It's 505 and welcome in to a Monday edition of the Carolina Journal News Hour, News Talk 1110-99.3 WBT. I'm Nick Craig. Good morning to you. Hurricane Helene affected the state of North Carolina some 10 months ago, and local municipalities once again this morning affected by Hurricane Helene have another chance to apply for assistance through the Helene Cash Flow Loan Program. North Carolina State Treasurer Brad Breiner announced late last week that the third round of $51.5 million in funding is now ready to be distributed.
That's thanks to the passage of the Disaster Recovery Act of 2025, Part 2, which was signed into law in late June, June 27th, to be exact. The State Treasurer's Office is the one responsible for administering that loan program, with the treasurer saying in a press release, this is money they otherwise would have to wait for an extended period of time to get from the federal government. The cash flow loan program has been very successful since its implementation just a few short months ago. Communities in need now have nearly $100 million in hand and it is already being used in their recovery work. The second round of loans used the remaining $34 million from more than $100 million that the General Assembly enacted back in December of last year as that legislation passed just before the turn of the calendar.
More than $73 million were distributed in February in the first round of those interest-free loans. A total of $97 million have been doled out to local municipalities over the past six months. One of the biggest recipients, Maggie Valley, Haywood County, receiving over $216,000. We talked about Maggie Valley last week as that town has a long road ahead. Initial damage assessments there estimated to be more than $4.7 million.
That's relevant as the town's yearly budget is just $5.2 million, almost their entire yearly budget. The mayor, Mike Evelin, previously told the Carolina. Journal that Maggie Valley's cash flow situation is currently stable thanks to the state's help with these low-interest loans as they wait for additional dollars from the federal government. Round two of Helen's cash flow is being administered by the state treasurer's office, and those loans must be repaid within five years. As with the first rounds of those loans, local governments willing to participate have to complete and provide a whole bunch of information to the state.
The deadline for that is August 15th. We will continue to track Hurricane Helen recovery and those efforts by many of those small mountain towns and municipalities on our website, CarolinaJournal.com, and of course, right here on the Carolina Journal News Hour. It's now 508, News Talk 1110-993, WBT. If you talk to a vast majority of voters, not only here in North Carolina, but across the United States, they would probably say that they wanted government to have more transparency in what it was doing. One of the agencies responsible for transparency and bringing information to light in North Carolina is the state auditor's office.
That is now controlled by state auditor Dave Bullock after his election win in November of last year. And the auditor's office has rolled out a new internal dashboard so you can keep an eye on what's going on in the auditor's office to walk us through some of those details and tell us exactly what's going on here. Teresa Opeka, CarolinaJournal.com, joins us on the news hour. I guess, Teresa, it'd be accurate to say now the public can see what's going on in the auditor's office. That's a pretty substantial step from my vantage point.
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Thanks, Nick, for having me.
So, yeah, I mean, you know, he's known, or the auditor's office is known as the watchdog, watching over everything, watching the spending of all state agencies and institutions. And now they're kind of flipping the script there with having the public go ahead and watch what they're doing.
So, yeah, auditor Dave Bullock released. This uh Press release yesterday announcing this: that they are going to have a new budget dashboard. It's up and running on the website in a bid to deliver better government transparency. He says, you know, he wanted to have opening access to his office spending. They're leading the charge to create a more transparent government in North Carolina and it makes it easily accessible to the public.
They can take a look at it. You know, he's been fighting for this since he got into office, actually, before he got into office, is what he said. There's plenty of details when it comes to this. But yeah, he says, basically, they're shining a light on their own office, which is remarkable, right? Because Well, we even have like the General Assembly who want to do, in fact, did what close up the records.
You couldn't look up records now, they can maybe possibly destroy them.
So, this is like the exact opposite.
So, it is refreshing to see that for a state agency, especially the one who watches over all the other state agencies. Teresa, you follow the Council of State very closely. The Council of State includes people like the State Auditor and other cabinet-level officials that many folks who are voted on every four years here in North Carolina. Do you think this move by state auditor Dave Bollock to say, hey, you know, we're not just going to go around investigating all of these towns and municipalities, but now you're going to be able to go and look and see what we're doing, do you think he's maybe trying to force the hand of some of these other state agencies to maybe say, now here's your opportunity, here's your time to offer some of the similar level of transparency to the public as well? He might be.
I think it's a great idea that he's taking charge of the initiative to do this. It's a definite possibility. And I think you are seeing some agencies take a little bit of attack in doing this. I know Department of Labor Luke Farley, he has been more active than I can remember anybody in recent times being active in that department, just as an example, and saying what they're doing and putting more press releases out or going around and doing this and doing that. I think State Treasurer Brad Briner has been really forthcoming.
