- [Narrator 1] State elections officials want the Trump administration to drop its federal lawsuit over voter registrations, and could North Carolina property owners lose federal flood insurance protection?

This is "State Lines."

[soft music] - [Narrator 2] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you, who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.

[upbeat music] - Welcome back to "State Lines," everyone.

I'm Kelly McClellan.

We're having a grand old time here on the set, and who's here with me, and with you to discuss the issues?

Dawn Vaughn of the News and Observer.

Hello Dawn.

- Hello.

Glad to be here.

- [Kelly] Brooke Medina of the State Policy Network.

Always good to see you.

- Glad to be here.

- The rookie debuting, former North Carolina State auditor, Beth Wood.

Beth, welcome to the show.

- Thank you for having me, Kelly.

- [Kelly] And I wanna put you right beside some real judicial firepower.

- Thank you.

- Judge Bob Orr, former Supreme Court Associate Justice.

Judge, good to have you on.

- Always a pleasure.

- Well, there's a million little things to talk about.

The Earth didn't move politically in North Carolina, but the show does roll on.

Let's talk about something that will affect thousands of property owners, the Federal Flood Insurance Program.

It was sorely needed by Western North Carolina last year.

You know, they would never need flood insurance in the mountains, right?

Well, coastal property owners have needed flood insurance forever.

Well, now the Federal Flood program could end on October 1st.

The News and Observer has reported along with many other outlets.

I'll give them the credit.

I read the article there.

The National Flood Insurance Program counts for 88% of all flood policies in America, with 5% of properties considered too risky for even the private insurance market.

The National Flood Insurance Program is currently $20 billion in debt.

The National Association of Realtors says 40,000 property sales every month will fail to close if federal flood policies are not available.

Brooke, here we go.

The free market says, let property owners buy their flood insurance on the private market, and their realtors go, let's do that and watch houses not sell, what happens?

- Well, I think right now what we still need to just get our minds around is the fact that 73,000 homes were impacted by Helene.

There's still a thousand applications to rebuild homes.

So, you know, what the market decides in the future is going to be largely dictated by the realities on the ground.

Now, I do believe there are going to be some options that start to emerge, but the federal government still has a lot that it needs to do in terms of helping recover.

And the state of North Carolina's been very active in trying to make sure that North Carolinians get back in their homes.

- Beth, I'm not sure what to make of this because for a hundred years, you know, the beach is gonna flood every hurricane.

It sure does, and now the mountains are a problem, or at least a challenge that this state has slept on for an equal amount of time.

I don't know, what do we make of flood insurance right now?

If the feds pull out, what do we do?

- If the feds pull out, I think that things are just gonna bottom out.

Again, you can't sell a home if you can't insure it.

And so I just think the housing market in that arena is just gonna fail.

I don't think we can survive if it is shut down on October one.

- Judge, many conservative voters will say they voted for this.

There's a lot of red counties out there that need flood insurance that, we'll see what Congress does.

They can renew this program and they have in the past.

Let's not be too fatalist here, but did we vote for this even if we voted for a strong conservative agenda or some sort of agenda in the 2024 election?

- I think this is one of those places where congress has continued to punt a major issue and a major problem down the road with these short-term continuations.

And we really need congressional leadership to figure out how you handle flood insurance in an environment that we all know is affected by global warming and increased flood risk, like we saw in the mountains.

And Beth's exactly right.

If they cancel this policy, this program, there's gonna be a huge negative impact on the real estate market and on people's individual lives.

Because if you can't get flood insurance, maybe the mortgage company doesn't make a loan to you.

And so it's a problem that can't be postponed.

It needs to be addressed seriously and comprehensively.

- Judge, there's no maybe, if you don't have flood insurance in a flood zone, you're not getting that mortgage.

And in transparency, I have a flood policy on a place I've got, and I will say this, if people say newspapers are dead, Dawn, an article here and there can at least ring your chimes.

And this one rung my bell.

Flood insurance is expensive.

It's more expensive if you can't get coverage at all or go to that private market.

- Well, the News & Observer does have millions of readers every year 'cause we can track that now.

But that's my colleague, Chantal Allum, had written about that, had written that story, and also in the context of of the Chantal Storm and everything.

