(cheerful music) - [Announcer] This is "Carolina Business Review."

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- As we hit our holiday stride here now among celebrations, but also year end activities to wrap up 2024, a question comes to mind.

What is worth knowing right now at this point in time?

I'm Chris William.

Welcome again to the most longest running and the most widely watched dialogue on Carolina business policy and public affairs seen across the region for more than 30 years.

The end is in sight, at least for this year, but issues do remain.

We'll start the dialogue in just a moment.

And later on, North Carolina's Department of Transportation Chief Joey Hopkins joins the dialogue, but we start right now.

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(energetic music) On this edition of "Carolina Business Review," Patrick Woodie from the NC Rural Center, Antjuan Seawright of Blueprint Strategy, and special guest, Joey Hopkins, North Carolina Transportation Secretary.

- Hello.

Welcome again to our program.

Thanks for joining us, Antjuan.

Good to have you back in the chair.

Always nice to have you here, Patrick.

- Thank you.

Good to be here.

- I wanna start with the deployment of help and funds to rural places in the Carolinas, specifically North Carolina.

Are they getting out there quickly enough?

- It's certainly getting out there.

It's been a challenge.

You know, I've seen the aftermath of some major 500 year storms, but have never seen the likes of Helene in terms of its impact on, I think we're fortunate, as big as the area, is that it wasn't bigger, but it's pretty significant.

It's gonna take a long time.

This is a multi-year effort.

And we're well underway.

I think as we get underway, as I talk to leaders in the West, the thing that they're really mindful of, we have a very well-defined disaster recovery system.

It's bureaucratic, it's complex, and at the end of the day, it doesn't always work very well for people.

And they're very mindful of the fact of trying to think innovatively and differently about, for example, housing.

How do we get people from a temporary situation to a permanent situation quicker?

How do we try to minimize the population loss that western North Carolina is actually going to see and is already seeing?

You know, we've already lost some population as a result of the storm.

But it may well be a lot of those people come back, but that'll be dependent upon how well the recovery process is.

- You mean lost population have moved other parts of the state or moved out of the region?

- If people have options, other homes, family, if they have options, part of it is a response to get kids back into a stable situation as quickly as possible.

And you know, definitely.

- You never rebound in these cases.

You reimagine and you reengage.

The country is still feeling the burden from Katrina in many ways.

In South Carolina we're still feeling the burden from that once in a generation flood we had several years ago.

Some people will never be made whole again.

But you want to create a new sense of normalcy.

And so we continue to pray for those who've been impacted, but we continue to reimagine what life after the storm looks like, and that's what North Carolina's going to do.

Unfortunately, the country is going to have to buckle and prepare for that, because the climate crisis is real.

We're going to see more of these storms and the impacts are going to become more and more severe as time goes.

So policy makers, lawmakers, officials need to prepare for what that may look like in the future and including citizens of the Carolinas.

- So when we layer on top of that, the politics of the day, and specifically coming out of a, I think it's an understatement to say a bruising presidential campaign, but when we lay that on top of North Carolina.

- [Patrick] Yeah.

- Donald Trump won the state.

- Yeah.

- But the top jobs, the governor, the lieutenant governor, the AG, the Secretary of State, et cetera, et cetera, are Democrats.

- Yeah.

- What does that say about North Carolina?

- Well, that says welcome to North Carolina.

That's been the last 40 years.

You know, it's not at all unusual that we've split our votes at the top of the ticket between president and governor and some of the council and state races.

So I think what I saw was what's pretty typical of North Carolina and at the end of the day, I mean there were clear margins.

There wasn't any-- - I was gonna say, it wasn't close.

- But they weren't blowouts.

Nothing was a blowout.

Yeah, I mean these were close races, you know, from a statewide standpoint, - South Carolina, two big names, two political stars.

Senator Tim Scott will most likely, and I'm going to ask you this, figure prominently in a new administration, but also Nikki Haley.

