- [Kelly] State lawmakers approve a near $275 million Hurricane Helene relief package, and North Carolina joins 13 other US states in suing TikTok for allegedly harming our kids.

This is "State Lines."

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Welcome back to "State Lines."

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Joining me today, Don Vaughn of the News and Observer.

To her right, WUNC Radio's, Colin Campbell, Michael McElroy of Cardinal & Pine, and the debuting Jeff Moore of the Carolina Journal.

Jeff, welcome to the show.

- Thank you.

- It's a great... a great show with a lot of topics.

Every second will count.

Let's start with North Carolina's General Assembly this week unanimously approved a $273 million flood recovery package for Western North Carolina's disaster zone.

Governor Roy Cooper's already signed this into law.

This money reflects the investment needed to unlock federal disaster recovery grants.

The law also deregulates many things on the law books.

Like for highway repairs, it loosens burn bans for debris is another example.

School nutrition employees will get paid regardless of their school's operational status.

Western North Carolina schools will receive calendar flexibility.

This is a state of emergency that lasts until March 1st, 2025.

- My hometown doesn't even have a grocery store open yet, and it's gonna be weeks.

Even though things are getting back at a snails' pace, it's going to be weeks before we even have a grocery store open.

This is just the first step.

This is the first bill.

I mean, here we are at two weeks, only two weeks later, and the legislature's going into session to immediately adopt legislation to deal with this.

- Alright, Dawn, they can call a session and they can vote on a bipartisan basis on a big bill, an expensive bill with deregulation and good government spending.

And boy, this is a hodgepodge.

- So they...

It was unanimous, you know?

And they had...

This was this day, the scheduled day was a just kind of a placeholder, a gavel in and out.

And then they weren't probably gonna do anything until November and before Helene hit.

And so it was so soon.

And really, they're at the point where they don't know exactly what the needs are yet.

There are the immediate needs.

FEMA is gonna bring, hopefully what the Speaker Moore and Senate leader Berger said, a fair amount of money, 90% to the 10% state money.

But what this bill was, it's 273 million.

It's a lot of money, but not that much money when you have a, you know, 4.75 mill... billion, excuse me, rainy day fund that they could use.

But it's just the fixing things with the regulatory problems, getting that money flowing as quickly as possible.

So that's what this was.

And calendar flexibility for schools and that sort of thing, really just sort of this stop gap in the meantime.

And they'll be back in less than two weeks to do something else.

And I asked Berger and Moore, "Well, are you... How much are you really gonna know later this month?"

And they said, "Well, we'll just go with what we have."

And then this November week-long session they have after the election will probably be like the big pile of money spending.

So this was something that everybody kind of agreed on to just get this out now.

As you saw, there are a lot of these heartfelt speeches from the lawmakers who actually live there and gave these, you know, emotionally at the news conference and then also on the floor about the impact to their districts and what that means, and really just being thankful and grateful to each other, to the people, to the Community, it was a lot in one day.

- What do you make of those stories coming from the North Carolina General Assembly, those Republicans, some staunch Conservatives in the western part of the state, they were grateful for government assistance in this case, is this an idea of bipartisanship done right?

- Yeah, I think so 'cause I mean, you've seen a lot of stuff out there on the internet, a lot of it is straight-up misinformation, about what the government has and hasn't done in the response to the storm.

And we asked, you know, some of these lawmakers from these districts who have spent the last two weeks on the ground, in their communities, trying to help organize the aid, the relief efforts, and they've been largely, you know, happy with how things have gone so far.

Certainly it's a huge disaster, a huge stretch of territory that needs help, and a lot of folks from the private sector, from charity groups have been helping with that.

But I think it's notable that the big takeaway from this session was that, you know, government's kind of all in this together, and we're all doing what we can at this point, and all the critique should come later once we've gotten people water, once we've gotten people outta their flooded homes.

