than handing an outgoing administration anything approximating a blank check.

Those newly elected public servants will have both the right and the duty to help craft the state’s response to Hurricane Helene. They will, after all, be held accountable for its implementation over the coming months and years.

John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His latest books, Mountain Folk and Forest Folk, combine epic fantasy with early American history.