NC hires disaster recovery firm with spotty NC record (05-15-2025--Hour1)

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[00:00:29] All righty, so I came across this piece over at Inside Climate News, which is a website that is devoted to maintaining a comfortable temperature in your home, I believe. Insideclimatenews.org. A piece by Lisa Sorg about the North Carolina officials who chose an outside firm to run disaster relief efforts.

[00:00:59] In Western North Carolina. I have some concerns. I have some questions. A company whose earlier disaster recovery contract in North Carolina was marked with serious communications problems will return to run North Carolina's disaster recovery program in Western counties flattened by Hurricane Helene.

[00:01:24] The North Carolina Department of Commerce, which is a department under the governor, Josh Stein. On May 9th, Commerce Department awarded a project management contract worth $81.5 million over three years.

[00:01:42] It was awarded to Horn. I think the E is silent there. Horn LLP. There were four other companies that bid on the project, but Horn was picked. Horn was the prime contractor for the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency or NCORP.

[00:02:08] It was later rebranded as Rebuild NC because it was not actually doing anything really fantastically. And so they were like, oh, this is bad. We got people down in eastern North Carolina still not in their homes. And it's been, you know, eight, nine, 10 years since Hurricane Matthew, Hurricane Florence.

[00:02:29] And NCORP, which was taken over by Governor Roy Cooper when he won the governorship because Hurricane Matthew hit right before the election. McCrory lost. Cooper came in and the disaster response was a mess.

[00:02:49] And to this day, I maintain Pat McCrory would have done a better job with the disaster recovery because he was the former mayor of Charlotte for seven straight terms, 14 years. And we went through many disasters, you know, snowstorms, ice storms and such. And so I'm not sure. I don't think I think he may have been on council during Hurricane Hugo, but I think Sue Myrick may have been mayor at the time. But I don't recall. Yeah, because Hugo was 89.

[00:03:20] So I think McCrory got in after that. But he may have been on council for it. So this Horn LLP organization was doing case management and other services for Rebuild NC for three years. The firm's contract was not renewed after many disaster victims complained about poor case management, which is what they were supposed to be doing.

[00:03:48] Last month in West Virginia, Horn agreed to pay one point two million dollars as part of a settlement agreement with the federal government over alleged improper billing for services related to disaster recovery in that state. A Horn spokesperson named Meg Anison said that the company did not admit any wrongdoing as part of the agreement. So therefore, we did no wrongdoing, obviously, because we didn't admit to any wrongdoing as part of the settlement.

[00:04:19] Horn has other connections to North Carolina as well. Oh, and the governor's office. Yeah. Jonathan Krebs, the Western North Carolina disaster recovery advisor to Governor Josh Stein. Currently, Jonathan Krebs worked for Horn until about 20 minutes ago. April to April 2024.

[00:04:47] So he was he was there when Josh Stein was. You know, was running for election. In the race against Mark Robinson. This guy Krebs was working for Horn. He was there until April 2024. Krebs was on a team of six people who wrote the request for proposals for the contract, according to Commerce Department officials.

[00:05:13] But he was not involved in the review committee, according to a governor's spokesperson. And he will not financially benefit from it. Not him personally. See. It's just his former firm that got the big contract, even though they didn't get their last contract with the state renewed because they were failing so poorly with the case management in eastern North Carolina. But I am sure they have learned their lessons.

[00:05:41] North Carolina received a one point four billion dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development last month for disaster recovery, including the repair or reconstruction of single family homes, rental housing, as well as infrastructure and economic revitalization and mitigation. Horn will be in charge of implementing the one point four billion dollar grant with oversight.

[00:06:07] By the state division of community revitalization, which is under the Commerce Department. State Representative Mark Pless is quoted in this article again by Lisa Soar get inside climate news. State Representative Mark Pless, who represents Haywood and Madison counties in western North Carolina, said the awarding of this contract, quote, causes me great concern.

[00:06:36] It would appear the executive branch has not learned from the massive failures of NCOR or rebuild NC. With the funding appropriated to date, he says the legislature has given the new administration a great opportunity to move western North Carolina in a positive direction. I can assure the victims of Haleen, I will not sit idle watching the same mistakes being repeated. Horn is a well-known accounting and professional services firm.