- Mike, this money $273 million, it's not, it's a blip on the Rainy Day Fund, if you wanna go there with that, it's still lots of money, this is just a key for the lock to unlock federal grants.

When does the accountability kick in on FEMA on state and local responders and resources, to see how it is flowing in and getting implemented to bring people back to whole, if they live in Western North Carolina?

- Well, I think that the entire bill is a really good example of the mechanisms in place for something like this, because there've been a lot of talk amid the disinformation talk, there's been a lot of complaints about the red tape, and this thing has got a lot of red tape, it's got appropriate red tape and that is how to keep track of, and make sure the money is spent.

There's all sorts of reports that have to be filed, there's all sorts of mechanisms and things to track this money as it's spent, after the fact.

And so there's red tape in this thing as well, but it's a useful approach, again, 113 to nothing I think in the House on this vote, and it shows that it's got the partnership with FEMA, and the partnership with the state, and how they're working together and in concert.

And I think that this is a pretty, I mean, I've read a lot of these, as we all have, a lot of these bills, and this bill is the first step as folks have talked about, the money coming in is right now for that immediate thing, and they've said, as everyone said, as Don just said, that there's going to be more.

And so the keeping track of the money, the accountability is built into the bill and it'll come as we go, but I think it's a useful and an efficient, so far, efficient way of doing things.

- Jeff, there's been scrutiny in this past legislative session on the State of North Carolina maintaining, not only a rainy day reserve, it's so many other pockets of reserve funds.

From your perspective, this is clearly a time everyone thinks, tap the Rainy Day Reserve, but is this a perfect example of that, and should we go deeper into the rainy day well, or just budget the next year to handle Helene Recovery, as part of the operations budget of the state?

- Yeah, it seems that, I mean, we definitely had a rainy day in Western North Carolina, and a few of them, and this is exactly what that fund is set up for, you got these reserve funds for the just-in-case scenarios, where a state that encounters hurricanes and weather like this, often, usually, it's on the coast, and now we have it in the mountains, but having that flexibility, actually enabled them to quickly get in there, to get this kind of consensus, and having such like healthy reserves, makes the hesitation on doing any of this, just essentially, go away.

Everybody's got the same colors on when they're voting on this legislation.

So I think it's a validation of their fiscal approach over these past several years of building those reserves up, there's often been criticism of there being too much money in some of these savings reserves, and we'll, we may find that, that we're able to handle lots of disasters with this amount of money, and maybe that the deference of some of the budget money into those reserves, starts to, the streams get a little bit smaller as we go forward, but it seems to be a nice validation of the approach.

- If you look at the budget debate of, you know, past years with the Senate and the House, of course, it's Republican-controlled, but the House usually wants more money, more spending more earmarks, higher raises, and the Senate is much more conservative with spending.

And this really is the example of this.

The rainy day fund is like technically called the savings reserve fund, and building that up, it's enough of a cushion.

There's also the disaster fund with I think $700 million or more in there.

But having billions of dollars gives you enough to spend whatever is needed and then still have that reserve there, which is something that I think Senate Leader Berger especially has been really pushing for the past several years.

- All right, we'll be following this.

Like I said, you know it's gonna be the first step, not even into the legislative session.

We still have 2024 to finish out.

Social media, well, platforms are earning their attention for distributing what's being called misinformation regarding the federal and state government's disaster recovery response in Western North Carolina.

Our senator Thom Tillis said this on CBS' "Face the Nation."

- Many of these observations are not even from people on the ground.

I believe that we have to stay focused on rescue operations, recovery operations, clearing operations, and we don't need any of these distractions on the ground.

It's at the expense of hardworking first responders and people that are just trying to recover their lives.

Look, if there are any challenges, call my office.

We'll track 'em down if there are real issues.

But quite honestly, most of what I've seen out there is a distraction and not helping the core of the effort right here, which is to save lives and start rebuilding.

