Franklin’s two state representatives are on a 20-person conference where the two chambers of the state legislature will hammer out details of a half-billion-dollar Hurricane Helene spending bill.
The state House voted through their version of House Bill 47 on Feb. 25, followed by the state Senate replacing the entire bill with their version and voting it through March 5. Both votes were unanimous. On March 11, the House voted 115-0 to deny concurrence with the Senate version of the bill, meaning a conferee conference must be appointed to negotiate. A negotiated bill must go through votes by both chambers again before being presented to Gov. Josh Stein.
In total, 12 House and eight Senate members are conferees for this bill, all Republicans, most of whom represent areas impacted by Hurricane Helene. Among those are Franklin’s Republican representatives, Rep. Karl Gillespie and Sen. Kevin Corbin.
“The two chambers have different perspectives on the best way to allocate the over $500 million in relief funds in the latest bill,” Gillespie said. “Some provisions in the Senate’s bill fall outside the scope of Helene relief, and I believe a clean, well-structured bill similar to the House bill would be more effective.”
Corbin said the two sides met this past Monday, March 17, to negotiate the amounts of funding.
“We anticipate reaching an agreement next week and will go to the floor,” Corbin said on March 14.
Gillespie remains “hopeful that these discussions will be productive and lead to a swift resolution that satisfies all parties.”
Some allocations are similar, such as the $140 million to the Department of Commerce, Division of Community Revitalization for the Home Reconstruction and Repair Program and $100 million to N.C. Emergency Management for the Private Road and Bridges Repair and Replacement Program, which is in both versions.
Many parts of H47 differ wildly. For instance, the House version of the bill had $192,491,704 to the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services for the Agricultural Disaster Crop Loss Program. The Senate version allocates $75 million to the same program. The Senate version has $55 million for the Small Business Infrastructure Grant and $4.5 million to the Department of Public Instruction for the School Extension Learning Recovery Program, neither of which is in the House’s version. The House calls for $5 million to the Department of Commerce for targeted media campaigns for WNC. The Senate changed that to $3 million.
H47, an early priority of the 2025 N.C. General Assembly Long Session, would be the fourth Helene spending bill passed by the state.