It looks like North Carolina is likely to suffer some damage from Hurricane Dorian, which makes the bill that Sen. Thom Tillis said last week that he plans to introduce even more relevant.

Tillis said that only 7 percent of the federal Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery money that had been provided to North Carolina for Hurricanes Matthew and Florence had been spent.

Tillis said that he planned to file a bill that would give local governments the ability to get federal disaster money directly if the state didn’t provide it in 18 months.

On the other side of that coin, Chairman of the North Carolina Board of Transportation Mike Fox at the Greensboro Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (GUAMPO) board meeting last week said that one of the reasons the NCDOT had “about a $600 million hole in the budget” was that the federal government had not yet reimbursed the state for the massive highway repairs that were needed after the recent hurricanes.

Fox said the state had only received 25 percent of the money that was coming to reimburse the NCDOT for repairs after Hurricane Matthew, which was three years ago.

Fox said that the state knew that it would get the money eventually so it was not a longterm problem, but not being reimbursed had contributed to the current funding issues.

So it appears that in one area, the state has not spent the money that the federal government provided and in another area the federal government has not reimbursed the state for the money it has already spent.