- If folks believe this misinformation, which we're scrambling to try to correct, and provide correct information, and put out rumors, and dispel myths.

If folks don't get the relief they're entitled to because they believe some of this miscommunication, that is another tragedy.

And it's no good for our people and for our community.

- Mike, Misinformation propaganda's been around for thousands upon thousands of years, and now it's a dire problem for Western North Carolina.

What got us here?

- Well, it's been around forever, but social media has not, and social media is the tinder that turns this into a wildfire.

It starts with disinformation at the very top.

It starts with Donald Trump and Mark Robinson and others.

And as it goes down, that's not where it's most dangerous.

As it comes down the hill, it picks up speed, and it's most dangerous in the nameless bots and Twitter folks, and even the good faith folks who spread the disinformation thinking it's true.

They spread these things, and you've got then reports of good faith folks saying there are a thousand bodies outside Asheville, as "News & Observer" responded to today, reported today.

There are 2000 people stuck and abandoned in a church.

People, the first responders go to try and, "Oh, okay, I guess we'll go look."

They go, it's not true.

They're wasting their time, they're putting them in danger.

And I think the biggest thing to think about this, we're not gonna debunk every single one, the biggest thing to say is, spreading misinformation by good faith spreading hurts the people that those people are really trying to help.

They are concerned about these thousand people abandoned or these a thousand bodies.

They spread the disinformation.

It actually hurts the people in these communities.

- It detracts from the relief process.

I mean as you heard from Senator Tillis, they're trying to figure out, where are the real needs?

And when they're having to put out this social media wildfire of these other things that are not happening, that distracts the recovery operations from focusing on who needs help right now and is legitimately a real person in need of help.

- Do you see this, Jeff, as the equivalent of making a crank call to 911 asking for help in terms of disinformation?

I have noticed when I read articles online and the papers, if you will, the digital papers, the story ends up being about disinformation in this nebulous term without exactly telling me, exactly what is disinformation versus what is critique of government response?

They would seem to be different to me.

Your take on disinformation.

- Yeah, I think that there's a distinction to be made here because the The thing that really gives it legs is when there's a little kernel of truth in some of it, and it starts off.

And then there's good faith people online that are spreading what they think to be good information, and people that are already kind of conditioned with suspicion.

Over the last several years, we've gained a huge audience that has an ear for some sort of skeptical narrative that would question what the response is and if there are ulterior motives.

We've heard the story about the lithium deposits underneath Chimney Rock and how the Feds were going to seize that land.

But you don't need to throw the baby out with the bath water because there's some real benefit to be had from an honest criticism of some of the response.

And to Senator Tillis's point, to be able to actually get to the things they need to do, those people that they need to help, the things they need to change in order to do this better next time around, some of the complaints, some of the criticism should be weeded out from that disinformation so that you can actually tackle those problems.

- Dawn, there's only so much you can write and your team can write.

When do you choose to go after something that's factually incorrect to correct it and spend the column doing that versus just taking information that is useful and telling people how to get help?

- Well, it's what's most helpful to people.

How can you serve the readers and, you know, viewers for TV, for people are wondering like, like you were saying, you know, people are really worried.

They're worried that like, you know, people who have died aren't recovered.

There's people stranded, they want to help.

So you can look into it, you can find the absolute source of this.

Journalists do this, lawmakers are doing it.

You know, Republican Congressman Chuck Edwards said he, on TV yesterday, that he checked out every single thing.

And it does bog things down.

It means the people that actually do still need help out there aren't getting it because they're checking something else out.

But you still have to check it out, whether in a story, whether, you know, a person or responder, just in case.

And it does make things more complicated, but you do want to find out exactly what the facts are and tell everybody about it.

- If people want to believe those tweets, is there anything anyone can do to change their mind?

We don't like changing our mind.

- Maybe eventually, you know, like people will come to a conclusion.

A lot of people want to see things firsthand.