He's been putting out different videos and announcements and press releases. I mean, we had Dale Falwell who did that as well. But I think you're seeing a new trend as far as transparency is going. And I think Auditor Bullock is definitely leading the way in that.
So hopefully he will rub off on even more and set a good example. I mean, it seems to be a really good thing he's doing. Mm-hmm. Transparency obviously is the key cornerstone and the very important part of this. But Teresa, transparency is great, but the information also has to be digestible.
Regular members of the public and even yourself and me, you look at some of these reports from whether it's the auditor's office in the past or other state agencies and your eyes just gloss over. It's a 70-page PDF with information all over the place. Yeah, it's great that it's out there, but it's incredibly hard to digest this information.
So yes, the transparency is important, but making it actually available and readily usable by the public, I think, is also a key step in that. Yeah, were you hearing me talk about my writing a story the other day, taking time to break things down, make it, you know, actually readable for the public and for yourself? You're absolutely correct. And the dashboard is it's really nice how they have it set up. They have all the different revenue sources, expenses, spending by vendor for state fiscal year, 2025.
They've got it all broken down. It's easily readable, digestible. You can really understand it. Did a really nice job on it.
So you're right. It's not sifting through 70 pages of what is this and what does this mean? Oh, God, I'm getting a headache from reading it all. No, you're right. And it's geared toward the public and public access.
Now, this dashboard, obviously it's new as it's looking at the spending within the state auditor's office, but these dashboards have been something that Dave Bollock and his team have been pretty diligent with since the early days in his office. They've got a couple of these dashboards out right now tracking similar spending. I know one of the big ones is Hurricane Helene. These have been pretty impactful from everything that I've been able to follow. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Again, Transparency, right? He led the way in this as far as I haven't seen anything like this before. Didn't have Hurricane Helene before, but we haven't really had any different dashboards as far as state auditor's office. Really quickly mentioned the weather one, yes, is the NC Financial Snapshot Dashboard. It's from the Office of the State Controller's NC Cash Watch Report.
Basically, how much money the state has, it's how much is in reserve, how much is available, things of that nature. But the bigger one, of course, you said Helene Recovery Dashboard. And that's showing you how many people were housed. Households seeking assistance, all the different expenditures when it comes to what's being spent as far as the budget, and also taking a look at GROW NC. That was the agency set up by Governor Josh Stein to separate from NCORE, which has done a really horrible job, let's be honest, with Eastern North Carolina under Hurricanes Matthew and Florence.
He set that up as one of his first actions in office when he took office in January.
So there's the Grow NC tab. It shows how many millions of dollars in payroll expenditures and actual operational expenditures they have. You can click through all of them. Again, everything is easily readable, digestible. You understand what's there.
So, sincere kudos to Auditor Bullock for putting this all together, not only on his office, but all of the other dashboards, including Hurricane Helene. Yeah, these are great. And again, really digestible by the public. We've got links to not only this new dashboard, looking at the auditor's office itself, but some of these other dashboards. Those are linked in our story this morning over at CarolinaJournal.com.
We appreciate the update. Teresa Opeka joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Looking for affordable auto insurance, even with tickets or accidents? At the Andrews Insurance Agency in Greensboro, we've got your back. We specialize in non-standard coverage with low down payments, low monthly rates, and excellent options for foreign and inexperienced drivers.
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Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, News Talk 1110-99.3 WBT. I'm Nick Craig. Good Monday morning to you.
Well, as we head deeper into the month of August, there are multiple areas to watch in the tropics this morning as we get in towards what is typically known as the peak, or get closer, I should say, to what is typically the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season. Over the weekend, Tropical Storm Dexter formed in the Atlantic.
However, it is a couple hundred miles off of the North Carolina coast and is heading towards portions of Europe, so not expected to pose a whole much of a whole lot of threat to anywhere on the eastern seaboard.
So not much going on there, but that storm has officially formed and is being tracked by the National Hurricane Center out of Miami, Florida this morning.
However, there are two additional areas that are now being tracked by the Atlantic. The National Hurricane Center, I should say. One of them is expected to pop off of the Florida coast and has a 30% chance of development over the second day. The other is a low coming off of Africa. That is typically where storms do form that could pose a risk to areas of the state of North and South Carolina.
That has a 50% development chance over the next seven days. We will, of course, keep an eye on what is expected to be a slightly above-average 2025 Atlantic hurricane season. We'll keep you up to date on our website, CarolinaJournal.com, and of course, right here on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Turning our attention to some statewide news this morning, North Carolina state treasurer Brad Briner has released the results of a 12-week pilot program between his office and Open AI, which was released on Friday. Of course, OpenAI, the organization behind the ever-popular Chat GPT product.
