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Watchdog Group Says NC Recovery Funds Delayed

Vehicles at a business are surrounded by floodwaters from Hurricane Matthew in Lumberton, NC, Oct. 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton)

A state government watchdog agency says delays have plagued recovery spending from the damage of Hurricane Matthew.

North Carolina has received more than $200 million dollars in federal grants to rebuild and recover from the devastation of Hurricane Matthew. But more than two years after it made landfall, only 1 percent of that money has been spent.

South Carolina, which received a similar award, has spent 22 percent during the same time period.

The non-partisan Program Evaluation Division says North Carolina was inexperienced with the type of grant it received. Their report says a lack of expertise as well as administrative mistakes contributed to the delays. It also found more than $3 million dollars in unnecessary state spending.

State recovery leaders acknowledged their inexperience led to a delay, but disagreed with some of the report's conclusions.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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