If you're isolated on the mountain and the only thing you have is social media and you're spending hours looking at TikTok and that's what you see, then that's your world.

And then, you know, you like leave wherever you are, actually talk to people, see things in reality yourself.

And sometimes I think it's that personal experience where people will come to realize, "Okay, I'm wrong."

And you need to also give people a little room.

You were saying like good faith, that they're trying to help, that it's not everything is nefarious.

Maybe some, you know, but a lot of it isn't.

And people do just want to do the right thing and move forward.

- When you check out all the multiple media out there, lots of reporters out there doing great work.

So compare that with your tweets, folks.

Let's go down a little deeper in this disaster recovery law.

It carries some elections law changes.

Waivers giving local election boards in 25 disaster-affected counties, flexibility to manage the election.

Local boards of elections can change polling places to meet local voter needs.

If you're a displaced voter out there, you can get access to your absentee ballot at your new location.

Poll worker rules are being adjusted.

State employees, for instance, can volunteer to be a poll worker and not take vacation leave.

These provisions carry broad bipartisan support, Colin, as well as deep input, deep input from the North Carolina Board of Elections.

Buncombe County officials, we're talking Asheville here, they're still optimistic voting can roll as smoothly as possible in spite of Helene.

- I'm here to reassure our community that Buncombe County will vote.

All of our staff and board members are accounted for.

And despite personal hardship, we've been organizing to make sure this community has a voice in choosing the people that represent us, both in good times and in tragedy.

- Colin, at the press conference, Senator Phil Berger in Raleigh said they crafted the elections law changes with consultation with local officials in the west, who may not agree with them politically.

But deep consultation and collaboration with the State Board.

- Yeah, and it was interesting, the State Board's resolution, which was sort of put into state law through this bill, was unanimous with both Republicans and the Democrats on that board.

You saw this bill pass unanimously.

There's definitely support for this.

And they were trying to figure out what everybody would come on board with.

There was also an attempt by Democrats to extend the voter registration deadline, which is this Friday.

They decided not to do that.

They decided not to extend the absentee ballot receipt deadline past Election Day.

But at the same time, you've got a lot of flexibility and they're really aimed at figuring out somebody who's displaced from their home, maybe they've moved to a county across the state temporarily, how do you make sure they're able to vote?

And I think particularly the ability to take a mail-in ballot, get it reissued if it got wet or if your mailbox washed away, get it sent to another location, be able to then turn in that ballot to any county Board of Election anywhere in the state and then they'll get it back to the county where you actually live in and are registered to vote, I think that's gonna have a big impact.

The ability to move polling places.

Some of these polling places were flooded.

Early voting starts next week, and they've had to move some of those around.

Some people are gonna be voting in tents or trailers potentially.

But there's definitely this sort of all-hands-on-deck, everybody's coming together to try to make sure this election goes as smoothly as it can.

- Mike, election operations in the west, you know it's coming with social media, you just know it's coming.

However, you've seen Republicans and Democrats come together on this.

Unanimous vote on this part of the bill too.

You can't piece it out.

Seems like everyone in the state's on board.

- Yeah, and what you said about the consultation, the Board of Elections already kind of passed most of these things, and they did it in consultation with the County Boards, and the General Assembly passed this thing.

And a lot of criticism is given sometimes in big changes where the General Assembly doesn't consult the people, the experts, and that they did it this time is a real testament, I think, to the power of these things and I think they're gonna make a big difference.

Now, what about after the elections?

Like, we'll see if there's that same response to the election disinformation that is inevitable as the bipartisan push against the Helene disinformation.

We'll see if it's the same.

But hopefully these things are very clear, these changes are very clear, they affect these 25 counties, it's not statewide, and so hopefully, because everything is very clear and precise and specific, that'll help to dispel some of the things.

- Jeff, in fairness, critics who would be inclined to watch elections more closely haven't said much about this, but there have been good feedback, at least some good comments made by Republicans out in the west.

