Mismanaging NC hurricane relief money and pitching false choices (11-19-2024--Hour2)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:28] So yesterday, the Joint Legislative Commission on Governmental Operations and Subcommittee on Hurricane Response and Recovery held a hearing. And they brought before them the leader of the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency or NCOR. And along with a fellow by the name of Pryor Gibson, who is from the governor's office, who went over to help NCOR at the beginning of the year.

[00:00:57] He said they became aware of the budget shortfall that NCOR has in mid-September. And you'll remember this, right? Because it was right after Hurricane Helene. And we started hearing that, oh, we're not going to have enough money to get through the hurricane season. You started, you heard it from FEMA, right, at the national level. And they were like, no, no, no, we got plenty of money.

[00:01:21] But you were also hearing that the state level agency wasn't fully funded either. And so they were like, you got to fully fund us. So they swoop in just after the hurricane, you know, hits. Now, to be fair, they learned about it in September, they said.

[00:01:37] And so maybe they were telling people ahead of the hurricane too. But afterwards, now it becomes a very real problem.

[00:01:47] Pryor Gibson explained why the decision was made to keep the filing period, the application period open for a longer period of time to extend it.

[00:01:59] They, the governor's office, somebody in the governor's office, maybe it was Pryor Gibson himself, I don't know, told NCOR, don't close out the application period.

[00:02:09] Not for Helene, but for Florence, which was like six years ago.

[00:02:16] So for people to reapply. And there's always a, there's always a cohort, they call it attrition. There's always a cohort of people who start the process, but then fall off for whatever reason.

[00:02:31] Right. They, they may have moved away. Maybe they got insurance money or something else and they couldn't have qualified or they, they, they couldn't keep up with the system.

[00:02:41] Like that they got lost in the bureaucratic maze. Like all of that is possible.

[00:02:49] So the legislators are asking who told NCOR to keep the application period open to extend it for a longer period of time.

[00:03:00] I can tell you, I saw a lot, hundreds, if not thousands of legislative inquiries and people from the community that were really asking about how to get in the program, how to fix things.

[00:03:13] And I would argue, Ms. Chairman, it's a valid question of, of why did you leave it open so long?

[00:03:20] But there's just as equal a question or, or answer is why wouldn't we?

[00:03:25] Okay. Okay. I, okay. I can answer that. Budgets, budgets. You cannot have this period open in perpetuity for a storm that hit six years prior.

[00:03:39] Because the longer you keep it open, that means that other storms that come along, like, how are you going to now fund those?

[00:03:48] Why are you, why are you extending the, the open, this enrollment period or this application period?

[00:03:56] Why do you keep extending it when the storm passed six years ago?

[00:04:01] That would be why not?

[00:04:03] Why not would be, oh, you know, the quarter of a billion dollar budget hole that you now have.

[00:04:09] I mean, the ability to help those extra hundreds of families, if we had the opportunity, is something to be embraced, not, not complained about.

[00:04:19] Are we short of money, Mr. Chairman? Absolutely.

[00:04:22] And should there have been a process, a, a projected accounting line that we knew how much money was being spent?

[00:04:30] Absolutely. If we had just added one more column to that weekly report that the legislature and the public gets for the last two or three years that said funds remaining, we wouldn't be having this nightmare that we're having right now.

[00:04:45] Ah, so if we just had added another column, that's it.

[00:04:51] See, we're doing these reports for the public and the lawmakers and we do it every week.

[00:04:56] And if we just had that extra column, then we totally would have caught it.

[00:05:00] What the hell are you guys doing in the meet?

[00:05:02] Like, are you telling me that without that report that you would not be following this stuff?

[00:05:07] Why were you not following it?

[00:05:08] This was to the earlier question that a lawmaker raised about how many accountants you guys have working in the agency.

[00:05:16] And there's like half a dozen of them making six figures and nobody saw this coming.

[00:05:22] How is that even possible?

[00:05:25] Gibson continues.

[00:05:26] What I would ask or answer in that form of an answer, Mr. Chairman, is please help us find a way to put the rest of these folks in eastern North Carolina back in their home.

[00:05:40] I mean, I want to make sure we get that asking.

[00:05:43] Absolutely deserve the scrutiny and the chewing that the agency's getting here.

[00:05:50] No question about it.

[00:05:51] But at the end of the day, I just wish we'd had something like this during Floyd and some of the other storms that eastern North Carolina's had to weather.