But I feel like again and again, we're hearing about, and on our show too, we've talked about this, about FEMA and issues and the balance of these needs between the state and federal government.

Governor Josh Stein this week had a news conference about a couple different things.

He also talked about Helene funding and how he wants more money from the federal government and is waiting on Trump and Congress to give the money.

It's like this issue, as we've, you know, we talk about a lot, it's become a, a regular North Carolina issue that isn't going away until the problem is solved, whenever that ends up happening, or parts of the problem is solved.

- Brooke, when it comes, we work for a state policy network, proud think tank of a certain persuasion, free markets and all that.

When does the practice of governing and the theorizing about how governing should be, when does that intersect?

When does it diverge when we're in a real world situation?

- Oh goodness, I mean... - You see what I'm saying?

I mean, you get what I'm saying?

Like it's easy to say, "We don't need flood insurance because it should be private," until the entire coast is like non-insured.

- And I don't know that anyone with their head on straight is actually saying that there are the ideologues, but then there's the reality, which is that folks need to be able to ensure that their properties are secure.

They need to be able to have mortgages.

And so I think, I just wanna go back to what Dawn was talking about regarding Governor Stein and federal funding.

And so right now, just to put this in better relief, 8%, only 8% of the needs that have arisen because of damage from Helene have been provided by the federal government.

That's contrasted to about 40 to 70% for other storms.

So even if we're, we could talk about insurance, but like at the end of the day, which Congress probably will renew and they will re-up.

So again, sky's not falling yet, but like, we just need to also understand we're still way behind where we've been before when it comes to federal compensation for Helene hurricane damage.

- One of the factors that's come out after Helene is that the flood maps are outdated.

And so I think what you're going to see though, moving forward, is there are gonna be more properties included in these flood maps, which will then impact requirements for flood insurance.

- And you can pay a lot of money in premiums and still not, the insurance companies still have trouble covering everything.

Well, next story back to you, Judge.

The North Carolina elections officials and the Trump Department of Justice agree to drop a federal lawsuit over incomplete state voter registration forms.

State elections officials will agree to ensure that all voter registration forms feature a voter's driver's license number or partial social security number.

They also agree to contact every voter who might have an incomplete voter registration.

State voter registration databases will be upraded and updated as part of the deal.

Judge, it seems like the state was already working towards many of these goals, and time for Trump to back off.

Is that the accurate assessment of this?

- Well, as I understand it, they've agreed to the settlement, and that's in part because the state board had already started contacting voters and putting in place a process to remedy what was a multi-year failure of the form that people used to register to vote.

And so the requirements for a provisional ballot, if you go in and you're one of those that has not corrected your registration form is reasonable.

And I think certainly under the new leadership at the State Board of Elections, I don't think anyone doubts that they were gonna make the changes regardless of whether the lawsuit occurred.

- Beth, this is a federal and state issue thing, but as auditor, you worked at the local government level, there's county boards of elections.

So how does the relationship and workability of a partnership, how is that different between Fed and state versus state and you're going into a county level to find these voters, for example?

- Well, I think it's gonna be obviously much easier to find them.

And I think that the State Board of Elections is committed to finding and helping those that haven't filled out the forms exactly like they should.

So the partnership I think is just much easier at the state and local level than it is with the Feds.

- Brooke, how far along do you think North Carolina is toward this goal, whether actionable or theoretical of having clean voter registration roles and not a bad vote to be found?

- This is a perennial issue with North Carolina, right?

We are so good at all of these court cases related to gerrymandering and redistricting and voting.

I feel like this is just a mainstay in North Carolina being a battleground state that we are, there's always this level of scrutiny, but to Judge Orr's point, I mean, this problem has been 10 years in the making.

It has not been addressed sufficiently.

And so it is a good thing that the state of North Carolina and the powers that be, are moving toward ensuring that the proper documentation is achieved whenever someone's registering to vote.

That's just common sense.

So we'll see.

Let's talk about this again in 2026.

- We'll talk about it next week probably.

- I think eventually there won't be anything for people to complain about with that, and then we'll eventually reach that and then, you know, the problems are solved.