A lot of red counties out there once you separate Buncombe County.

So what do you think the conservative play is gonna be, doing all this expansive voting rules changes to get us through Helene?

- Yeah, it seems to be a practice in pragmatism and as soon as the clouds started to dissipate, I started hearing these conversations about how is this election going to work?

Once the people started to understand the extent of the damage, that this could really be a functional barrier to getting it done.

So everybody came together for that, and it seems to be that all the lawmakers are on board, the policy makers, but we've got, I saw last night the North Carolina Republican Party issuing a statement critical of the NC State Board of Elections' interpretation of the law when it comes to the early voting sites and the ability to open up different expanded voting sites.

So you're gonna have some of the partisan bickering and they're feeding different groups that have different concerns about how much you expand voting access in the state.

So it may not be 100%, but so far it looks like you have a critical mass of support for that to be going smoothly.

- Jeff, for those citizen watchdogs out there who self-appoint themselves, what's the responsible approach to take when you're looking at all this and you're taking information from the parties versus traditional media versus social media?

They have a role in this, do they not, in some degree, whether or not they end up getting it right in the interpretation.

Is that right or do you disagree?

- Yeah, no, I agree with that.

And the approach has to be manifold, where you actually take everything in, just to make sure that you're covering all your bases.

And for retail voters out there.

As far as getting this information and what to look at as far as what the real information is and what you should be concerned about, I've read recently that most people actually get that information from circles of friends, and then it's online.

And then on down the list is actually politicians and officials and things like that.

So I would say to flip that over maybe and look for some of those official sources first just to be able to couch everything else you hear from your friends and online against that to see where the truth may land.

- Yeah, and there's a $5 million allocation for voter education outreach.

How that will work in practice will be a bit challenging 'cause some people might not have TV and electricity at home anymore.

They might not be online.

They might not have good mail service.

But certainly the state has some resources to try to let people know what their options are gonna be.

- I think it's important too that they got this done quickly.

Again, another example of this was, you know, pretty successful week, you know, legislatively is that, you know, again, there's still gonna be bickering.

And there'll be more, you know, closer to the election, but the just taking action quickly when it needed to be taken and not talk about it for another week.

Just do it and get things underway, I think will... And we still got, you know, a couple weeks now until election day.

- What do you make about the concept they spent 273 million before anyone can read, analyze, do investigative reporting on the bill and its rollout?

There's gonna be more money and more bills coming this fall and winter.

- Yeah, the bill's 21 pages.

I read it as quickly as I could 'cause of course they had the news conference before they, you know, post the bill, but we knew a little bit of what was gonna be in it anyway.

It's not like it's earmarks and things that you're digging for.

It seemed on the... Again, like, you know, as much as fast as we could read and analyze that.

You know, this is just the first round.

I'm sure there'll be some stuff and like the, you know, the big spending as far as you know, you know, looking at what districts got it, you know, did they need it?

You know, what else is in there?

Is there suddenly some policy because that's kind of how the leg does stuff.

- I think that this jumps out, though, as this is such a unique thing.

The scale of damage is so unique.

I mean, we were talking with, Heist talking the other day about just that one wastewater system or water system taking four years.

That is such a monumental undertaking that of course it's going to take a lot of money.

Of course it's gonna be multiple rounds.

And I think in this case, the speed was vital.

The speed was necessary, and they built in...

The thesis of this bill was the flexibility in the individual things, and I think hopefully that's what gets us through.

- I have two other topics I want to get to, speed being of the essence.

The North Carolina Insurance Commissioner, Mike Causey, and the North Carolina Rate Bureau, which represents insurance companies, have entered public hearings over proposed insurance rate hikes.

Ah, just in time.

The insurance companies request an average 42% property insurance increase statewide.

This is pre-Helene.

Some mountain counties could see a 4% hike if the insurance companies get their way, others 20-plus percent.

Insurers want to raise some coastal property insurance rates by 99%.