[00:06:01] And this is a good helping helping 4,200 people get a new home is a good problem to have.

[00:06:09] Gibson said he did not know who decided to instruct NCOR to extend the the application period.

[00:06:16] But he said the governor would have approved it because helping more people was the right thing to do.

[00:06:24] Six years after the storm, you see.

[00:06:27] By the way, I got a message.

[00:06:32] About prior Gibson.

[00:06:37] I will keep the author anonymous because they are up in Raleigh.

[00:06:44] Prior Gibson is a longtime fixer.

[00:06:46] Under Governor Bev Perdue, he tried to fix a Transportation Department problem by convincing the Secretary of Transportation, Jim Trogdon.

[00:07:01] I think Jim was his first name, but Trogdon was his last name.

[00:07:04] By convincing Trogdon's secretary to sign a letter on his behalf and then submitted that letter to the legislature to support a budget request.

[00:07:16] Trogdon got back from his North Carolina National Guard training and wrote the lawmakers that he knew nothing about that letter and would not have signed it.

[00:07:27] Also, during COVID.

[00:07:29] Remember all of the problems with the unemployment insurance?

[00:07:34] And how the agency could not keep up with all of the claims and getting out the checks and everything?

[00:07:42] The secretary of DES, I guess that's Employment Services, was being grilled about the delay and the backlog of the uninsurance benefit approvals.

[00:07:56] Or the unemployment insurance benefit approvals.

[00:07:59] 300,000 people had filed the first week of the lockdown.

[00:08:03] Which, again, I said at the time, like, if you're the governor and you're locking down everybody and you're forcing everybody to close their businesses,

[00:08:11] why would you not think there would be massive pressure put on the unemployment insurance system?

[00:08:19] Of course there would be.

[00:08:21] Why wasn't that part of the plan?

[00:08:23] See, again, when you never go back and do a postmortem, when you never go back and ask what worked and what didn't,

[00:08:30] as nobody has apparently decided to do with Governor Cooper because he's like, I don't know, the golden child.

[00:08:36] And you can't question Cooper if you're the North Carolina media.

[00:08:39] You can't question any of the COVID response because that means you're just anti-science.

[00:08:46] Well, the director said that he had no idea that the governor was going to lock down hotels and restaurants.

[00:08:51] He had no idea that he was supposed to prepare for that onslaught.

[00:08:56] That guy got fired.

[00:08:58] And Pryor Gibson went in to fix it.

[00:09:01] Money flowed very quickly.

[00:09:03] And then, remember this?

[00:09:05] Oh, we made a mistake.

[00:09:06] You got to pay back the money that we sent you.

[00:09:10] And remember those letters went out a few months later?

[00:09:13] Yeah.

[00:09:16] This is the Democrat governor's fixer guy, Pryor Gibson.

[00:09:22] And so if he's involved in this, I am not comfortable.

[00:09:31] I'm not comfortable if he's helping running this show and trying to, quote, clean up the problems at NCOR.

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[00:10:42] Alrighty.

[00:10:43] So back to the committee here.

[00:10:46] And I got a bunch more sound bites to get to.

[00:10:50] We're also going to talk to Donald Bryson, I believe, from the John Locke Foundation.

[00:10:55] Because this may come as a shock.

[00:10:57] You may want to sit down for this, but Governor Roy Cooper is trying to politicize the Hurricane Helene recovery funding.

[00:11:04] I know!

[00:11:06] Who could have thought that this guy, of all governors, would have done such a thing?

[00:11:11] Gibson, prior Gibson, from the governor's office, as I said, he claimed he did not know who extended the open application period by like a year.

[00:11:23] So nobody knows where the directive came from, but it ended up costing way more money.

[00:11:30] And because they didn't put that darn extra column at the end of their weekly report, nobody could see that it was draining, you know, $200 million out of the accounts.

[00:11:39] Okay.

[00:11:40] So Representative Todd Johnson asked for the actual number, the actual funding level that NCOR needs.

[00:11:49] I'm hearing two different numbers.

[00:11:51] I just want to make sure that when we go so we can start on the next round, we need to help them get wrapped up.

[00:11:57] I recognize this is frustrating.

[00:11:59] It depends on the assumptions that you use.

[00:12:00] So I think what we want to make sure that we are communicative...

[00:12:04] Let's assume I want to get this wrapped up and get to Western North Carolina.