[00:07:06] Krebs was a partner, Jonathan Krebs, now with the governor's office. He was a partner in Horn's government services division, a position he held for nearly nine years. In that role, Krebs oversaw multiple disaster recovery projects, including hurricanes, floods and pandemic response. After Krebs left Horn, he contributed $12,800 to Stein's gubernatorial campaign,

[00:07:30] another $29,000 to the North Carolina Democratic Leadership Committee in in-kind donations in the 2024 general election. Because that's what I do. Whenever I lose my job, I donate like $40,000 to politicians. It's very, it yields a lot of fruit, you know. As rebuild NC's prime contractor, Horn had many responsibilities,

[00:07:55] including communicating with hurricane survivors and guiding them through the early steps of the application process. It also hired subcontractors to do further work. She goes on to report that while Horn was in charge of case management, dozens of hurricane survivors complained they could not reach their case managers for weeks or even months at a time. Those problems continued even after rebuild NC did not renew Horn's contract in 2022

[00:08:25] and then went on to hire its own case manager. So the state, just to be clear, the state wasn't any better, okay? In December 2022, Legal Aid of North Carolina sent a letter to a state legislative oversight committee describing the consistent communication breakdowns both under Horn and rebuild NC. Applicants sent emails to unmonitored addresses. That's always fun.

[00:08:51] Like, yeah, if you got problems, questions, concerns, email here. And then you send the email and you never hear back because nobody's ever monitoring the email. They left messages on voicemails that were apparently never checked. When applicants were able to finally reach a case manager, they would often receive different and even contradictory information. As case managers churned through the program, Legal Aid wrote,

[00:09:19] the applicants did not know who to contact but were withdrawn for failure to communicate. So what does that mean? You call a case manager. You're like, hey, what's going on? I need some information. You can't get a hold of anybody. You leave voicemails. You send emails. And then you get kicked out of the system for failure to communicate. In testimony submitted to a state legislative oversight committee,

[00:09:46] Horn attributed program failures to rebuild NC. Rebuild NC attributed the failures to Horn. Horn. So I say let's try it again, shall we? Why not? All right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events. And I know you do too. And you've probably heard me say, get your news from multiple sources. Why? Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with Ground News.

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[00:11:07] Inside Climate News dot org piece by Lisa Sorg. On the firm that the North Carolina Department of Commerce has hired to run the disaster relief efforts in Western North Carolina. And it's a company that used to work for the. N-Core or Rebuild NC. That took and still hasn't even finished all of the disaster relief down east from like a decade ago. So, yeah, we're going to give them another shot.

[00:11:36] The company's name is Horny. Sorry, Horn. The E is silent. L-L-P. Horn. L-L-P. And in this piece, Lisa Sorg details some of the other, shall we say, issues that Horn has run into in other states.

[00:11:59] For example, in Louisiana, the state auditor investigated Horn back in 2022 after several company employees allegedly received COVID-related relief funds they were supposed to be administering.

[00:12:16] Earlier that year, 2022, the state of Alabama had to return more than $42 million in pandemic aid back to the U.S. Department of Treasury after Horn failed to distribute emergency rental funds in a timely fashion. Horn has successfully managed, distributed. Oh, hang on a second. That's their response. I'll give you their response in a minute.

[00:12:44] More recent scrutiny of Horn came in West Virginia, which dates to historic flooding that occurred there in 2016. West Virginia investigators discovered that many of Horn's services provided to the state were, quote unquote, problematic.

[00:13:04] Many of, for example, many of the personal consultations that Horn was billing $950 each for, they were actually just cold calls. You know what that is? Cold call? I did some of this back in my youth when I was, you know, even less employable than I am right now.

[00:13:30] You know, you would just, you just get like people's names and phone numbers and you just call them. And you ask them, hey, do you want to buy some service? Hey, do you want to, you know, get some insurance or whatever? It's just a cold call. So many of what Horn was calling personal consultations with, again, victims of a disaster. And they were billing $950 each and they were cold calls in which homeowners would tell Horn that they do not need services.