So those two have two different fortunes going on right now.

How would you predict those two?

- Well, I think the former governor is positioning herself for 2028.

Keep in mind, according to the constitution, the president-elect can only serve four years.

She was a close second, most people would agree, in the presidential preference primary for 2024.

And so it's all about positioning for 2028.

We still have not broken the glass ceiling of electing a woman president in the United States.

So I think there's still some anticipation of what that could look like on either side of the aisle.

I think she wants to be in that slot.

Tim Scott just became the chair of the Republican Senatorial campaign committee, a big leadership role to help defend, protect, and expand the Republican Senate map, as it is.

And so I think there are two different tracks.

What I do know is that South Carolina is still in the forefront going into 2028.

Scott has been reelected.

Lindsey will be up for reelection.

But the presidential preference primary, if everything remains the same, Democrats will lead off in South Carolina.

Republicans will be first in the South.

So there's tremendous opportunity that will shine on the Carolinas.

- I know I asked you this question, but you know what, shudder goes down my spine here a little bit that I'm just asking you about the next presidential election in 2028.

(Patrick laughing) We're starting to bone up for that, I guess.

I mean, do you see any of that happening?

- Well, I think we have a tremendous opportunity to learn first.

We have elections in '25 and '26 there to deal with head on and learn from where we got it wrong and where we got it right in 2024.

But I think 2028 is far down the road.

But I do believe there's a lot of potential that is on the Democratic side and potentially momentum, because it's easier to vote against something, the people in power, than there is to vote for something.

- That's so true.

Stay with us gentlemen.

We're gonna bring on a pretty key leader in North Carolina.

Speaking of North Carolina, coming up next week on this program, Harry Sideris is the president of Duke Energy.

Harry and Lynn Goode and et al have been busy, to say the least, not just rebuilding the infrastructure and the electrical capacity, but natural gas and rebuilding communities.

Harry Sideris from Duke will be on this program.

And then also we do a year end special that looks at the economy in review.

It is a spirited panel of economists.

They're not afraid, they don't pull punches.

I hope you'll join us for that.

You know, it seems that the human spirit can eventually assimilate and accept almost anything.

And I'm referring to, as we watched in horror in September, the surprising and stunning disastrous effect of the hurricane on western North Carolina.

Now that reality, of course, remains, but the rebuilding, the optimism, the inspirational stories abound, but it still has to be fixed and restored.

Transportation and infrastructure were the biggest part of that, after the loss of human life, of course.

Joining us now is the point of the spear for transportation in North Carolina, in the old North State.

He is North Carolina's Secretary of Transportation.

We welcome the honorable Joey Hopkins.

Mr. Secretary, welcome.

- Thank you, Chris.

I appreciate the opportunity to be here.

- Thank you, sir and thank you for traveling to the program.

We can read reports, we can drive to western North Carolina if we don't live there, we can talk to people.

From the numbers, from DOT, from what you have seen, what is the scale and the scope of the loss?

- So this is a scale from Hurricane Helene that we have not seen the likes of in North Carolina.

I've worked at the Department of Transportation for almost 35 years, lived in North Carolina my whole life.

At the height of this storm, we had over 1,300 roads closed in western North Carolina.

Now that's down under 300.

We have over 8,600 damage sites onto those roads, bridges, and culverts.

We expect that we're gonna have to replace over 140 bridges in western North Carolina.

All that takes money.

All that takes time.

We lost over a mile and a half section, two whole lanes, of I-40 in the Pigeon River Gorge coming eastbound from Tennessee.

That has to be rebuilt.

It's not an option not to rebuild or not to reopen I-40.

You know, we're gonna do that.

And that takes resources to do that, you know?

And my fear, is because y'all have already mentioned, this is not gonna happen overnight.

It's gonna take years to rebuild this infrastructure.

And I liken it to the three F's.

Fall, fun, and forget.

We've lost the fall in western North Carolina from an economic standpoint.