[00:12:06] Let's use that assumption and get a number.

[00:12:08] Boom.

[00:12:08] The worst case scenario would be the $264 million number.

[00:12:11] That's if there's no attrition and if we are not able to use any other sources of funding.

[00:12:16] Perfect.

[00:12:17] Mr. Chairman, may I add to that over here?

[00:12:20] This is Pryor Gibson.

[00:12:21] Real quickly.

[00:12:22] Representative Johnson, what we've proposed to your staff, we've shared spreadsheets with them and summary documents several times.

[00:12:30] What we're asking the General Assembly to at least do, if you can, is about $40 million a month for the next three months.

[00:12:40] That's the ask.

[00:12:42] $40 million a month for three months.

[00:12:45] By the end of that time frame, NCOR should maybe, kind of hopefully, have the final numbers on attrition, which is the number of people that fall off of these programs.

[00:12:58] And they should have a better estimate on what the final expenses will be.

[00:13:03] Gibson says he doesn't expect to need the full $265 million that is the upper end of the ask.

[00:13:13] We want to help get these guys taken care of so we can move on to the next stage.

[00:13:17] But, I mean, right now we've got folks admitting fault for this being mismanaged.

[00:13:23] It doesn't give us a whole lot of confidence and give my people confidence back home that it's going to be handled right the next time.

[00:13:29] So we need to get this done quicker.

[00:13:31] We need to get that dollar amount pinned down.

[00:13:33] We need to go ahead.

[00:13:34] We've got to get this done now.

[00:13:36] But we've got to look at some real-life reforms going forward on how to fix this because, you know, you've mentioned some of the challenges out west with building.

[00:13:46] It's going to be expensive.

[00:13:47] It's going to be a long process.

[00:13:50] And we'll get into it later.

[00:13:52] But we need to really look at how this procurement's done on the front end, getting the contractors in there, making sure they can get to work, making sure if it's a zoning issue, a septic issue, a perk test that needs to be done, the permits need to be filed for the building.

[00:14:07] I mean, that's something to me that just point blank should have been done ahead of time.

[00:14:11] And now we're getting in there and we're that deep in the game and we're having these issues.

[00:14:15] That's, to me, that would have been easy to foresee.

[00:14:17] Well, I mean, maybe.

[00:14:19] To you, you're not in charge of the Office of Recovery and Resiliency.

[00:14:26] Rebuild, it's also called Rebuild NC, the officials, you heard one of them, Laura Hogshead, defended their work while acknowledging that they had fallen short in helping survivors of Hurricane Matthew, which was in 2016,

[00:14:42] as well as Hurricane Florence, which was in 2018.

[00:14:49] For more than five years, Hogshead has led Rebuild NC.

[00:14:54] Under her leadership, the agency has mismanaged several aspects of its programs, which has culminated in a financial crisis.

[00:15:02] That's according to Lisa Sorg.

[00:15:05] She is a writer at InsideClimateNews.org.

[00:15:10] Hardly a right-wing rag.

[00:15:13] All right, hey, real quick.

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[00:15:40] Again, that's Pete at ThePeteCalendarShow.com.

[00:15:43] Just as the legislative leaders were grilling members of the Cooper administration for their lack of oversight and their runaway budget deficit for recovery relief,

[00:15:57] the governor was out there saying that the lawmakers need to give him more money.

[00:16:03] And we need to drain the Opportunity Scholarship Fund and redirect all that money over to the very agency that has been mismanaging all of the money.

[00:16:15] What could go wrong?

[00:16:17] I want to welcome back to the program Donald Bryson.

[00:16:20] He is the CEO of the John Locke Foundation.

[00:16:24] Donald, how are you, sir?

[00:16:25] Good to hear from you again.

[00:16:28] Oh, good to hear from you, too, Pete.

[00:16:29] Thanks for having me on.

[00:16:30] Yeah.

[00:16:31] It's always good to be on with your audience.

[00:16:34] Yeah, no, I appreciate you having some time for us and sharing it with us today.

[00:16:38] So you got a piece up at the John Locke Foundation, the Carolina Journal, I should say, CarolinaJournal.com.

[00:16:46] So I have a pretty good nose for sniffing out false choices.

[00:16:50] And this seems to fit the bill pretty well.

[00:16:54] That it's somehow an either-or decision.

