The GOP in the General Assembly Once Again Shrug-Off Hurricane Helene

 

Gov. Stein in Boone recently.
Noah Williford, The Appalachian

Just happening in North Carolina: For the second time in three months the Republican bastards in the General Assembly (the new team of Berger/Hall) have proposed much less -- about half of what Western North Carolina needs for recovery from Hurricane Helene and half of what Governor Stein requested for our devastated region -- Berger/Hall say $500 million should be enough, instead of the requested and badly needed $1 billion.

To recap the first General Assembly diss of our ravaged counties, here's Thomas Mills:

In December, when Roy Cooper was still governor, the legislature went back into session, supposedly to address the needs of hurricane victims. Instead, they used the time to strip power from Democrats who won seats on the Council of State in November. They shuffled money around from existing funds but refused to allocate additional resources to the region.

As Republican Representative Mark Pless told The Assembly at the time, “The disaster portion of it doesn’t do anything …. [I]t was just moving money from one account to another without actually appropriating it for anything.”

Stein's request included grants to businesses wiped away or severely damaged by Helene, but Berger/Hall's bill prohibits grants to businesses. Bastards. I know of at least one thriving landscaping business in western Watauga that was totally wiped out -- greenhouses, equipment, plants, the whole livelihood. FEMA does not give disaster money to businesses. It's up to the state. And those Republican SOBs think they can get away with turning their backs on some 30 majorly Republican counties they consider "theirs."  

At least Gov. Stein engineered a public-private fund of some $30 million to help businesses specifically, but that's a mere drop in the bucket. A small Kubota front-end loader, back-end digger will run you over $80,000.