For many people, renting is a convenient option. It offers flexibility and may require less responsibility for maintenance. But owning a home can offer a different set of long-term benefits. Instead of paying rent to a landlord each month, homeowners are investing in a property that can potentially increase in value over time. That means your home may become an asset as you continue to live in it.
Home ownership can also provide more control over your living space, from decorating to renovations that really fit your lifestyle. And here's something that many people don't realize: there are education programs and financial assistance options available for first-time homebuyers.
Some of these programs even offer grant funding that may help cover part of the upfront cost, and grants typically don't have to be repaid. That's why learning about home ownership options can be an important step toward making the best decision for you and your family. To learn more, visit toolsforhomeownership.com. It's 505 and welcome in to a Monday edition of the Carolina Journal News Hour on Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT. I'm Nick Craig.
Good morning to you.
Well, two years ago, yesterday, September the 27th, 2024, Western North Carolina was changed forever. Hurricane Helene had already slammed into Florida as a major storm. And by the time it reached the North Carolina Mountains, while it was no longer a hurricane in terms of its strength, it didn't need to be. In many areas, it dumped more than 30 inches of rain on the sleep on the steep slopes and narrow river valleys of western North Carolina. The French Broad River, the Suananoa River, and many others left their banks.
Hillsides gave way. Entire cities, streets, and towns disappeared. This storm, as we've been documenting over the last two years, is the costliest In North Carolina history, and unfortunately, one of the deadliest as well. Nearly $60 billion in damage, which is about three and a half times that of Hurricane Florence, which affected eastern North Carolina about a decade ago. More than 73,000 homes were damaged or destroyed.
9,000 road sites heavily damaged across 39 counties, plus the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, all under a federal disaster declaration, and unfortunately, 107 lives lost in North Carolina. Driving through many of the popular areas, Asheville, Marshall, Chimney Rock, or the Pigeon River Gorge in those first few weeks, it did not even look like the western North Carolina that existed prior to September the 27th, 2024. Rain line rail lines underwater, houses completely moved off their foundations. Interstate 40 torn open in many areas. Businesses that had stood for generations reduced to nothing more than mud and twisted metal.
That was two years ago, yesterday. Over the last two years, we have been continuing to follow where Western North Carolina stands now. And fortunately, a lot of the emergency work to this point is done. State officials say that more than 99% of damaged state roads have reopened. More than 17 million cubic yards of debris has been hauled out of the area.
We're talking about trees, houses, cars moved off of roads, out of streams, and off of private land in Western North Carolina. Case managers have worked more than 1,600 survivor cases and are still helping around 1,000 families find their way through insurance as FEMA nonprofit and state programs all try to pick up the pieces. FEMA's individual assistance program reached about 160,000 households. Schools have been repaired. Small business loans have been going out over the last 24 months.
And food and water utilities have reached tens of thousands of homes. Housing has been one of the slower portions of the recovery efforts, but fortunately it has been moving in recent months through the Renew NCN Volunteer Partner Program. More than 1,250 homes have been repaired or rebuilt. Hundreds more are in the pipeline and currently awaiting approval as the state has also put money towards new affordable housing units. Federal hazard mitigation buyouts have approved 535 flood-prone homes so that those properties can be taken out of harm's way and the land returned to open space with the risk that a future storm could destroy new property that was rebuilt and water systems have become one of have become one of the largest discussions after the storm as the water systems have seen more than a billion dollars in state grants for things like drinking water sewer and resiliency projects across 28 counties Dams that overtopped or were damaged are in the process of getting repaired and just this month the state finished awarding a $10 million Hurricane Helene dam safety fund that included money for three high hazard dams in Polk Henderson and Watauga counties that are going to be receiving a portion of those funds Carolina Journal has spent the last two years following the money, and the state has put up about $3.1 billion.
That includes money to match federal grants that have come into North Carolina since Hurricane Helene, with the latest budget that was approved just a couple of months ago, adding another $700 million to that total. Last week we covered here on the NewsHour the state treasurer announcing nearly $23 million in new interest-free cash loans to western North Carolina towns and counties, many of which are still waiting on FEMA reimbursements. That's on top of the $150 million that went through that same program over the last year and a half or so. On the federal side, FEMA has approved a batch after batch of projects, $297 million in June, another $137 million in late August. Federal support for Helene in North Carolina has now passed $7.5 billion at in insurance and private donations and other groups.