[00:16:57] We either fund all of the school vouchers or people, you know, can get their houses rebuilt in western North Carolina.

[00:17:07] False choice?

[00:17:08] Yes.

[00:17:10] It's absolutely a false choice, and that's the choice that Governor Cooper has apparently presented to the press and citizens.

[00:17:17] And he's trying to say that's the choice that legislators are making.

[00:17:20] But it's mind-numbing that he would, one, present a false choice, and, two, do it on the same day, as you pointed out,

[00:17:30] that his own administration admits that they have lost fiscal management, institutional fiscal management,

[00:17:36] of the Office of Resiliency and Recovery, to the tune of $220 million.

[00:17:42] He's put out this $3.9 billion plan that's needed for recovery in western North Carolina.

[00:17:49] And I don't have reason to believe that the amount's not that big or higher.

[00:17:53] I mean, Hurricane Helene was devastating.

[00:17:55] But saying, hey, give me this giant check, and if you don't do it,

[00:18:00] then you don't care about western North Carolina to legislators is kind of nuts

[00:18:04] when you're already admitting you can't handle the money.

[00:18:07] Yeah, did you watch any of the hearing yesterday, any of that grill session that occurred?

[00:18:15] I watched some video clips of it afterwards, and Representative Brendan Jones was pretty straightforward.

[00:18:21] Asked the director of the office, you know, are you going to resign?

[00:18:25] Yeah.

[00:18:26] And, of course, the answer was no, but given everything that we heard, I don't know why the answer wasn't yes.

[00:18:30] The staggering thing to me, too, is that they're still running this program for victims of Hurricane Florence.

[00:18:37] I mean, that's...

[00:18:38] And Matthew.

[00:18:39] And Matthew.

[00:18:40] Yeah, I mean, this was eight and six years ago.

[00:18:42] It's crazy.

[00:18:44] No, it's insane and incompetent that I think the last count I saw was something close to 1,500 people

[00:18:51] that are still unhoused from Hurricanes Matthew and Florence.

[00:18:55] It's like, well, why is this the case?

[00:18:57] The state has the money.

[00:18:59] The state has allocated the money.

[00:19:01] So why don't these people have houses?

[00:19:04] And how did you blow through your budget by $220 million?

[00:19:09] You know, the state has been very fiscally responsible since Republicans took over the General Assembly after the 2010 elections.

[00:19:18] They've set aside billions of dollars in emergency reserves for disaster recovery.

[00:19:24] There's the state savings reserve that people often call it, the rainy day fund.

[00:19:27] And just between those two reserves, there's more than $5 billion available.

[00:19:31] So it's not like the General Assembly sitting here saying, no, we will not fund disaster recovery.

[00:19:37] You know, we're being hard-nosed about this and cold-hearted.

[00:19:39] So they're willing to spend the money and have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in disaster relief.

[00:19:44] It's the Cooper administration that is failing to allocate the money or allocate the money properly.

[00:19:50] Right.

[00:19:50] Yeah, they're not just going to give them a big blank check when they haven't been able to contain their costs

[00:19:56] or explain why they're running so far behind in their accounting.

[00:20:01] It would be reckless if the legislators did not provide this kind of oversight.

[00:20:09] But it also speaks to an accounting-slash-governing philosophy, I feel like, this.

[00:20:15] I remember somebody saying it years ago when the Democrats were in control of the General Assembly.

[00:20:21] It's a philosophy of see a penny, spend a penny.

[00:20:24] And, like, that's what we're seeing.

[00:20:27] It's just the latest, it seems to me, the latest example of that philosophy.

[00:20:33] Yeah.

[00:20:33] No, I think that's absolutely right.

[00:20:36] And, you know, what has also gone missing in this conversation is that, you know,

[00:20:41] when Roy Cooper was first running for governor back in 2016,

[00:20:44] he opposed that the state Rainy Day Fund was even so large.

[00:20:49] Right.

[00:20:50] He wanted it smaller than it is.

[00:20:52] And now, obviously, the prudence of the decision to set aside some money in case there is a rainy day in North Carolina,

[00:20:58] and we've had a few now.

[00:21:01] I don't understand why the press and the left, although I've repeated myself,

[00:21:08] for whatever reason, seem to go back and say, well, look, you know, he's right about this.

[00:21:14] If we spend money on vouchers, then there's no way that we can spend money on disaster relief.

[00:21:20] Well, one, the choice is false.

