Raleigh - Wednesday afternoon, the NC Senate approved Senate Bill 382. The bill provides the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency (NCORR) with an additional $50M along with directing NCORR to sign the subrecipient agreements to proceed with the projects it obligated in Round 3 of the Affordable Housing Development Fund by December 31, 2024.   

If this bill becomes law, it means that the projects placed on hold in the Towns of Maysville and Beulaville, along with those in Pamlico County and Scotland County, along with the project supporting the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, could see construction starting on these sites in early 2025.   

Senate Bill 382 has been sent to Governor Roy Cooper for consideration, and the Governor may sign the bill, take no action on the bill, which then becomes law after 10 days, or veto the bill. The legislature is scheduled to reconvene on December 2, 2024, to consider a veto override if necessary.   

The sweeping bill also includes an additional $252M in new Hurricane Helene funding, bringing the total allocated to Helene funding relief to $1.1B and oversight measures involving the State Auditor and Office of State Budget and Management of NCORR’s funding. Additionally, the bill funds changing the Governor’s appointments powers in the future, moving oversight of the State Board of Elections to the State Auditor’s Office, establishing the State Highway Patrol as an independent agency, requiring that appointments to judicial vacancies align with the outgoing judge’s political party, funding $33M for childcare stabilization, and $7.8M to the states university system.