Governor signs Florence aid package, visits Harnett County

Oct. 04--LILLINGTON -- North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper signed into law a $56.6 million Hurricane Florence aid package and later visited Harnett County to review progress on the storm recovery effort.

Also on Wednesday, the U.S. Senate approved $1.68 billion in Florence aid for the Carolinas, including $1.14 billion for North Carolina. The federal legislation now awaits President Donald Trump's signature.

The storm made landfall near Wrightsville Beach and Wilmington on Sept. 14 and inundated the state with extreme amounts of rain across several days. There was extensive destruction from flooding. Twenty-eight North Carolina counties were declared disaster areas. Damages are expected to run into the billions of dollars.

The legislation Cooper signed includes $6.5 million to help local public school systems pay their food-service employees for workdays lost when the public schools closed for the hurricane. The remaining $50 million, Cooper said, is to have cash available to match federal disaster assistance programs that require matching contributions from local governments.

Cooper additionally signed a Florence bill to help the public school systems that closed for extended time because of the hurricane. The schools are now exempt from making up all the school days that were lost.

The legislation also had other provisions to help residents in the disaster area cope with the storm, such as a waiver of fees to replace driver licenses and Division of Motor Vehicles documents that may have been lost or destroyed.

The Florence legislation signed Wednesday is just "the initial response," Cooper said in Lillington. "But there's going to be a significantly larger appropriation coming later."

State lawmakers plan to reconvene on Oct. 15 to authorize additional assistance, after the Cooper administration gathers more complete data on the losses, damages and needs in the disaster areas.

The next phase of assistance should include help for farmers, Cooper said.

"A lot of our farmers are on the brink of bankruptcy when you look at the losses that they've had, combined with the past years" of recession, low commodity prices, international trade tariffs, and Hurricane Matthew two years ago, he said.

Cooper, a Democrat, and Republican state Rep. David Lewis of Harnett County said the state aid package was a bipartisan effort of the Democratic Cooper administration and the Republican-controlled legislature.

"The brown floodwaters don't care if you vote red or blue," Lewis said, the focus is on the people. "The legislature's committed to working with the governor to try to get their lives back to normal."

Lewis had praise for Cooper's hurricane efforts.

"I do think he's doing a good job," he said. "I told him before that I think that local, state and federal emergency management has worked seamlessly during this time of crisis, and I applaud all involved, including the governor."

Cooper visited the Harnett County Department of Social Services office in Lillington, where social workers helped residents sign up for D-SNAP, a one-time food stamp benefit to help lower-income people replace food that was spoiled or destroyed in the storm and its extended power outages.

"Thank you, guys, for the work you're doing," the governor said to the workers.

As of 3 p.m. Wednesday, 4,321 households had applied for the D-SNAP benefit in Harnett County since it began on Friday, and 3,994 had been approved, said county Social Services Director Paul Polinski.

Statewide, as many as 300,000 households could be eligible, the state Department of Health and Human Services has said.

In addition to visiting the Social Services office, Cooper viewed a road repair near Angier and a Federal Emergency Management Agency Disaster Recovery Center in Lillington. Earlier, he reviewed damage and recovery efforts in neighboring Johnston County.

In Lillington, Cooper said, he met a woman who was flooded during Hurricane Matthew nearly two years ago, got her home repaired, and then was flooded by Florence.

"And she was in despair, rightfully so," he said. The staff at the FEMA center advised the woman on her private insurance and her options for getting federal assistance, he said.

"The magnitude of this storm is mind-boggling," Cooper said. "We've already had over 110,000 people apply for FEMA help. That compares to a total of 80,000 who applied in Matthew, and we know that this number will continue to increase significantly."

Staff writer Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3512.

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