The embattled leader of North Carolina’s disaster recovery agency on Monday defended her office’s capacity to rebuild from Hurricane Helene — rebuffing calls for her resignation as she took responsibility for major budget overruns and delays following previous hurricanes.
Laura Hogshead, director of the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resilience, told state lawmakers that her agency has improved since floundering after Hurricane Matthew hit the state in 2016.
“We’ve made all the mistakes. We’ve corrected all of those mistakes. And now we know what not to do, and we know how to do the things that we need to do for the west earlier and better,” Hogshead said, referring the portion of western North Carolina devastated by Helene in late September.
At a joint legislative hearing Monday, House and Senate lawmakers questioned why Hogshead’s agency, known as NCORR, should administer Helene’s recovery after delays and overspending in its response to Matthew and Hurricane Florence in 2018. An estimated 1,600 people remain displaced from the two hurricanes, according to Inside Climate News.