Commissioner Causey has rejected these increases, which legally prompt the public hearing.

Insurance company attorneys say, Jeff, inflation of construction costs and severe weather, which were pre-Helene make these premium price increase requests very feasible and reasonable.

We're gonna move quickly through this.

Your thoughts on this?

Did Helene change the hearing?

- Yeah, it may have changed the focus of some of it, but I believe the focus on the side of Commissioner Causey is gonna be to keep this rate increase as low as possible.

They had an attempt in 2020 to raise rates an average about 25% across the state, and they ended up negotiating over that time period.

The settlement was closer to, I think it was just under 8%.

So it's about 1/3 of that.

So here you've got an average increase of about 42% across the state, 99% in like Emerald Isle and in Carteret County, maybe up to 20% in the mountains.

But you'll probably find a settlement after they work their way through it that's somewhere in between that takes the sting off of this.

- Mike, what do you think of the insurance rate?

You could be a real populist here as you're an insurance commissioner, and the opponent, Natasha Marcus.

Insurance rates, they're gonna pay out a lot of premiums.

- They are, and I know we don't have time to get into it, but I just, I don't think we can have this conversation without talking about climate change, because the insurers are the ones who have not been ignoring it.

99% increase on the coasts where we just saw footage of houses falling into the sea.

As a news and observer wrote just a couple of weeks ago, those houses weren't built on the shoreline.

And so this stuff is coming and this is gonna be around for a long time.

And Helene is not the only Helene we're gonna be talking about.

So we're gonna be talking about insurance for a long time - And we certainly will.

Alright Colin, let's switch up and talk about TikTok.

The North Carolina Attorney General's office.

You know, Josh Stein has joined a multi-state lawsuit against the social media platform TikTok.

12 attorneys generals say TikTok design is apt to be addictive to young people.

The lawsuit alleges TikTok has downplayed mental health risk associated with repeated use.

Colin, I can't believe this.

The average 13 to 17-year-old TikTok user searched TikTok at least two hours a day in a quarter.

25% of young TikTok users on the app, three hours or more daily.

Here comes the lawsuit, the multi-state suit, looking for the settlement, fines and I guess some app changes.

- Yeah, it is all, I guess, the backdrop of the efforts to ban TikTok over the fact that the Chinese government is connected to the company that owns it.

You know, it's interesting to see the efforts to go after this particular social media app, 'cause they're all a little bit addictive.

I probably spend way too much time on Twitter/X and some of the other ones as well.

But TikTok, from what we've seen in this lawsuit, seems to be going above and beyond, and particularly targeting at young people whose minds are still in development and they're more easily addicted to whether it's an app on your phone or drugs or whatever else like it, you can easily be harmed.

So I think that's sort of the crux of this.

The interesting North Carolina angle is the potential next attorney general, Democrat Jeff Jackson, if he wins his race, is one of the biggest TikTok celebrities in the political world, doing a lot of videos on there.

It'll be interesting to see how he continues this legal effort if he were to be the one that takes over from Josh Stein, the AG right now.

- Don, I'll give you the last word, but Jeff Jackson is an adult using TikTok, not a 13 to 17-year-old.

And they've debated this topic.

- I think, yeah, I think it's interesting the target with young people because it's companies making money off of people that are still minors and they make plenty of money off of all the adults scrolling too.

But I think TikTok is the focus now.

It'll be something else soon enough.

- It'd be something to watch.

Well, we only have a half a minute left.

Jeff, I want to thank you for being on the show.

- Thank you for having me.

- This week debuting.

You have a great team at the Carolina Journal and John Lock.

Mike, always good to have Cardinal and Pine.

You two are rocks for us.

I appreciate your analysis each and every week, and most importantly, as much as I like them, I love you for watching State Lines.

Always email me your thoughts and opinions, statelines@pbsnc.org.

Yes, I'll screen every email.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

I'll see you next time.

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