[00:21:24] The money for vouchers will come out of the general fund, the regular state budget.

[00:21:28] And, by the way, the budget will balance when they do that.

[00:21:31] There's another 55,000 people on the Opportunity Scholarship wait list,

[00:21:34] and that's 55,000 families who want their kids to have a better educational environment that works for them.

[00:21:40] They can fund that, and it won't be a problem for the state.

[00:21:43] Additionally, they've prudently set aside money for disaster relief, for a rainy day that we've had.

[00:21:49] The Cooper administration has proven that they don't know how to do that,

[00:21:52] so they are allocating that out in hundreds of millions of dollars chunks at one time.

[00:21:56] But this is not – there is not a choice between these.

[00:21:58] The state can do both of these things at the same time.

[00:22:00] It's up to Cooper to actually execute the law, which they have apparently done very poorly.

[00:22:05] Yeah.

[00:22:06] I had forgotten, too, that he had opposed the rainy day fund on his first run, and he took over.

[00:22:12] Pat McCrory had that hurricane hit while he was governor, Hurricane Matthew,

[00:22:16] and then Cooper started – had to sort of pick up the recovery effort afterwards,

[00:22:22] and the whole thing just fell apart.

[00:22:23] And I referenced this actually, I think, a little while ago in the – I think last hour was the COVID response as well.

[00:22:30] We're seeing the same pattern where there is no sort of post-mortem done to ask what we got right and what we got wrong.

[00:22:40] You can't – you know, Governor Cooper cannot have done everything perfectly because he's a human being.

[00:22:44] Nobody can.

[00:22:44] So we have to identify the things that didn't go right in order to avoid making those same mistakes in the future.

[00:22:51] But it seems like there is just an utter lack of curiosity about this question, if not outright political, I guess, defense that the media is running,

[00:23:01] that the North Carolina political press corps is running for Cooper on this.

[00:23:04] And I don't understand it because if you're not spending the money for this stuff and it's wasted,

[00:23:10] then the people you're trying to help are the ones that get hurt.

[00:23:12] I don't know.

[00:23:13] What are your thoughts?

[00:23:14] No, I think you're exactly – I mean, you're on to something.

[00:23:17] And the journalistic malfeasance that's going on is crazy, not to mention just the – I don't know,

[00:23:26] the manufactured crisis that Governor Cooper is making everybody hand-wring.

[00:23:31] Like, oh, either we fund vouchers or we fund hurricane relief efforts.

[00:23:36] That's just not true.

[00:23:39] I would like to know how they spend the money.

[00:23:41] And, of course, the General Assembly has every right to have oversight over this.

[00:23:44] If they fund it, then by definition they have oversight over it.

[00:23:48] That's just the case.

[00:23:49] And if anybody doubts the power of the legislature in North Carolina over the governor or as a more politically powerful entity than the governor or the courts,

[00:23:59] read the state constitution.

[00:24:00] It's very well laid out in all three constitutions our state has had.

[00:24:04] The General Assembly is the law of the land.

[00:24:06] The governor and the courts are secondary.

[00:24:07] That's how it is.

[00:24:08] If you want to change it, amend the constitution.

[00:24:11] But I am increasingly disappointed that – basically what this comes down to is that the governor is taking this as a chance to do a political hit on vouchers,

[00:24:18] which he just opposes outright anyway.

[00:24:20] But he's doing it to parade around hurricane relief efforts as if somehow he's done a good job.

[00:24:27] And we've named three hurricanes, which he has apparently failed at so far.

[00:24:31] Is there also the possibility that this is sort of political cover to distract from the NCORP problems by making it into a, oh, it's a funding issue only?

[00:24:43] And if we had more money, you know, yes, you can – it's like a twofer for him.

[00:24:47] Hit the vouchers that he opposes, but then also try to distract from NCORP's problems.

[00:24:54] Right.

[00:24:55] Now, you know, I mean, you hit the nail on the head there.

[00:24:57] It is sort of a distracting tactic.

[00:25:01] And, you know, I was kind of stunned that out of all of the, you know, news outlets in, you know, the Capitol Press Corps,

[00:25:09] which Carolina Journal, part of the John Locke Foundation, is not part of the Capitol Press Corps,

[00:25:15] but we're the only outlet that I think covered that committee yesterday.

[00:25:19] Oh, wow.

[00:25:20] Which is kind of strange.