[00:14:00] And so Horn would bill the state for that call, $950, and call it a personal consultation. Horn created an applicant file for every person, complete with fictitious birth dates, social security numbers, and fake signatures on legal documents. This is all according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

[00:14:25] Investigators also found that in some cases, these personal consultations were actually performed by staff for voluntary organizations active in disaster. That's the name of a group, VOAD, or VOAD, as I like to call it. So Horn wasn't even making the cold calls, but they were billing as if they were. Further investigation revealed that 48 of the physical property inspections,

[00:14:54] where the Horn person apparently went out there to, like, personally inspect the property, at a cost to the government of almost $1,900 a pop, that these inspections, 48 of these property inspections, were for vacant lots, where an inspection was not required.

[00:15:15] Also, Horn billed almost $1,700 for each of 72 repair estimates, where there was actually nothing to repair. But $1,700 just to make sure. That's Horn. Now, Horn says that it has successfully managed, distributed, provided compliance,

[00:15:43] and overseen more than $122 billion in funds related to natural disasters and COVID-19. We are proud of our record of helping and supporting communities in their recovery from these disasters. So, if you look at the amount of waste, fraud, and abuse, it's very, very small when compared to the $122 billion that we have ethically and properly administered. See?

[00:16:12] So, it's nothing to worry about. Okay? I know it's a bit of a spotty record here in North Carolina, too, but nothing to worry about. We got Jonathan Krebs leading this show. Krebs with the governor's office, who just happened to have been an employee of Horn for, like, nine years before he went to the governor's office. This is completely confidence-inspiring, right? I am here for it.

[00:16:43] I will say that the benefit of the previous governor bricking the response to Hurricanes Matthew and Florence for a decade, it has given the legislature more of an incentive and more authority, more political capital, to ride herd on these efforts now.

[00:17:11] They are intimately involved with these programs. They have held hearings. They have been bringing people in front of them, asking them questions. They forced out the last NCOR director. So, I do have a little bit more confidence because you've got a lot more people. These are locally elected representatives from Western North Carolina that are actually, you know, providing real, I hope, oversight on the recovery efforts. But we shall see.

[00:17:41] Oh, speaking of recovery efforts, Congressman Chuck Edwards went to a Rotary Club meeting in Asheville to give an update on hurricane relief and stuff, and then he was accused of hitting a guy. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in Western North Carolina, just a quick drive up the mountain? And Cabins of Asheville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal,

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[00:19:07] and make memories that'll last a lifetime. The McClatchy Papers, I'm not sure if this was out of the Charlotte Observer or the News and Observer, well, it's Danielle Battaglia, so I think she is based in Raleigh, had the story the other day of an event that was held by the Rotary Club, the Rotarians.

[00:19:27] And this was in Asheville, but it was like a larger conference of all of the various chapters of Rotarians in Western North Carolina. It was the Rotary District 7670. Okay, so they had their conference. And Representative Chuck Edwards, Congressman Chuck Edwards from Western North Carolina, was one of the scheduled speakers where he talked to,

[00:19:54] he was supposed to come in and talk about Hurricane Helene relief efforts and such. I, you know, full disclosure, I have worked with the Charlotte Rotary Club for, you know, to raise money for childhood literacy programs. And I actually, I spoke to the Asheville Rotary Club when I was, when I was up there. They were very nice. It went very well, if I do say so myself. I mean, like I wasn't assaulted or anything,

[00:20:22] which is always a plus when I would go out in public in Asheville. If I could come home unscathed, that was a win for me. Okay. So, no, they were all very nice. These are, you know, civic leaders, business people and stuff. And it is an apolitical, nonpartisan type of an organization. And so they had their conference. Chuck Edwards scheduled to appear. I think this was on, yes, Saturday night. And a fracas occurred or fracas.