We are not spending money like we normally do in western North Carolina.

Fun, we all go to western North Carolina, even people from outta state.

We all have fond memories.

Maybe riding to the mountains to pick apples with our grandparents, you know, or to go skiing.

Or just to visit, just to get some cooler weather.

Forget, because it's gonna take so long.

We're gonna forget what's happening in western North Carolina and what the need is.

And I think it's our duty to help people remember that.

To remember to keep the focus on it, but also to remember to go and spend money to support these local businesses and local communities.

And all those drive up to the big F, which is funding.

And so we need money to restore western North Carolina.

From our standpoint, from the transportation infrastructure, and these are very preliminary numbers, subject to change, we expect to need about $5 billion to rebuild the transportation infrastructure in western North Carolina.

And let me kind of put that to scale.

We've had two major storms in the last eight years in North Carolina, Matthew and Florence.

Combined, they've cost us $450 million.

- Together?

- Together.

Now we need $5 billion.

Over the last eight years for all declared storms we spent less than $700 million in the whole state, on transportation infrastructure, though.

So this is a scale we've never seen.

This will put a strain on our resources, our contractors, our suppliers, our employees.

You know, it'll put a strain on everything.

- Are you optimistic you can get that finance right?

And what does the financing look like?

Does it look like the general assembly stepping up?

Does it look like federal dollars?

Do you float bonds?

How does it work?

- So it'll take a combination of possibly all that, including bonds, you know, but we would have to have the authority to be able to sell some sort of recovery bonds to be able to do that.

But historically, FEMA and Federal Highway Administration help us respond to storms from a financial perspective.

Typically we have to spend about 35% of the dollars on load state or local dollars and then the federal government, through FEMA or FHWA, reimburse the rest.

So if you do the simple math, we're talking somewhere around $1.7 billion of state needs here.

And so that'll be spent out over a period of, you know, five to six years if funding is available.

And so we will need that money.

- Is the general assembly friendly to that number for you?

- They're aware of it.

They haven't been in a place yet to really put the pen to paper.

You know, they've allocated some dollars to the cause, not directly to DOT.

We've made an ask.

What we're trying to do is break it down into parts for them, because we don't need all that at once.

We'll need a chunk for this fiscal year, for the balance of this fiscal year.

So we've tried to let them know what we expect that'll be at this case and we've asked for that.

Minus some emergency dollars that they have had us set aside a few years ago after some big storms, we've got $125 million already set aside for things like this.

And so we can apply that to the cost for this year.

Also, we've got some cash on hand where we are projected to underspend in some other areas that we can cover temporarily.

And then hopefully by 2026 we'll start seeing that reimbursement come in from both FEMA and FHWA.

- [Chris] Of course.

Yeah.

Patrick, question.

- Yeah, well, I think you've done a great job of really laying that out, it's a huge lift.

You know, one of the things that's really on my mind is along with that huge number, in terms of roads and bridges and a lot of repair work we have to do, fiber optics that we've been working hard to get to rural areas has come out of, you know, the ground because of where it was or is down because it was aerial.

You know, other types of water and sewer.

It's gonna take a tremendous degree of coordination between DOT and all the other agencies and all the other types of infrastructure to try to rebuild and hopefully rebuild in a way that's more disaster proof than it was the first time.

I wonder what your thoughts are about the complexity of trying to coordinate something on that scale that long term.

- Yeah, I think that's a great point, Patrick, and I'll give some examples of early on in the storm.

Early on in the storm, we put our crews with Duke Energy crews, because we both have issues when you're responding.

They can't get to their infrastructure if the road's blocked or damaged.

We can't repair the road or clear the road if there's a fallen power line and we don't know if it's de-energized or not.

So we put our folks together for a number of weeks early in the storm and really made a lot of headway by that coordination.

A typical storm, our guys would come in, they'd see a fallen power line, and they'd go to the next road.

They'd come back in a few days, the power line's still there, they'd leave.

