Laura Hogshead (bottom left), the director of ReBuild NC, and Pryor Gibson (bottom right), advisor to Gov. Roy Cooper, testify in front of lawmakers about the hurricane recovery housebuilding program on Monday, Nov. 18, 2024. (Photo: Galen Bacharier/NC Newsline)
Leaders of North Carolina’s hurricane home recovery program said in an oversight hearing Monday that the agency had run up a deficit of around $221 million.
And the director of ReBuild NC, or the NC Office of Recovery and Resiliency, again faced calls to resign from lawmakers frustrated by years of financial woes and uncompleted homes.
“Will you turn in your resignation today?” asked Rep. Brenden Jones (R-Columbus) asked the director, Laura Hogshead.
“No sir, I will not,” Hogshead responded.
The hearing brought renewed scrutiny to the state’s hurricane recovery efforts under Gov. Roy Cooper in the final months of his administration, while billions of dollars flow to the mountains for Hurricane Helene relief.
And it revealed that the program to rebuild homes for survivors of Hurricanes Florence and Matthew was even deeper in the red than originally anticipated.
Inside Climate News reported in October that ReBuild NC had run up a deficit of over $150 million. On Monday, an advisor to the governor who’s been assigned to the agency said an accounting review showed it would actually take around $221 million “to solve all the problems.”
ReBuild NC was “too far over its skis,” said Pryor Gibson, who is also deputy legislative counsel in Cooper’s office. “It does not have enough money to finish the projects in its queue or the affordable housing.”
It is not the first time Hogshead has been grilled by lawmakers over her agency’s struggles. During a 2022 hearing, Sen. Danny Britt (R-Robeson) called on her to resign. (Hogshead’s post is subject to the governor and the head of the Department of Public Safety.)
Gibson, a former state representative, was assigned to the agency in January. He previously led the Division of Employment Security, taking charge as it faced struggles to keep up with unemployment claims during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lawmakers homed in on a number of different concerns they had with the program — chiefly the financial ones, as leaders again ask the General Assembly to appropriate more money to finish projects.
“We simply were not watching carefully enough,” Hogshead said of her agency’s accounting process.
“That’s an understatement,” responded Jones, who co-chaired the oversight committee.
“If you worked for me, I would fire you,” he added. “You guys are like a teenager with mama’s credit card. … When are you going to get it right? We’ve given you every opportunity, every thing you’ve asked for.”
Hogshead and Gibson acknowledged the program’s financial straits, but pointed to nuances — including an eight-step award process and navigating federal dollars — that had complicated their mission.
A “worst case scenario” for the program, Hogshead said, would require an additional $264 million to finish all the projects in ReBuild NC’s queue. Gibson asked for at least $40 million per month for the next 3 months.
“Please help us find the way to put the rest of these folks in Eastern North Carolina back in their homes,” Gibson said. The agency “absolutely deserves the scrutiny and the chewing,” he said, but “at the end of the day, I just wish we’d had something like this during (Hurricane) Floyd.”
ReBuild NC has been the subject of criticism and scrutiny for years. A series of stories by NC Newsline in 2022 detailed how the agency failed to finish building hundreds of homes and handed out favorable contracts to a troubled company while survivors remained displaced. Survivors came to testify in front of lawmakers while top officials at the agency continued to step down.
Lawmakers’ second relief package for Helene, passed last month, included $30 million for ReBuild NC; Cooper had asked for $175 million. It remains to be seen what role the agency could play as the state takes on a years-long rebuild out west.
Multiple Republican lawmakers were publicly skeptical Monday that the agency would be able to handle efforts in Helene after struggles in the east. But Hogshead expressed confidence that if the program was given money to finish its current obligations, it could be trusted in the future.
“The reason to keep NCORR is because simply, we’ve done this recently,” she said. “To start over with someone else would be to re-learn those hard lessons.”