We are getting close to $10 billion worth of relief efforts thus far. For much of the last two years, Carolina Journal has reported some of the bottlenecks, money awarded on paper and then stuck in the federal review process, program restrictions or reimbursement delays, as this has been a major problem for local governments who were spending cash, frankly, that they didn't have while they waited for those federal dollars to flow in. Homeowners paying mortgages on houses that no longer existed as well. Democrat Governor Josh Stein has consistently asked Congress more than once for additional dollars, at one point requesting $13.5 billion, later lowering that to $10 billion for housing, water systems, and local governments, as he pleaded with federal lawmakers that the federal dollars had only covered a fraction of the estimated damage I mentioned, about a $60 billion storm, at least at last estimates.
Some of the biggest jobs are still years from being finished.
However, reconstruction of Interstate 40 through the Pigeon River Gorge is now expected to cost in the ballpark of $2.8 billion. Four-lane traffic is not expected to open in that area until 2029. That is a large stretch of road. It is a freight corridor to connect the Tennessee and North Carolina mountains. And until it's rebuilt for good, that region is living with temporary fixes and temporary roadways on a very important piece of infrastructure that Hurricane Helene destroyed.
Housing remains one of the more personal unfinished items of business. A survey of three hundred people in the last couple of months affected by the storm found that one in four have still not returned home, even though they plan to when it is feasible. 71 percent of those surveyed personally knew someone who was still struggling financially, and unfortunately 60 percent say that they felt abandoned by the government during and after Helene. The people who lived through it talk about two different recoveries in Western North Carolina. One is the official one: roads reopening, grants being awarded, press conferences about resilience, and all of the other work that has happened over the last two years.
And the other is the discussions that are still taking place across many communities in Western North Carolina, fighting with insurance companies, dealing with contractor shortages, some of the red tape and bureaucracy as it relates to many federal programs that have taken place in Western North Carolina.
However, in the immediate aftermath of the storm, we saw this. Communities did not wait for Raleigh or Washington state or federal government to finish the job. Churches, volunteer fire departments, other nonprofit groups began the process of making or attempting to make, I should say, Western North Carolina whole again as many of these groups stepped in and attempted to pick up the pieces while government did not. Helene was called a thousand-year flood. The question hanging over the mountains this morning is pretty simple.
If something like this happens again before the full rebuild is done, how much of what was temporary will still be temporary? Two years now since the storm, more of the roads are open, more storefronts have lights and windows again. Tourism has returned to western North Carolina. Rivers are back within their banks, and we have seen a lot of successful work out west. This marks the two-year September the 27th, 2026.
Yesterday, Sunday was the two-year mark of Hurricane Helene. There is a lot that we are going to continue to follow on that for years to come, including an announcement from the governor last week as Stein announced and unveiled a long-term economic recovery plan for Western North Carolina. We'll get into those details coming up here in just a couple of minutes on the Carolina Journal News Hour. For many people, renting is a convenient option. It offers flexibility and may require less responsibility for maintenance.
But owning a home can offer a different set of long-term benefits. Instead of paying rent to a landlord each month, homeowners are investing in a property that can potentially increase in value over time. That means your home may become an asset as you continue to live in it. Home ownership can also provide more control over your living space, from decorating to renovations that really fit your lifestyle. And here's something that many people don't realize: there are education programs and financial assistance options available for first-time homebuyers.
Some of these programs even offer grant funding that may help cover part of the upfront cost, and grants typically don't have to be repaid. That's why learning about home ownership options can be an important step toward making the best decision for you and your family. To learn more, visit toolsforhomeownership.com. This is Troy Millings from Earn Your Leisure. On Earn Your Leisure, we're all about smart money moves.
And here's one most people skip: and it starts with Insurify. Most of us never shop our car insurance. The policy renews every year, the rate creeps up a little at a time, and nobody calls you to tell you. You stay with the same company because it's easy, and that convenience costs you real money. That's what Insurify fixes.
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Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM. WBT, we're just talking about the two-year mark of Hurricane Helene. That was yesterday, September the 27th, 2024, as Western North Carolina dealt with the impacts of Helene. Just ahead of that, Governor Josh Stein and the Governor's Recovery Office for Western North Carolina, known as GROW NC, last week released details on a plan that promises to help rebuild and grow Western North Carolina's economy. According to the mid-last week press release, the Western North Carolina Economic Recovery Plan was built with input from 28 counties, five regional councils of government, chambers of commerce, and economic development organizations.
