NC House passes Helene funding, including grants that small businesses want
House Republicans announced Wednesday how they want to spend an additional $464 million on Helene recovery efforts.
A day later, the House passed their proposal unanimously.
“It’s really hard to have a good product if you don’t have a good process. We listened to a lot of folks in developing this bill ... but most importantly we listened to our constituents,” Rep. Karl Gillespie, a Republican who represents various Western North Carolina counties, said Thursday.
But there’s disagreement between the GOP-led House and Senate over where the money should come from — particularly when it comes to funding for a nonprofit created to boost innovation and a proposed children’s hospital.
Helene grants for businesses, farmers
The House Helene bill — dubbed the Disaster Recovery Act of 2025 Part II — allocates over $450 million from the Helene reserve fund, into which lawmakers have been funneling money to address unmet needs.
That’s a little more than half of what Democratic Gov. Josh Stein called for earlier this week. On Monday, Stein urged lawmakers to provide more than $891 million in additional state funding. The House Republican plan includes some of Stein’s proposals, but at different funding levels.
Rep. Eric Ager, a Democrat who represents Buncombe County, highlighted funding in the bill for farmers and business grants.
“We’ll never get enough money from the federal and state to make us whole, by any stretch and I think we all know that, but this is going to make a big difference,” Ager said Thursday.
“We have a huge number of small businesses in (Western) North Carolina that continue to struggle,” he said, and the grants are “going to keep businesses rolling and really help our economy to to not fall off a cliff.”
Rep. Pricey Harrison, a Democrat from Greensboro, highlighted some concerns but also said she appreciated the money in the bill for stream debris removal after hearing feedback on that topic, including concerns that the Army Corps of Engineers was not following guidance from the state’s Wildlife Resources Commission.
Gillespie said that despite the best efforts of the Corps of Engineers, “there have been some concerns.” In the cases he’s aware of, he said the corps has met with local governments and counties to address them.
Allocations under the House bill include the following:
$55 million for farm infrastructure, stream-flow rehabilitation and fire response services. Western North Carolina has seen multiple wildfires since Hurricane Helene.
$60 million in small business disaster grants for businesses that lost at least 20% of revenue. Business owners have called for this aid for months.
$15 million for debris removal.
$10 million to repair, modify or remove damaged dams.
$3 million to develop a disaster recovery constituent portal.
$7.5 million for repairs and restoration in state parks.
$5 million in grants to repair and renovate local parks, libraries and museums.
$10 million for railroad repairs.
$33 million in grants for public schools.
$70 million in state funds to match federal disaster recovery dollars.
$30 million for private road and bridge repairs.
$25 million in grants for airport repairs.
$5 million to help students pay for tuition, fees and emergency expenses.
$50 million for local governments to cover unmet and unreimbursed needs. Local government have complained about not seeing federal money.
Chasm between House and Senate.
In both the House and Senate budgets — and now in the House’s Helene bill — lawmakers proposed adding more funding to a reserve fund intended for Helene recovery efforts.
In the House budget, Republicans propose reclaiming $500 million from NCInnovation, a nonprofit established to transform UNC System ideas into businesses. The group received this amount in the 2023 budget, which would now be redirected to the Helene reserve fund.
House Republicans likewise propose pulling that $500 million from NCInnovation to the reserve in their Helene bill – suggesting their intent for it to move in one proposal or the other.
Meanwhile, the Senate, which passed its budget plan in mid-April and which must now be reconciled with the House version, proposes adding $700 million to a Helene reserve fund but does not yet allocate most of the money. The funding would come from shifting existing resources and making cuts.
The House is voting on its budget version Wednesday. Afterward, the Helene bill is set to be considered in a House appropriations committee.
One notable shift in the Senate budget is also for NCInnovation.
The Senate budget calls for the group to return $100 million and redirect $400 million of its remaining funds to North Carolina Children’s Health Inc., a new pediatric hospital network being developed by Duke Health and UNC Health. That $400 million makes up part of the Senate’s proposed $638.5 million in new funding for the project under its budget.
Lawmakers had already allocated $320 million to the project.
The House budget proposal, meanwhile, seeks to reduce already approved funding for the hospital network by more than $100 million.
This story was originally published May 21, 2025 at 12:30 PM.