But I really do think that, you know, each incremental thing, whether it's, you know, partisan origin or not, but of like, you know, making things better, like streamlining things, like all of that.

Eventually we will get to that point.

Maybe I'm a little overly optimistic.

- Kelly, I was just gonna say that some years ago, the state auditor's offices, not under me, did an audit, and they were looking at voter registration and they were looking at who voted and when they voted and they found all of these dead people that had voted and they found underaged that had voted.

Well, when you dug into the real data, what happened is that people voted and then they died.

That's legal.

You can vote and then die.

And then those that were said to have voted under age were simply people, youngsters, that had, teenagers that were 17 and they voted in the early election, in the primary.

And then in November, they were 18.

And that's allowed also.

So what I'm getting to is that the registers are just outdated and not cleaned up like they should be.

And I think that's gonna be what is a lot of what's going on now and a lot of what needs to happen.

- Judge Orr, I noticed that the DOJ and state officials, they don't want the Democratic party, the NAACP, these groups have asked to join this lawsuit.

I don't know what that means, what would they do if they're included?

What happens if they just say, "Nope, we have a deal with the state and the feds" and stay out of this?

- Well, at this point, if you've got a settlement reached between the DOJ and the State Board of Elections and the state of North Carolina, there's really no need to have intervener parties.

The settlement still has to be approved by Judge Myers at the Federal District Court, which I would expect that he would, since both parties or all the parties have agreed to it.

But let me just put a plug in for election workers at the state level and at the local level, they do an incredible job in an incredibly difficult situation.

And as long as they have the funding and the staffing and clarity of laws, they're gonna do a great job, and our elections will be safe and secure.

- The first US Congressional District in Eastern North Carolina primarily is considered the only swing district in our state for US House.

The Republican primary in that race heated up substantially this week.

State Senator Bobby Hanig would now face Rocky Mount Mayor Sandy Roberson in the GOP primary.

Incumbent Democratic US representative Don Davis is seeking reelection.

That should be a clear primary or practically so.

This district stretches from the outer banks to out near Raleigh.

Mr. Roberson Don has $2.3 million in a campaign war chest.

Mr. Hanig got lots of publicity, which is free for recently fighting against the ban on inshore shrimping.

Take this raise at the general election level or look at the Rocky Mount Mayor versus the state senator who fought the shrimping ban, how does it shake out?

- Well, it seems like Senator Hanig has a lot of shrimper votes, you know, that's for sure.

And you know, being on the Senate floor for some of his impassioned speeches about it, he's been one to watch really this whole past legislative session, which technically still isn't even over yet because Hanig voted against the budget, was only the Senate Republican to vote against the Senate Republican budget.

So it was over, I can't remember which ferry it was, but they were gonna charge for a ferry and that affected his district.

He was, you know, very adamant about that.

But when you make that political move or you, you know, cross those in power in your caucus, it pinged my radar, you know, of course other journalists.

And then just kind of watching him throughout the session.

And then when Shrimpgate, as I believe Representative Kidwell in the House called it, when that came out, you know, Hanig wound up very impassioned.

And of course all these people came from the coast because this affected their jobs.

So he's gotten a lot of attention, more attention than his sequined loud blazers, which is kind of what he's known for in the legislative building.

So I'll be interested to see if he wins the primary, what a race with him versus Don Davis, who of course also served in the state Senate before he ran.

- Brooke, this race in the first districts in the TV market that, Morgan Jackson, Paul Schumaker run big campaigns in North Carolina say it's very affordable to buy ads there.

If you're a voter out there, you're gonna be inundated, maybe now, and we've gotta go through 2026.

Hanig Roberson GOP primary, Mr. Roberson ran before.

Is this something that we should pay attention to, even if we're not in the first district?

- Certainly.

I mean, every political race, especially ones that are at the federal level, are going to just, tons of money gets poured into this.

And Roberson has already dedicated 2 million of his own personal dollars to this campaign.

It will be spicy probably, especially because that is the top competitive congressional district in North Carolina.

So we're gonna see that spiciness start well before the general election, especially during that primary.

So it should be interesting to watch.

It will be one to watch.