This very lengthy plan focuses on nine areas: infrastructure, natural resources, economic development and entrepreneurship, housing, education, and workforce development, healthcare, arts, culture, and tourism, and finally, agriculture. It also sets five and ten year targets for each area. Sharon Decker, who is GROW NC's senior advisor for long-term recovery, has been named the lead of this new plan, with the release saying that the plan doesn't create new appropriations or supersede many of the plans that communities have already put together. It instead integrates the region's five federally recognized economic development strategies into a single shared framework. enabling communities to combine resources around their own priorities across the state.
According to Decker in the press release, Western North Carolina has never lacked plans or ideas. What we've lacked is one place where the region's own priorities line up with money back to them and that people who can act on them. That's what gives uh western North Carolina That's what this plan gives to Western North Carolina and why we didn't write it in Raleigh. Counties, chambers, community colleges, business owners and council of councils of government built it, and now the work belongs to them. It was shaped by two different approaches, a campaign planning and the Marshall Plan.
Campaign planning, which the plan also called military planning, offers a framework for connecting a desired future to the actions and resources that produces it. It named Hurricane Sandy, also known by many in the Northeast as Superstorm Sandy, as an example of how the National Disaster Recovery Framework's recovery support functions operated as parallel federally coordinated work streams dealing with things like housing, infrastructure, the economic issues, health, community planning, as well as natural and cultural resources, which aligned with a common recovery end state. The 117-page plan cites the Marshall Plan, officially known as the European Recovery Program, which was an effort to rebuild Europe after World War II. That happened by channeling $13.3 billion, which translates to roughly $143 billion in today's dollars, into 16 countries in Europe from 1948 to 1951. The United States required recipient nations to come together through the Organization for European Economic Cooperation and jointly plan how the aid would be used.
Governor Stein said in the press release with this plan. While the headlines about Helene have faded over the last two years, the work remains. Western North Carolinians know best how to keep things moving forward. That is why this plan takes the priorities that the region sets for itself and puts the state's weight behind them. Together, we can build an economy that is stronger and more diversified than the one that the storm hit, because that is what full recovery requires.
This new 117-page plan builds on previous actions. Those efforts included strengthening advanced manufacturing through a $29.2 million U.S. Economic Development Administration award for the Western North Carolina Futures factory program in Buncombe County, supporting the creative economy, a sector that generated more than $3 billion in sales and supported roughly 35,000 jobs in 2025. expanding connectivity through the $1.8 billion Interstate 26 connector, which broke ground in April, and building a strong workforce through the Good Jobs WNC program and 11 college 23 county investment pursuing roughly 1,200 jobs throughout the region. These actions are especially important because the region faces numerous challenges, or faced, I should say, numerous challenges before the storm as North Carolina lost more than 40% of its manufacturing jobs over the last three decades and 28 counties in the plan also experienced significant losses in their industrial labor force.
From April of 2023 through April of 2026, the region's labor workforce shrank by more than 16,000 people while the state's overall population grew. That is according to data from the North Carolina Department of Commerce. On housing, the plan rele the press release states that more than 1,250 homes have been repaired or rebuilt through the Renew NC and state partnerships with volunteer organizations of those homes. 135 have been completed by Renew NC according to its dashboard. Nearly 16.5 million cubic yards of debris were cleared.
99% of drinking water systems have been restored. And 99% of impacted state roads have reopened.
Some of the most complex repairs do still remain, however, especially private roads, bridges, and local systems that federal programs do not fully cover. In August, FEMA approved an additional one hundred thirty seven million dollars for recovery and mitigation projects in North Carolina, pursuing federal support for Hurricane Helene above seven point five billion dollars. They also recently announced that they are awarding nearly $48 million to the state through the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. That program is set to acquire approximately 135 flood-prone properties damaged by Helene in several of the hardest hit communities. Those properties will be converted into permanent open spaces to prevent, eliminate, or reduce future disaster damage.
In total, FEMA has provided funding for the state to acquire more than 500 properties to this point. North Carolina has also continued putting state money towards recovery. The state budget approved by lawmakers this summer and signed by Governor Josh Stein includes more than $700 million in non-recurring funding for Hurricane Helene during the 26-27 fiscal year, with the funding covering the state and local share that is required for federal disaster recovery programs as well as local government capital needs. supporting things like volunteer fire departments, housing recovery, private road and bridge repairs, temporary relocation assistance, and other rebuilding efforts in western North Carolina. This latest FEMA funding comes as North Carolina continues to seek additional federal support for long-term recovery.
