Bell fights for funds
By Steve Herring
Published in News on September 26, 2017 5:50 AM
Additional state disaster funding -- possibly for property buyouts, river dredging and reservoirs -- could be among the issues to be addressed by the newly appointed House Select Committee on Disaster Relief.
"This is something that I had been working on for a couple of months," said Rep. John Bell, committee chairman. "I am also on the Joint Emergency Management Oversight Commission, which is going to handle some of this as well. But the speaker (of the House) wanted to take it a step further, and that is when he issued the Disaster Recovery Committee."
District 4 Rep. Jimmy Dixon, of Mount Olive, is also on the committee.
Bell, of Goldsboro, said one of his questions is why the level of federal disaster relief funds was lacking.
A lot of federal funds came in through different entities, but the state's funding request came back well short of what was sought, he said.
The past General Assembly made what its members knew would be a long-term commitment to the recovery from Hurricane Matthew -- a commitment it has held strong to, he said.
"We are going to do what we need to do," he said. "If there is more funding that needs to be put into place, I am willing to go fight for it. I don't see anybody fighting against it."
Bell said he will set the agenda that will include public comment and public input.
He added that he had planned to call a committee meeting by early October and to begin getting things ready for that meeting this week, but said he did not want to disturb emergency management this week because of its response to the threat posed to the Outer Banks by Hurricane Maria.
Bell said he decided instead to wait -- possibly until late October or early November -- to hold the first meeting.
The committee will be updated on the Disaster Recovery Acts of 2016 and 2017.
It also will study the state's infrastructure and regulations as they pertain to flood relief and study a proposed recommendation to prevent future flooding in eastern North Carolina.
"The plan would be to come in and get an overview of where we are, look at what else needs to be done," he said.
The committee will look also at where the funding from $300 million in appropriations has been spent, and make sure all of the departments have allocated the funds that have been sent to them, Bell said.
Visits will be made to the Wayne/Lenoir and Cumberland/Robeson areas that are among the counties hardest hit by Hurricane Matthew.
"Before we go into the short session in May 2018, the committee will actually make a recommendation on how to proceed," Bell said. "So we will make this recommendation to the full legislative oversight committee."
That could be followed by more legislation, should more funding be needed, he said.
"There are a lot of unanswered questions there, especially on the housing piece," Bell said. "We are behind South Carolina and some other states, and the funding has not gotten out as quickly I thought it should be, personally."
Some people would say that is wishful thinking on his part, Bell said.
"We are coming up on a year anniversary, and we still have people in limbo," he said. "We need to figure out why that is happening."
Golden LEAF has done a "great job" getting funds out, Bell said. But there is a need to ensure all funds from all the agencies are getting out, he said.
"If we need to divert funds from agencies that are having trouble getting funds out to something like Golden LEAF, who does it on an everyday deal -- we may look at that.
"The big part of the committee will be looking at what do we do moving forward. You are never really going to prevent a flood, but do we look at some of the things that have been done in the past? Do we need to have a current study done on reservoirs and dams in the area?"
That would include the Neuse, Tar and Cape Fear rivers.
A federal study was done on that in the 1950s or 1960s that has a lot of information in it, Bell said.
There is still some good information in the study, but the landscape has changed dramatically since then, he said.
"That is one of the issues that we are going to bring up -- what is feasible, what is not?" Bell said. "Do we look at dredging? Do we look at snagging and dragging?"
Bell said that one issue brought to his attention is that state Department of Transportation workers used to be able to go farther down on private property to clean ditches.
They can no longer do so because of property rights concerns, he said.
"Do we do some legislation to allow those types of things?" he said. "These are all things that are up for discussion and trying to find some ideas and solutions as to how we move forward."
The new U.S. 70 Bypass kept western Wayne County and Lenoir County from being cut off because of flooding, Bell said.
That raises the question of whether the state needs to build roads to a higher standard, he said.
Another area of interest will be the search and rescue side, and whether the state has the equipment to be able to deploy those assets, he said.