- Beth, Don was pinged because Bobby Hanig voted against the Republican Senate budget and that makes you think he may have offended leaders with that vote, not staying right.

With the team and all that.

So in that race for primary, does the state senate leadership get involved in this, if for whatever reason they're not pleased with handing service in the State Senate?

- Given my experience, they will be involved in the background, but you won't see them come out publicly and do anything.

But I think what you'll see, and this will be interesting for me to watch, is you've got all this money on the one side with the mayor, and then you've got Hanig with, you know, this publicity.

People will, I think, be affected on both sides of the aisle.

You might see all these ads on TV, but at the same time, you're affecting my livelihood.

You're affecting.

So I'm not so sure that party lines really will get involved in that piece of it, because, again, you're talking about people's livelihood.

So I'm not so sure the money's gonna win out this time.

- Judge, I know I've covered Don Davis as the State Senator, and he wasn't always the most democratic-y Democrat in the State Senate, but he would cross lines and vote on things that liberals would consider quite conservative.

This is an interesting race philosophically.

- It is, but I think you have to put it in the context of the point you made, that it's the only truly competitive congressional race in the state.

And when you look at what's happening nationally in Texas, California, on the redrawing of districts to try and assure Mr. Trump a majority in the House after the 2026 election, this seat becomes incredibly important.

And so I think it's gonna be on steroids from an interest standpoint once the general election hits.

- And it might actually be more about the local issues than national because of what we were talking about with what Hanig has brought up in Davis'.

You know, I remember when I first covered him in the Senate six, seven years ago, him giving this impassioned speech that he didn't think this bill paid enough attention to Eastern North Carolina.

So he's been very passionate about what is now his district for a long time.

So it could come down to local issues if it ends up being Hanig and Davis in the general.

- We've seen these proud state legislators go to the US House and they go from being state representatives to, I mean, absolutely anything Donald Trump wants.

Can Hanig go from being the renegade Senate Republican who votes against a budget to a house member who stands on his own two feet for his constituents?

- That's a good question because Hanig, when he was in the house, he was in the pretty conservative freedom caucus with Kidwell and others and he's been a little bit different in the Senate.

So how much is that gonna come up?

And then we have all the other factors.

We know about midterm elections and any sort of backlash against Trump.

- Well, got a year and a half or so to worry about that race among all the others.

North Carolina public schools report a positive trend of students performing at or above grade level.

Now let's be real, it's 55% of all students that are now fully at grade-level proficiency.

But the trend does show a one percentage point increase annually over the past two to three years.

Third grade reading, high school English two class, and high school math one did not show increased proficiency.

But state education leaders say they have the data now, Beth, to know where to target students for enhanced learning opportunities.

88% of public high schoolers graduated last year in four years.

That's good news, an uptrend on towards a goal of 92%.

And I'll give Liz Schlemmer of WNC Radio credit for that fine report.

Well, thinks every other article, the schools are in bad shape.

The schools are showing growth.

Auditor, what do the data show?

- The data's not there to really show what's really going on.

- [Host] Yeah.

- And I say that because we did an audit on the truancy policy and wasn't implemented during COVID.

Children that missing school and were they truant, yes or no?

Were they chronically absent, yes or no?

But then the piece that was interesting is we tried to look at six different school districts, two big, two small and two medium.

And five out of the six, the data was incomplete and not valid.

And we had our data analytics working and try to validate the data with the vendor that was keeping the information and the bottom line was five out of six school districts, they were keeping their attendance records differently.

The Department of Public Instruction was not overseeing how the data was being kept.

And so eventually, we put out an audit report on one school district and what we saw there was that out of 12,000 students, 1400 were chronically absent and 81% of the 1400 removed to the next grade level or they were graduating.

So again, I'm just not sure that the data's there for us to depend on the numbers that are coming out.

- So you're saying disregard the report or be cautiously optimistic?

- Cautiously optimistic.

Because again, we never could get our... And this is back in 2023, only two years ago that we couldn't get the valid data.

We couldn't get it validated.

The vendor couldn't validate it.

DPI couldn't validate it.

And so five out of six schools, we could not report on.

- Brooke, okay, Cautiously optimistic about these trends.

There is a huge market out there now for school vouchers for good or bad, they are popular and parents are choosing that option as well.

