ASHEVILLE, N.C. (WLOS) — News 13 spoke with the director of the Governor’s Recovery Office for Western North Carolina (GROW NC), Matt Calabria, which is an entity set up by N.C. Governor Josh Stein.

Calabria clarified that GROW NC was created to oversee Helene recovery programs and it does not directly touch any of the funds or distribute them.

“The way GROW NC works is we are a new organization that sits within the Governor’s office that works to accelerate recovery across all the agencies that tries to make sure we identify and resolve right-hand, left-hand problems,” said Calabria. “And make sure we have the most robust effective efficient recovery we possibly can.”

Calabria said GROW NC was established five months ago and is making sure North Carolina agencies do their best to expedite and facilitate recovery funds and that work gets done.

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“We want the work of debris removal to be managed by North Carolina Emergency Management. We want environmental protection work to be done by North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality,” said Calabria. “GROW NC oversees the recovery but is not a pass-through for any funds. Funds don’t go to us they go rather to departments.”

On Tuesday, May 20, GROW NC went live with a new recovery fund tracker showing the Helene damage need and allocations on the state and federal levels so far.

“There was about half a billion dollars approved through HB 47 in the March time frame,” said Calabria responding to questions by lawmakers on getting funds out the door,” said Calabria. “And with each one of those, about a dozen line items we worked, as soon as the legislation was passed to issue request for proposals, to make sure whether it be farmers or others had an opportunity to apply to utilize those funds. That’s where those funds are. It’s part of a natural process for distributing those funds. We have to make sure whether it be small governments or others have an opportunity to apply for those funds.”

He said it took a month for the State Office of Budget and Management to “certify” the funds.

State Representative Mark Pless(R-118) said, so far, he’s been disappointed with GROW NC and the work the team has overseen.

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“GROW NC is the agency with which the governor’s office has set aside to rebuild Western North Carolina,” said Pless. “They have been up into the mountains, they have spoken with many communities, and they have said, this is who’s going to redo this. We are going to redo this the correct way. But they have still not gotten any of the money out that we gave them in March. It’s all still sitting there. There’s money for housing. There’s money for private roads and bridges; There’s money in there for debris removal. There’s a lot of things we did in March, the money’s just sitting there.”

“There are a number of deadlines coming up,” said Calabria. “That will enable us to start to move those funds out the door, but by and large they tend to be in procurement processes right now, or out for applications, but we hope to get those funds out as quickly as we can.”

Calabria detailed more on appropriations.

“The funds that were appropriated by the State that we were able to move out the door, we have to the greatest extent possible, we have put to work about 80% of the funds that were available to be distributed,” Calabria said. “We’re working through approvals to get the rest of the money out as quickly as possible.”

“The other thing to keep in mind is a lot of appropriations from General Assembly are either contingent on certain triggers or certain requirements being met, or they come in the form of loans and loans are constrained by the demand for those loans,” Calabria said.

Click here to view GROW NC’s Helene recovery fund tracker.