Six years later, North Carolina’s government agency tasked with rebuilding after Hurricanes Matthew and Florence has failed to complete the construction of even one new home and has repaired less than half of the homes it promised to restore.

The North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency (NCORR), also known as ReBuild NC, was created in 2018 to utilize federal funds to direct the construction and repair of homes damaged by Matthew and Florence. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) provided NCORR with grants of $236.5 million for Matthew and $542.6 million for Florence. The federal funds for Matthew and Florence must be spent by 2025 and 2026, respectively.

According to NCORR’s most recent reports, the agency has spent $234.6 million and $506.9 million of the HUD grants for Matthew and Florence, respectively. Now that the federal funding has almost dried up, NCORR has requested $175 million in state taxpayer money to compensate for years of financial mismanagement.

NCORR

The NCORR was initially established as a temporary agency with “three-year time-limited positions” that would be dissolved after completing recovery efforts related to Matthew and Florence. However, in 2021, the time limit was removed, and as of October 2023, the organization had more than 200 employees, 32 of whom were reported to be paid at least six figures annually.

The NCORR estimated that by October 2024, 308 new houses would be built; however, zero have been constructed.

Since 2021, NCORR’s financial negligence has been revealed in multiple audits:

NCORR’s most recent projections show that the agency has consistently overspent and underproduced. The NCORR estimated that by October 2024, 308 new houses would be built; however, zero have been constructed. The agency also estimated that 6,440 houses would be restored; unfortunately, only 2,236 have received repairs. This leaves 308 new houses to be built and more than 4,100 still needing restoration; however, NCORR only has $37.6 million remaining from the $779.1 million in HUD grants. Such dismal results call into question how the agency has been spending its funds.  

In the recent projections, NCORR estimated that it still needs to spend $94 million to complete the rebuilding efforts, which would be $56.4 million over budget. However, based on the agency’s request for $175 million and its proven inefficiency, we can safely assume this projection is nonsense. For every family helped, NCORR has spent a tidy sum of $331,600. At the current rate NCORR is spending, it does not need $175 million; it needs closer to $1 billion.  

Beyond financial failures and poor performance, NCORR has received scrutiny for giving certain general contractors preferential treatment and mistreatment of program applicants. In 2022, multiple policymakers unsuccessfully called for the removal of NCORR’s Chief Operating Officer, appointed by Governor Cooper in 2018. Instead, the agency decided to pay consultants more than $200,000 for advice. The consultants found that at NCORR, “There is a strong desire to protect each other and program leaders from missteps and/or public scrutiny.”

The Chief Operating Officer has blamed supply chain issues, labor shortages, contractors, and the pandemic for the agency’s ineffectiveness. However, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 440,000 building permits for new privately owned housing units have been issued in North Carolina since 2020.

Making matters worse, the repair work that was done by Rebuild NC has been plagued by shoddy workmanship. A 2022 investigation found that “homeowners had filed more than 1,000 workmanship complaints to the ReBuild NC against their general contractors.”

NCDOT

Unfortunately, NCORR is not the first time that the citizens of North Carolina have been called upon to cover for the fiduciary mishaps of a Cooper-appointed bureaucrat. In fiscal year (FY) 2019, the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) required hundreds of millions of dollars to atone for poor financial leadership.

In 2020, the Office of the State Auditor found that the NCDOT overspent its FY 2019 budget by $742 million. Following this debacle, the department’s head official resigned, and finances slowly improved, but recently, there have been increasing concerns that another budget shortfall might be in the NCDOT’s near future.

Going Forward

NCORR made promises to vulnerable families that have not been fulfilled. People have been homeless for years, while bureaucrats have continued to collect lavish salaries that they have not earned.

While there is still more about NCORR to investigate, at this point, we know that the agency has a pattern of poor financial management, which seems to be part of a more significant trend among bureaucracies led by Cooper-appointed officials.

NCORR’s current leadership should be relieved of their duties and replaced. The new leadership should be given a strict timeline to complete the construction and repairs of homes for families still waiting. The new leadership should also consider reducing the size of the agency’s labor force in order to redirect funds to its core purpose.

Upon completion of the homes, NCORR should be permanently eliminated. An out-of-touch bureaucracy in Durham should not administer future federal disaster relief funds. Instead, the funds should be managed in a decentralized manner by the counties, cities, and towns that are directly impacted by disasters.

With Cooper’s tenure ending and Josh Stein set to take office, the question arises: will Stein continue to allow NCORR and NCDOT to waste money at the expense of hurricane victims and taxpayers, or will he have the courage to correct Cooper’s mistakes?