Legislators grill administration over Matthew recovery delays

They found little satisfaction in the administration's answers, and the frustration was bipartisan.

Officials often promised to follow up with more details on the complex state and federal programs at issue. At one point it came out that the man sent to do the main briefing, Assistant Director for Resiliency Nick Burk, will be leaving the state Emergency Management Division in two and a half months, well before recovery efforts are expected to wrap.

"It seems like today we're leaving with more questions than we actually have answers," said oversight committee Chairman Rep. John Bell, R-Wayne.

State Rep. Brenden Jones, R-Columbus, said it took him 83 days at one point to get a response to a letter he wrote to Cooper's director of emergency management. Rep. Garland Pierce, D-Scotland, said he feels like a liar when he repeats state timelines to constituents who want to know when they'll be back in their homes.

"We got calls on the phone on the way to committee today," Pierce said some 18 months after Matthew flooded parts of eastern North Carolina. "People are still hurting. ... We need to know, when are people really going to be helped?"

Administration officials acknowledged frustrations, and that indeed the state has not yet spent any of the $236.5 million HUD has approved. That figure actually increased last week to more than $400 million, funding that awaits resolution of an eight-step process for 1,500 people in the pipeline.

About 500 people have cleared the first or second step, Burk told lawmakers. The intake centers to process those applications opened in late November of last year, more than a year after the storm struck.

Emergency Management said in a news release Monday that it had to build this program "from the ground up" starting in December 2016, after legislators shifted oversight to the division and away from the N.C. Department of Commerce. The Department of Commerce section was then eliminated.

Administration officials have also stressed that this is just one program of several and that $550 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency recovery funding has been allocated by the state so far, including nearly $100 million to approximately 26,000 families in need and $250 million for public infrastructure repairs. More than 2,600 Small Business Administration home and business loans have been approved for a total of more than $100 million, the department said.

But when it comes to these HUD disaster recovery grants, the federal department has labeled North Carolina a "slow spender." The state is one of 67 with the designation on the department's most recent list of 109 grantees. It's one of two grantees from 2016 disasters that hasn't spent a dollar yet from this pot.

On HUD's list of more than 100 grantees, only 28 are classified as "on pace."

This is the last money spent in a disaster recovery, meant to rebuild neighborhoods. It takes a lot of planning and there's an interplay with other federally funded programs, in part to make sure people don't double dip.

"A lot of work has been done," Burk said. "It can never be fast enough."

State officials also said Monday that the pace of this recovery is actually ahead of Hurricane Floyd efforts. Emergency Management Director Mike Sprayberry will hold a press conference with federal officials Tuesday morning to announce that Federal Emergency Management Agency staffers will embed in the state to aid the Hurricane Matthew recovery.

This will be the nation's first "FEMA Integration Team," according to the Sprayberry's office.

But lawmakers pointed to South Carolina, saying homes there are being rebuilt and that the state seems to be well ahead of North Carolina's pace. After Monday's committee meeting Bell, the House Republican majority leader as well as chairman of the House Select Committee on Disaster Relief, said he has supreme confidence in the the Emergency Management Division to handle storm preparations and the immediate response.

But the recovery?

"After we move past the storm ... I have little to no confidence," Bell said. "I think we need to go back to the drawing board."