Governor Josh Stein asking Congress in June for more than $10 billion in additional Helene recovery funding for housing, infrastructure, water systems, and other unmet needs.
However, it is important to note that Congress has not yet set a timeline for acting on that request. This brand new 117-page plan will be presented to the Governor's Advisory Council on Western North Carolina recovery, which is co-chaired by State Senator Kevin Corbyn and Asheville Mayor Esther Mannheimer on Friday, September, or was presented to them on Friday, September the 25th. And so that plan is now out and public as many communities will continue the process for years to come to make Western North Carolina whole again. You can read more on this plan if you are interested. We've got a link to the entire 117-page report.
Those details available over on our website this morning. CarolinaJournal.com. Look for the story with the headline, Stein Unveils Long-Term Economic Recovery Plan for Western North Carolina. Many people believe buying a home requires a large down payment and years of saving, but that's not always the case. Across the country, there are programs designed to help first-time homebuyers take the next step toward home ownership.
Some of these programs offer down payment assistance or grant funding that may help cover part of the upfront cost of purchasing a home. Grants are especially helpful because they generally do not have to be repaid. There are also organizations that provide homebuyer education, financial counseling, and guidance to help individuals understand the home buying process before they begin. The goal is simple: to help more families become informed and prepared for home ownership. If owning a home is something you've been thinking about, start by visiting toolsforhomeownership.com.
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It's 5.37. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT. I'm Nick Craig. A good Monday morning to you.
Well, Wednesday was said to be an interesting day across eastern North Carolina as the former FBI director and James Comey was said to be arraigned in court. We've been following this legal challenge here over the last couple of months on the Carolina Journal News Hour.
However, a court order on Friday is not going to make that move forward, at least right now, to walk us through the latest on the details. Mitch Gokai from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Mitch, accurate to say ahead of Friday afternoon that James Comey and his legal team may have been sweating a little bit on a delay that they requested in this arraignment? They probably were wondering when this order was going to come out. James Comey had asked a little bit earlier in the month of September to have his arraignment delayed from September 30th to January, and then the trial that had been scheduled for October to be delayed until February.
And Judge Louise Flanagan had been waiting to issue this ruling.
Now, it's not as if she was ignoring the case. Even as late as Thursday, she issued an order on some other motion that was involved in the case, but had not yet complied with the request from James Comey to have this delay.
So I'm thinking that at least in the back of his mind, he thought, do I need to have a way to get down to New Bern for an arraignment on Wednesday, September 30th?
Well, as of mid-Friday afternoon, Judge Louise Flanagan took that calculation out by saying that it was fine to delay. This proceeding until January.
Now, this is not terribly surprising that this is happening because not only did James Comey request the delay, but government prosecutors said they had no opposition to it.
Now, they also indicated that they would have been fine going forward with the arraignment in September and the trial in October, as had been scheduled, but they also did not raise any objection to that delay. And usually, if both sides of a case are accepting the idea of delaying it, the judge will typically not then step in and say, no, we're going to go ahead and do this now. The judge will usually go along with what both sides in the cases have agreed to. Mitch, read between the lines a little bit for us. The fact that this goes all the way back to an Instagram post in 2025, I mean, you know, obviously you'd assume something like this, the federal government would try to get this wrapped up in some sort of expeditious manner.
What do you make of federal prosecutors, again, not necessarily greenlighting a delay, but saying, yeah, if we need to push it back a couple of months, that's okay. Anything significant there? I don't think there's anything terribly significant in this. This is probably a case of lawyers being willing to work with each other on a very complicated case. Remember, this is a case that has generated.
At this point, hundreds and hundreds of pages of briefing. James Comey is trying to get the case thrown out on a number of different grounds, and almost every particular argument he's making has generated a 30 or 40 page brief, which then generated a reply from the government that was about as long.
So, Judge Flanagan has a lot to read through before she decides what to do with the case. And also, both sides need to prepare quite a bit if this case does, in fact, go to a trial, how to deal with the accusations from Comey's side that there's vindictive and selective prosecution. Also, that the case, of course, is based on this social media post where seashells were arranged to spell out 8647, and Comey took a photo and displayed the photo. And is that a true threat against President Donald Trump or not? That's another piece of the argument.