So how do we take public education data, digest it as a parent, and then use it to make a decision for our families?

- Yeah, that the question that parents ask every single school year as they're preparing to decide where do I send my child especially because we do have so many wonderful school choice opportunities now.

But to Beth's point, there is some reason to be cautiously optimistic, but I do think we need to look at it through the lens of, well, what was this like even before COVID?

We still haven't even reached that benchmark yet of where we were at before COVID.

And so this means that still the numbers are telling us if we can rely on them that 30% of those that are graduating are not college-ready and only 50% of those that are in eighth grade are ready to go on to the next grade.

So there's still so much work to be done in the public school system.

And I think that creating the competition within this school choice movement is going to help lift up all boats including the public school system, but there's still a lot of work to be done.

- If I could just add, if we're going to put the public's tax money into private schools, then I want the data out of the private schools just like we're requiring the data out of the public schools.

And so if you don't have that information from a fairly substantial segment of students in the private schools who are there because in part of of public tax money, then you don't have a complete picture.

And so I think reading is sort of a lost art.

I mean, the kids are all on screens, right?

They're on their phones but I think the Department of Public Instruction and certainly Governor Stein's administration are pushing to strengthen reading but it's tough.

But if we're gonna rely on data, let's get all the data and instead of just part of it on the public schools.

- Well, you can read on your phone too, right?

Although it's probably a little more on videos than reading.

- [Bob] Not if you're watching TikTok.

[laughs] - But I mean, data is important.

But a school experience, a family's experience with schools that everyone that works there is more than just data.

And there's a lot that's equally important than just...

I mean, I understand benchmarks and you need to gather information to assess but I think there's a lot more to it that you really.

can't quantify in data as far as like what people are getting out of their public education.

- Alright, last topic very quickly, the North Carolina Department of Information Technology says it now has a plan and the funding in place to ensure North Carolinians have access to broadband internet.

93,000 homes and businesses could benefit from this near $400 million grant.

The Biden administration had restricted funding to broadband fiber installations.

Trump administration has relaxed the requirement to allow cable internet providers into the game, as well as the satellite based internet service, Starlink.

The satellite grants, though, would only cover areas broadband providers have indicated they would not or could not serve.

Very quickly, Dawn, we'll go around the horn.

This bridge is built to broadband, are we here?

- I feel like we're getting closer.

I read WNC's coverage of this, and like, you know, I feel like we've been hearing year after year about more money and more need for it, and it looks like we're actually getting to that point.

So that's good.

- Those final 93,000 homes, does that make a big difference, Brooke, to say that we are fully connected in an economic sense?

Or is this more of a moral and a success for society of state taxpayers and federal taxpayers?

- Well, I mean, economics is about human action.

So there's the moral element that's just inherently baked into this.

But I think I'm most interested in the fact that we've been talking about broadband for many, many years, but now we've got things like Starlink, and when that starts scaling more, like, does this become a moot conversation by the time we finally have all of this sorted out?

I don't know, but it's really good that more North Carolinians at least do have access to this bridge for right now.

And hopefully, you know, five years from now we'll be discussing something else and this isn't even an issue anymore.

- Beth, did the state get there?

Have we got the goal and the plan in place, it's gonna work?

- I think it's gonna work, I absolutely think it's gonna work.

It has been over a couple of administrations, it's certainly their focus, and I've seen it personally in Jones County, North Carolina, my sister had cancer, I went there to stay with her when she had her treatments, and I could not get on my internet to work.

I'd have to drive to the Piggly Wiggly in Trenton, North Carolina to get to the internet to work, and now she has it.

Alright, 20 seconds, Bob?

- The Starlink component is really important, and we saw that in western North Carolina in the rural areas where broadband, cable, and everything, the polls were gone.

If you didn't have the satellite link, you didn't have communication.

- And I had a link to reporters during Helene using Starlink, how about that?

Thanks to our panelists.

Email your thoughts and opinions about anything you've heard on "State Lines" this week, statelines@pbsnc.org.

I'm Kelly McCullen, thank you so much for watching, we'll see you next time.

[gentle instrumental music] - [Narrator 2] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you, who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.