You know, we stopped all that this time so we could coordinate better.

And so that worked really well and hopefully that's got a blueprint for future storms so we can do the same thing in other parts of the state.

The other part is, they were doing it, the telecommunications providers were doing the same thing.

They were laying temporary line, just wherever they could get it early on.

Now comes the job of putting it in a permanent location or a long-term location.

Our contractors, our crews, multiple times not on purpose would come and cut the line that they just fixed.

And so, you know, that's a temporary setback.

And early in the storm, the first few weeks, we had no landlines, we had no cell phones, we had no VIPER radio.

The entire communications infrastructure went down temporarily.

It took us a week or more to even know what was going on in some of our counties from our transportation network.

- And you've been around for Florence and Dorian and Matthew and probably Floyd.

And they weren't to this extent.

- They were not to this extent at all.

You know, we've lost cell towers temporarily in floods and stuff, but others were able to come in and pick 'em up.

- [Patrick] Yeah.

- You know, the Starlink was a big help to us and to many other government and local folks.

And so, you know, we're setting up systems now where we'll be able to get that in future storms in case you have something of this need.

- Mr. Secretary, first of all, thank you, and to your staff and to all of our first responders who responded to this once in a generation natural disaster we had.

My question for you, you know, I've always heard when I was younger, no romance without finance, so no infrastructure romance-- - [Patrick] That's right.

- Without finance.

(Joey laughing) - How does the current political environment, both local and federal, shape what you will be able to do and how quickly in the future?

Because we have a federal government in some places who are not necessarily against bringing federal dollars in a real way to give you what you need, and then you have a general assembly that may be in the posture of the federal government.

It's a wait and see game.

So what does that mean for you and how do you prepare and plan for either scenario?

- Yes.

I think that's a great question, Antjuan.

The short answer is right now we don't know.

Because we have not had the support yet.

You know, put the pen to paper to say, "Here's X dollars or Y finance and opportunity to do this."

But we have regular conversations with both our general assembly and our congressional delegation and folks at FEMA and FHWA and everybody is saying the right thing.

Everybody wants to come to the table and do their part.

I'm hoping to go up to DC soon and talk to our delegation.

I've already talked to many of them already about this.

They're asking Congress to come back to fully fund FEMA, to fully fund FHWA and to get us those federal finances so we can address this storm.

And it's not just North Carolina.

We got hit the worst, but it hit multiple states.

- How do you prepare for future storms?

Very quickly.

How do you prepare for future storms?

Because we know they're gonna happen again on top of trying to repay and rebuild for what you're doing now.

- Yeah, I think you do it in a couple of ways.

One way, which Patrick mentioned a second ago, you have to build back better.

We have to be more resilient in what we build back.

And I-40 is a prime example.

The structure we had for the wall in the Pigeon River Gorge didn't hold up.

So we're not actually gonna move 40 maybe more than a few feet one way or the other.

But we've gotta figure out a system to tie that wall into the bedrock so that river can't get under or behind that to make it more resilient.

We've got areas now where we've gotta put in larger culverts, we gotta put in head walls where maybe we didn't have a head wall to protect that culvert.

The bridges in some cases, may need to be longer or taller to allow for more flooding systems.

So that's one way to do it.

The other way is we just gotta be aware it's coming.

I think it's really difficult to plan for something of this scale, but we do have to plan at a scale to make sure that we can be responsive in a point.

I don't think any of us sitting here or any of our citizens can afford for us to have $5 billion sitting in the bank for what if, that's not smart.

But we can have a few hundred million set aside for that immediate response and then work on what we do next.

- [Antjuan] We'll borrow some from Chris.

(laughs) - Ouch.

You know, as I listened to you talk about, you're very level headed about it.

You're very calm, you're very cool.

But two questions.

One's a personal question.

The other one is related.

How do you not get personally discouraged when you look at this, when you see the devastation, when you hear the stories?

And then the second part is your team.