[00:25:21] How, you know, how are the major TV stations in Raleigh and Charlotte or Wilmington or Greensboro,

[00:25:26] how they not covered it, how none of these newspapers covered it, where's the Associated Press?

[00:25:31] Nobody's covered it.

[00:25:32] Why are there no stories on this?

[00:25:34] It's $220 million.

[00:25:35] And, you know, I've got a third grader.

[00:25:37] It's my youngest daughter.

[00:25:38] She's eight years old.

[00:25:39] She was born in the summer of 2016.

[00:25:42] That means that basically for all of her life, there are people who have not lived in houses of their own

[00:25:47] that they lost due to Hurricane Matthew.

[00:25:49] Think through that.

[00:25:50] That's nuts.

[00:25:51] Yeah.

[00:25:52] But the press is just letting him get away with it.

[00:25:55] Yeah.

[00:25:55] Yeah.

[00:25:56] Donald Bryson, the CEO of the John Locke Foundation.

[00:25:58] Always good to talk with you.

[00:25:59] Donald, thanks so much, man.

[00:26:01] Thanks for having me on, Pete.

[00:26:02] Talk to you guys soon.

[00:26:02] All right, man.

[00:26:03] That's Donald Bryson.

[00:26:04] You can read his work at the Carolina Journal, carolinajournal.com.

[00:26:08] Carolina Journal's piece by Catherine Zender.

[00:26:11] Today, the North Carolina General Assembly is expected to vote to override House Bill 10,

[00:26:17] which includes budget adjustments.

[00:26:19] It also includes requiring sheriffs to cooperate with ICE.

[00:26:25] It also includes money to fund and clear the wait list for the North Carolina Opportunity Scholarship Program,

[00:26:35] as you just heard Donald Bryson talking about.

[00:26:38] About 55,000 students are on that wait list.

[00:26:42] They are awarded to families on a sliding scale based on household income,

[00:26:46] so the lowest income families get served first.

[00:26:49] In February, 72,000 applications were received for the scholarship program.

[00:26:56] That is a record number.

[00:26:58] The wait listed families have been left hanging because the General Assembly did not fully fund the program at the time, in the summer.

[00:27:09] House Bill 10 would allocate $463 million to clear out that wait list.

[00:27:16] That includes $248 million in non-recurring funds for the current school year.

[00:27:20] The other half is $215 million in recurring school funds for the scholarship through 2026.

[00:27:27] So $463 million.

[00:27:30] The two funding packages in HB10 total more than $900 million for disaster relief efforts.

[00:27:41] Sorry, this is not HB10.

[00:27:43] This has already been paid.

[00:27:45] This has already been paid and already approved, I should say.

[00:27:48] $900 million.

[00:27:51] And they plan to pass the third package this week.

[00:27:54] Okay?

[00:27:55] Government policy experts pushing back on what Cooper is alleging that,

[00:28:01] oh, let's take the money from the vouchers and give it to the, you know, disaster relief.

[00:28:08] Dr. Bob Lubke, who is the director of the Center for Effective Education at the John Locke Foundation,

[00:28:14] said, quote,

[00:28:15] I agree with Cooper's commitment to helping families and businesses in Western North Carolina.

[00:28:20] Because of prudent budget practices, however, North Carolina has a healthy savings reserve of about $4 billion.

[00:28:29] The truth is, North Carolina can afford to help hurricane victims and parents who want to expand education options.

[00:28:38] It's not the either-or situation that Cooper is advocating.

[00:28:43] Lawmakers have the opportunity to help both groups, and they should.

[00:28:48] Right?

[00:28:49] Cooper does this kind of garbage all the time, and he never gets called out for it.

[00:28:55] These are two different pots of money.

[00:28:57] And what he's trying to do is to demonize the voucher program because, as Bryson said,

[00:29:03] he is opposed to the vouchers.

[00:29:05] He's been opposed to the vouchers.

[00:29:07] He's also been opposed to the Rainy Day Fund and the funding of that.

[00:29:13] Meanwhile, you'll recall, Roy Cooper was a legislative leader in this state for years when the Democrats ran the show,

[00:29:21] and they had just about bankrupted us.

[00:29:24] They had $2 billion in structural deficits that Republicans had to fix when they took over in 2011.

[00:29:32] All right, that'll do it for this episode.

[00:29:33] Thank you so much for listening.

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[00:29:48] Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.