[00:20:52] I'm not here to tell you how to pronounce the word. I'm just saying that something like that happened. But we're not really sure because the eyewitness wasn't really an eyewitness at all. So Chuck Edwards said he was the victim of a drunken man's belligerence, which checks notes, Asheville. Right. Okay. So that does track, that tracks. But a Rotarian who helped to organize the event where Edwards spoke said the congressman was the aggressor,

[00:21:21] striking a man in anger with a clipboard or maybe a folder. Or maybe it could have also been a binder. We're not really sure. Not a binder of women, but I think a binder nonetheless. After he was done with his speech, this incident occurred. The Rotarian who is the, quote, witness, his name is Guy Gooder. Guy Gooder.

[00:21:50] He says he heard but did not see. Edwards hit the man. And he couldn't tell where the blow landed because he didn't see it. Right. And the reason he didn't see it was because Edwards's body was between him and the other guy. So. Because this guy Gooder is sitting at a different table.

[00:22:15] Edwards comes walking down the center aisle to leave after he's done with his speech. He exchanges words with this unidentified third person, the, quote, victim or the belligerent drunk guy. Not sure. And Edwards, I guess, has his back turned towards Gooder. So Gooder can't see what actually happened.

[00:22:39] But he's the one that the observer is relying on for this ear witness account, I guess you would call it. But so Guy Gooder, the district's community service project chair and a corporate sponsor of the event. I think he runs a company called like Gooder Graphics or something, said that he had concerns as soon as he learned that Edwards was a speaker. Ah, OK.

[00:23:09] So, you know, this guy's politics. Gooder is a graphic designer from Franklin, North Carolina, who has a has a history of sharing Antifa posts on social media. I'm sure that has nothing to do with his ear witness account. Right. I'm sure his his loathing of Edwards and his concerns as soon as he heard Edwards was going to be speaking.

[00:23:34] His Antifa posts, I'm sure, have nothing to do with his recollection of what occurred here. Um, he said Edwards was invited to speak about Hurricane Helene relief and recovery. He said Edwards, though, used his speech to defend President Donald Trump's administration, including on tariffs and cuts to federal agencies.

[00:23:57] Gooder said while Edwards said that he might try to restore funding to the State Department to help the Rotarians cause of polio eradication. He also spent his speech insulting his word insulting the federal agencies that the Rotarians work with most closely. Quote, he spent 30 minutes basically insulting the Rotarians intelligence in his speech.

[00:24:23] Again, I am sure Guy Gooder's politics have nothing at all to do with his interpretation of the remarks that Chuck Edwards made. Although Gooder is described as a critic of Trump who is registered as an unaffiliated voter and he serves on the Franklin Tourism Development Authority Board. So a critic of Trump.

[00:24:47] When Edwards finished his speech, he walks down the center aisle between the tables of the Rotarians so he can exit the room out the back. And according to the earwitness, gooder, this other guy, the drunk belligerent or, you know, the angel among us, depending on your politics, I guess. The other Rotarian basically said that was a load of BS.

[00:25:12] Chuck stops and kind of bends over, kind of in his face type stuff. Who said he was at the next table over. Gooder says he was at the next table over. And then it continues from there. Edwards, he said, Gooder says, Edwards then hit the guy with his clipboard while the man was seated. Gooder said the two men then left the room and continued arguing out of view of the Rotarians. All right, let's just stop for just one second.

[00:25:40] Let's imagine you're sitting at the table and Chuck Edwards or fill in some other politician that you that you don't like. They give a speech. They start walking out. And you yell at the guy. You yell at the politician. And the politician comes over and leans over, has some words with you. And then the politician hits you. Do you think it is a normal reaction?

[00:26:07] Do you think you would react to such an action by standing up and walking out with him into the lobby area to continue having a conversation? Does that sound that? Yeah, that doesn't sound that doesn't sound right. Some politician hits me with a clipboard. Like. It's on, right? Unless, of course, maybe the guy isn't he's a lover, not a fighter. Maybe he doesn't know how to fight.

[00:26:37] I don't know. But, like, of all the guys that if you had to pick, like, hey, I might need to go toe to toe with a congressman. Like, there are definitely a bunch of congresspeople that I would not want to. I don't think Chuck Edwards is in that category. You know, I think if Chuck Edwards hits me with a clipboard, he might be eating the clipboard. You know, like, that's just me. But I think I don't know. I think I'm about, like, 15 years younger than him.