This announcement was first agreed to in the month of March with the state treasurer saying in a press release or a press conference, I should say, on Friday, as a reminder, we embarked on this partnership with a bright red line attached, and that was to use within parts of our department. We did not touch personal or private data. We had three specific areas where we thought this would help the major goals of freeing up our team's time to do what they describe as higher value work. The first was to accelerate the analysis of financial statements and improve our accuracy. The second was to summarize regulations and automate routine communications.
And third was to spot inconsistencies in a variety of data sets. Unclaimed property and state and local governments were the two divisions within the department to use open AI products. With the state treasurer saying that the program had very good results, telling reporters, What we've learned first and perhaps most unsurprisingly is that this technology saves a material amount of time. We estimate, thanks to our friends at North Carolina Central University, which conducted the evaluation, that it improved the productivity of our employees by about 10% in the early phases of the trial. That last piece is important because the second thing we learned is that the program kept improving and it would have continued to improve had the 12-week trial not ended.
So we did not get to maximize productivity in the twelve weeks which we did this. And then third, we were able to orient our people towards more complex and human-centered interactions, which are inherently more productive and satisfying. Brad Breiner added that artificial intelligence is an incredibly powerful tool that is increasingly being used by many as well as those within the state government, noting that state government still needs to lean into it and respect that bright red line for privacy, telling reporters this technology is all about empowering public servants to do an even better job serving our citizens, not about replacing them. He said, quote, we look forward to continuing to find ways to implement AI and other technologies in our work here to ensure that we serve the people of North Carolina even better every day. Dr.
Grady, the founding director of North Carolina Central University's Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Research, said that the 48-page report that was conducted by NCUU shows that the employees using ChatGPT expressed relief. Enthusiasm and delight. Over 71% had a very positive sentiment when using ChatGPT, while only 7% of employees that were using this under that 12-week trial had what were described as a neutral feeling on the program. Employees began saving fifteen to thirty minutes in the beginning of the initial survey, with the time going up to thirty to sixty minutes a day at the end of the twelve week period. There were four user types within this pilot program.
The biggest were sporadic users who used it occasionally. The next largest percentage were super users. Those individuals were able to integrate ChatGPT from multiple different workflows, with the third being consistent users who used it for repeatable tasks. And the last, finally, were non-users, individuals that did not use the program very much at all. A reporter asked if OpenAI could help out with automated functions in the state's division of motor vehicle.
Breiner joked that he wasn't sure if it could, if he had the ability to touch the DMV question, but later answered the question by saying that there was no question that the power of technology for anything that deals with data could see a tremendous amount of growth and productivity and could improve the operations like any other agency, including potentially that of DMV. While open AI isn't perfect and does make mistakes, according to Dr. Grady, he said that everyone has to do their due diligence when using the technology as well as making sure that things are factual and not relying on ChatGPT or any other AI project to do 100% of their job. Bryner said that the trial was set to officially end this morning on Monday, and that they have been having a lot of conversations about what some of those next steps are, but are unsure as they don't know what the price point will be for the continuation of the program. He told reporters on Friday, quote, there's real value to this tool.
It is, of course, not the only tool in the artificial intelligence space.
So we're going to run some other trials and think about other solutions as well. But obviously, we're extremely impressed with what we saw with OpenAI specifically. And you'll be hearing from us again sometime in the coming months. This trial, again, was announced back in March of this year at no cost to the state of North Carolina or the state treasurer's office. This was a partnership that OpenAI agreed to do essentially for free in this 12-week trial.
You can read additional details, including checking out that full 48-page report by North Carolina Central University over on our website this morning, CarolinaJournal.com. The headline: Treasurer's reports positive results for OpenAI pilot program. It's 5:36. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, News Talk 1110-993WBT. As we now sit in the first month, or the first week, I should say, of the month of August, all eyes are going to be on the state of North Carolina as it has been made official on both the Democrat and Republican side.
Two major candidates running for an open North Carolina United States Senate seat. That election heading to the state of North Carolina next November, one week ago, former Democrat Governor Roy Cooper announced his official campaign launch on his social, on a variety of his social media platforms. And late in the day on Thursday, chairman of the Republican National Committee and former NCGOP chairman Michael Watley made his official announcement in Gastonia. Many individuals that follow politics very closely have speculated that this United States Senate race is likely to be the most expensive in U.S. history.