The mental health, the behavioral health of your team has to be assaulted with this kind of work.

- Yeah.

And I think both of those are good points.

Me personally, you know, I don't have a negative personality, so I can let the dismay, the despair, that rolls off my back.

I take the stories of hope, you know?

And that's what I hear and that's what I take and put in my heart and my head and that helps me move forward.

And those stories just are abounding.

You know, we've had over 100 crew members from Kentucky Transportation cabinet here since the beginning helping us.

- [Antjuan] Wow.

- And I went out with their Secretary of Transportation one day and met some of their crews, and the way they've befriended our citizens of North Carolina.

You know, you hear stories like that.

There was a young 13-year-old young boy who didn't have his birthday because of the storm.

This crew from Kentucky went and bought him birthday presents.

They worked on his road for a couple of weeks repairing it.

They made him an honorary Kentucky Transportation cabinet member, you know?

So it is those stories that I live off of and build off of and keep me moving.

Now our employees are a different story.

You know, we had people who had their own damage.

Vehicles flooded, homes lost.

And many of those put their own worries aside and came to work and they worked each and every day.

And even early on, we tried to collect lists.

Give us a list of employees that had personal damage.

Nobody wanted their name on that list.

They're like, "There's people in worse shape than me.

I don't need the money, I don't need the help.

I just want to go help others."

You know?

And those things.

But with that said, they still struggle.

You know, we've brought in people to talk to 'em, professionals that are trained in that and talk to 'em.

And we'll still do that.

They've seen things that they've are not trained to see.

They've seen things that they've never seen in their careers, you know?

Which we've all heard those stories.

And so we've gotta make sure that we keep an eye on them and that we give them that professional help if needed.

You know?

And thank goodness things have changed over time.

And it is not looking bad on you if you go and try to get some help and some assistance, because some people need it.

- [Chris] Yeah.

Thank you.

- You know, and we probably all need it from time to time.

- Yeah.

Thank you, thank you.

I wish we had more time to unpack that particular element.

Two minutes.

You have a quick question.

- Well, I just want to add onto something that the secretary said.

You know, during this time we've had a chance to see people at their absolute most distressed level you will ever witness human beings, you know, in the course of this.

But it's also brought out the absolutely best part of human beings, and human beings that are not connected in any way to the region or the people there other than just they feel for 'em.

And I think that can give us a lot of hope.

It sounds like you've seen a lot of that.

- I have seen a lot of it.

I've talked to a lot of crews out there, and typically outside of a storm, when our guys are out in the road doing work, people aren't happy to see 'em.

You know, they're in the way.

"You're slowing me down."

You know, "I gotta get from point A. I gotta get to work.

You're making me late for work."

This storm, or any storm for that matter, brings out the best in the public.

They're so grateful and thankful.

They've been cooking for our crews.

They've been bringing them pies, bringing them lunch, just stopping and thanking 'em, you know, and it's just thanking 'em for that work.

And that gives our folks hope.

- [Patrick] Yeah, keeps 'em going.

- But at the same time, the work that our crews are doing every day gives the public hope.

They see the difference that they're making out there, the progress that they're making.

When you reopen 1000 roads in less than 50 days, our crews, contractors, volunteers, crews from Florida and Kentucky, they have made a big difference.

And they continue to make a big difference.

- Mr. Secretary, I wish we had more time, but we're literally out of time.

Thank you.

Not just for coming and being on the program and fighting traffic, no pun intended, but for your leadership.

It's appreciated.

So thank you.

- Thanks, Chris.

I appreciate it.

And again, thank you for the opportunity to be here.

- Please come back.

Antjuan, you always look good.

- Thank you.

- You just do.

And we've appreciated you being a special member of this panel, so thanks.

- I feel like it's family.

- Thank you.

And Patrick, same thing.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you.

Good to see you.

- Until next week, I'm Chris William.

We hope your weekend is safe and good tonight.

Bye.

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