[00:27:05] So, um, Gooder says the two men leave the room, continuing arguing out of view of the Rotarians, which why wouldn't you go out then? If you saw this assault happen, why wouldn't you go out into the lobby? Wouldn't you be afraid that Chuck Edwards would just start, like, you know, pounding the bejeebus out of the Rotarian? Why wouldn't you go defend your fellow Rotarian?

[00:27:27] Now, Gooder identified this guy, but that guy who told McClatchy that he couldn't answer any questions, but that he had just got off the phone with a police detective and that they're trying to come to a resolution. So they're not identifying the guy. So everybody else gets identified except the potentially drunk belligerent or the angel among us, whoever, however you choose to describe him. Gooder defended the man saying he was not belligerent.

[00:27:57] He says he's never seen anybody be belligerent and that that would be shut down quickly if a member did something like that. I don't know. It kind of sounds like the guy started it. Right? Wouldn't you say it's belligerent to, as Gooder claims, he says, that's a load of BS. He starts, you know, cussing at the congressman. That's kind of belligerent-y, don't you think? Seems like it to me. So I'm not sure I believe this guy, Gooder's story.

[00:28:29] APD, the Asheville Police Department, they put out a statement. All right, so spring is here, a time of renewal and celebrations. You got graduations, weddings, anniversaries, and the special days for mom and dad. Your family's making memories that are going to last a lifetime. But let me ask you, are all of those treasured moments from days gone by, are they hidden away on old VCR tapes, 8mm films, photos, slides? Are they preserved?

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[00:29:25] Creative Video, preserving family memories since 1997. Located in Mint Hill, just off 485. Mail orders are accepted too. Get all the details at createavideo.com. The Asheville Police Department declined to file charges on anybody regarding the incident,

[00:29:47] non-incident between Congressman Chuck Edwards and a drunk belligerent or angelic Rotary Club member in Asheville. In a statement released this week, the department confirmed that, yes, APD responded to a call from, quote, an individual who reported having been assaulted by Congressman Chuck Edwards.

[00:30:11] The caller was not identified in the statement, nor were the allegations details made public, which I feel is kind of odd. The initial report does not contain any narrative written by the responding police officers, nor does it mention Edwards or contain the name of the caller. I don't know how many police reports you have read in your lifetime. I have read quite a few.

[00:30:41] And, in fact, when I was a reporter here at WBT, I would head on down to CMPD headquarters every day at the beginning of the shift, and I would do what we called cop shop, where you go and you look around to purchase a police officer. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. No. Cop shop was the beat. And you would go and they would print out all of the police reports from overnight,

[00:31:09] and they would be sitting in a tray on the desk in this little office. And reporters would go in there and look through the police reports. And if anything jumps out, you're looking at, you know, famous people. You're trying to find, you know, names of famous people. And this is before the days of cell phones. So, like, I'd have to write everything down off of a police report because you were not allowed to take them out of the room.

[00:31:37] Although I have always suspected that some reporters would swipe some of them. I cannot prove this, but that was a suspicion. But the police would always write out what happened in their report. So, obviously, you know what happened in the report. There's a record of it. The statement that was issued by Asheville police characterized the encounter as a, quote, disturbance and said the department conducted a thorough investigation, which included interviews with the reporting party and multiple witnesses.

[00:32:06] After reviewing the findings and consulting with the Buncombe County DA's office, who is a Democrat, it was mutually determined that no criminal charges against any party involved in the incident will be initiated. A statement released by Edwards' congressional office said, immediately following a speaking event, I refused to engage with an intoxicated man that was cursing. He became more belligerent and later called the police. His behavior was embarrassing to the people at the event

[00:32:34] and was duly noted by the police. The congressman had been invited, as I mentioned earlier, to talk about Helene relief efforts. One Rotary member told the Asheville watchdog, the AVL watchdog group, which is what I'm reading from now, that the speech did not go well from the outset and it was a partisan tone that may have triggered the angry outburst that Edwards faced. So, in other words, he totally deserved it. You should have seen how short his skirt was.

[00:33:05] All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So, if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepcalendorshow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.