And what remains to be seen this morning is how quickly this campaign will materialize on both the Democrat and Republican side. Text messages, emails, and social media jabs have already been going out from both campaigns as we continue to track this very high-stakes race. We'll continue with our coverage of this election all the way through November of next year over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com. And of course, as we get new polling details, big statements and comments from both of these candidates, we'll continue to bring them to you right here on the Carolina Journal News Hour, where it's now 5:37, News Talk, 1110-993, WBT. We're looking into a very interesting legal battle that could have major implications for law enforcement practices across North Carolina at the center of this case, whether police can rely on the smell of marijuana combined with a so-called cover scent like cologne as probable cause for a vehicle search to walk us through this very interesting legal challenge this morning.
Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Mitch, this is an interesting situation unfolding across North Carolina. It really is. And this dates back, Nick, to the time when North Carolina made hemp legal. And so one of the things that has cropped up since then is that those who advocate for clients who've been charged based on marijuana since have said, look, hemp smells the same as marijuana.
So if there is a search of a vehicle that's based or a residence based on the odor of marijuana that law enforcement detects before conducting this search, that that is unconstitutional because they may be violating people's rights who didn't have anything to do with marijuana. They just had, they were around hemp. And so The courts in North Carolina have struck down this argument that the odor of marijuana can no longer be used as a basis for probable cause for a search. But this latest case that comes out of Greensboro has an interesting twist because the officers in this case. Stopped a car and then searched the car because not only did they detect the odor of marijuana, but they also detected a very strong scent of cologne, or at least one officer described it as a strong fruity smell.
And so the cologne combined with the marijuana, they said the cologne was a cover scent. And so as this case has gone through the courts, the defendant, who was eventually charged with a gun crime because of the search, said that, wait a minute, my Fourth Amendment rights were violated because they had this odor, which could have been hemp, not marijuana, legal hemp, and the legal cologne. The officers put those two things together and came up with what the lawyers in this case described as an unconstitutional double odor rule.
Now, the courts have so far at the trial court level and the state court of appeals in a unanimous decision struck this down, saying no, the officers. Proceeded in the proper way. They looked at what they call the totality of the circumstances before deciding to engage in this search. And because of that, what was revealed in the search was able to be used in court. And that's why, after they found this defendant, whose name was Tyron Dobson, after they found a gun on him and charged him with a gun crime, that is able to stand.
What's interesting is that though the state court of appeals ruled unanimously against Dobson, the state Supreme Court has agreed to take the case. It agreed earlier this year to take it up. And the latest development is that the statewide groups that deal with district attorneys. Sheriffs in North Carolina and chiefs of police all filed a joint brief this week supporting the law enforcement stance in this case, saying that, look, this is not a case of some sort of unconstitutional violation of Fourth Amendment rights. The officers in this case were engaging in common sense law enforcement.
They smelled marijuana. They smelled this cologne, which could have been a cover scent. Those two factors, combined with everything else that their law enforcement training prepares them for, said that this is a vehicle that needs to be searched. And of course, after they had the search, they found additional drugs and they found the gun on this suspect Dobson, who eventually was charged and convicted.
So it'll be very interesting to see what the state Supreme Court does with this case now. The state Supreme Court didn't need to take the case because there was a unanimous decision from the Court of Appeals, but the state Supreme Court has decided to review this issue. And now all of these big law enforcement groups for the DAs, the sheriffs, and the police chiefs are all saying, look, you should allow this search and the conviction that came out of it to stand. Before we get into some more pertinent details about this case itself, I want to go back to what you just mentioned there at the end. A unanimous Court of Appeals had already ruled on this.
Mitch, reading the tea leaves, why do you think the Supreme Court would take something like this up? Is there anything that you can gather in that?
Well, one clue that you might get is from the way that the Supreme Court decided to handle this case. When the appeal was made to the Supreme Court, the lawyers basically said, here are two options for why the state Supreme Court might take the case. The first option was the idea that smelling marijuana means you could be smelling hemp, which is legal, and so that has to be unconstitutional. The Supreme Court rejected that. And I think partly that's because the courts in North Carolina have already dealt with this issue.
I don't believe that it's gone to the state Supreme Court yet, but the Court of Appeals has, on multiple occasions, said that this is not a reason to throw out a search. But the second item that was put forward was this notion that the courts have sanctioned an unconstitutional double odor rule. And I think that's something that, at least for a majority of the state Supreme Court, of the number of justices they need to decide. They're going to hear the case was something that they wanted to address. Whether this idea of having the marijuana smell and the cologne smell together came up with some sort of new double odor rule that would be unconstitutional.
I think they decided that they're going to take that up either to say that no, you can't use these two things in concert with each other as the only factors to have a law enforcement search, or on the other hand, they decided that let's just settle this for good and say that. The marijuana smell is still good, and having the cologne smell along with it is not going to be something that's going to distract from this other factor. My guess is the state Supreme Court really just wanted to say, let's settle this once and for all, or at least as once and for all as any court cases can be settled. And this was a good case for them to do that. You know, looking at these two scenarios that you lay out, probable cause obviously is a very important part of law enforcement, and this would have an impact across the entire state of North Carolina.
Mitch, you can imagine a situation if the Supreme Court comes down on this and says, oh, that additional odor of a heavy cologne or some other smell throws out probable cause. That would put law enforcement probably in a pretty tricky and tough situation. Yeah, it really could. And I think that's one of the reasons why those various law enforcement groups with the DAs, the sheriffs, and the police chiefs wanted to weigh in on this case. Basically, their argument is these law enforcement officers are using their training and using common sense to decide when to search a vehicle.
An officer smells marijuana. That in and of itself is a good basis for a search, and courts have said that. They also smell the cologne. That's something that can be used to try to cover up marijuana sentence.
So that's another reason that would factor in to a law enforcement decision that a particular vehicle or a particular residence is liable for a search.
Now, of course, it is important to want to protect Fourth Amendment rights. You don't want law enforcement just to decide, I'm going to search anyone I want for any reason. There needs to be a good, legitimate, probable cause. And I think this. Case has at least the potential to set some good guidelines on what is appropriate and what is inappropriate when law enforcement wants to search a vehicle or a residence without having a warrant.
We've got a lot more interesting details on that case this morning. You can read those over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com. We appreciate the update. Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. It's 5:53.
Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, News Talk 1110-993 WBT. Don't forget, if you miss any of our program Monday morning, or weekday mornings, I should say, of 5-6 right here on WBT. You can check out our Carolina Journal News Hour podcast. It's available in Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, anywhere you get your shows. Just search for the Carolina Journal News Hour, tap that subscribe or follow button, and you'll get a new program delivered each and every weekday morning.
You can also watch the show live and listen to it after the fact on our Carolina Journal YouTube channel. Turning our attention to some statewide news this morning: local municipalities affected by Hurricane Helene more than 10 months ago have yet another chance over the next week or so to apply for assistance through the Helene Cashflow Loan Program. North Carolina State Treasurer Brad Breiner. Made the announcement on Thursday of last week that the third round of more than $51.5 million in funding is now ready to be sent out to local communities affected. This is all thanks to the passage of the Disaster Recovery Act of 2025, Part 2, which was signed into law back on June the 27th.
The state treasurer's office administers the cash loan program with state treasurer Brad Breiner saying, quote, this is money they otherwise would have to wait for an extended period of time to get from the federal government. Noting that, quote, the cash flow loan program has been very successful since its implementation just a few short months ago. Communities now have nearly $100 million in hand, and it is already being used in their recovery work. The second round of the loan program used a remaining $34.4 million under Senate Bill 382. That was the Disaster Recovery Act of 2024, which became law in December of last year, just before the turn of the calendar, and was sent out to those municipalities in the month of June.
More than $73 million were also sent to participating municipalities in February in the first round of these interest-free loans. A total of $97 million has been loaned in the past six months. Many of those recipients we have been covering as we continue to track recovery and relief efforts in the western half of North Carolina. Last week, we talked about Maggie Valley, that's in Haywood County, and the more than $200,000 that they have received from the state government, again at zero interest, and that has been incredibly helpful. As the initial damage assessments of Maggie Valley post-Hurricane Helene are expected to cost somewhere in the ballpark of $4.7 million.
That is a pretty significant amount of money when you look at the town of Maggie Valley. Their yearly budget is only $5.2 million. Most of the initial damage was sewer-related and damage to parks near the Jonathan Creek. Several creeks in the small town overflowed into the valley, causing a major damage that required cleanup, which also accounts for those initial damage costs of $4.7 million. The mayor of Maggie Valley, Mike Eveland, told the Carolina Journal previously that Maggie Valley's cash flow situation is currently stable, and that's in large part thanks to the state's financial assistance, noting that the town received a low-interest loan from the Department of Environmental Quality as well for more than $2.5 million, which also needs to be repaid over the next five years.
As with the first two rounds, local governments willing to participate do need to complete a pretty significant amount of paperwork to get those low-interest loans from the state of North Carolina. The deadline for this third round of funding is August the 15th as we continue to track recovery and relief efforts across western North Carolina.
Well, that's going to do it for a Monday edition of the Carolina Journal News Hour. WBT News is next, followed by Good Morning BT. We're back with you tomorrow morning, 5 to 6, right here on News Talk 1110 and 99.3 WBT.