So, my guess is, even if Fed. Federal government lawyers said that they were ready to go if this case were to go to trial in October. Giving themselves a little bit more time was probably not something that they were going to look twice at it. You know, say, go ahead, give us more time as well. For those that are maybe not super familiar with the legal system, Mitch, if this delay did not come forward midday on Friday, what would we have been looking at on Wednesday?
Would Comey have been handcuffed and thrown in jail? What would an arraignment have looked like in a case like this? And presumably what we might see early next year, obviously there's still a lot that can change between now and then, but as the current arrangement schedule lays out. I don't think he would have to have been cuffed because he's already made an appearance, and so he has. Answered this charge not too long after it was originally made.
Now, the charge is made in North Carolina. He appeared in a Virginia courtroom to address it. And so, all of the proceedings of having an arrest, quote unquote, and then having the initial appearance and then telling Comey what conditions he had to comply with to remain out of prison, all of that's already happened.
So, my guess is that he would not have had to have been cuffed for the arraignment. I don't know that for certain, but my guess is he and his lawyers show up for the arraignment. He enters his plea, presumably based on what everything he has said and indicated that he would plead not guilty, and then he would leave and return at some later date for the trial. And in fact, this order that came out Friday from Judge Flanagan did not take all of James Comey's suggestions into the order because he suggested delaying the arraignment until James. January and then having the trial in February.
Judge Flanagan did agree to delay the arraignment until January and then said. Following the arraignment, Upon a not guilty plea, then a trial date will be set.
So the trial date has not yet been set, and a trial date would be contingent on Comey entering a not-guilty plea.
Now, in a lot of federal cases, what you see is someone, even if they initially enter a not-guilty plea, they'll end up reaching some sort of deal with the federal government, plead guilty. And so by the time of what was expected to be an arraignment for a not guilty plea, they'll enter a guilty plea and then sentencing will take place at some point down the road. My guess is James Comey plans to fight this as long as he can and will enter a not guilty plea. And so what would happen at the arraignment? See what arrived.
Uh the the Both sides would make some arguments, and then there'd be the not guilty plea. And then, at some point, either that day or in the not-too-distant future, a trial date will be set. And then you would see what you would expect to see with a typical court proceeding with the trial witnesses. opening and closing arguments and all of that sort of thing. Mitch, as you've walked us through this case over the last couple of months, we've had sporadic updates as motions have been filed.
One of the big things that you mentioned just a couple of minutes ago is that Comey and his team have taken multiple angles to try and get these charges dismissed. Is there a possibility that the judge in this case rules on some of those things before we get to that January arraignment? Or does that have to happen first? And then maybe the judge looks at whether or not she's going to dismiss some of these charges? No, I think the judge could certainly at any point dismiss the charges.
I think the fact that she has delayed the arraignment until January suggests that she is taking more time to decide what to do on all of those motions. But it's entirely possible that if Judge Flanagan agrees with one or more of James Comey's arguments for throwing the case out, that she could throw the case out and he would never have to appear for an arraignment.
Now, my guess is if she does end up dismissing the case, for one or more grounds that the federal government would then appeal. Up to the fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and you would see the potential of an arraignment down the road. But if Judge Flanagan throws the case out before January, then you would never see him come back to New Bern to face that arraignment. That also may be part of the calculation.
That if Judge Flanagan had already looked through all the documents and decided that Yes, this is something I'm going to throw out that she would have done that and not delayed the arraignment. If she has looked at it and said, no, these look like valid charges, then that would be another reason to go ahead and delay the arraignment so that the actual proceedings could take place. But my guess is, given the volume of paperwork that has already been filed in this case, that Judge Flanagan, who has a full load of other cases on her docket, probably also likes to have a little bit more time, a little bit more breathing room to make a decision about these motions before the arraignment. Yeah, no question about it. It's not immediately clear when we'll get our next update in this saga as it stands right now.
That arraignment has been delayed until January, if anything unfolds over the next couple of months as we approach that. We'll, of course, keep you up to date over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com and right here on the Carolina Journal News Hour. We appreciate the update this morning. Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Many people believe buying a home requires a large down payment and years of saving, but that's not always the case.
Across the country, there are programs designed to help first-time homebuyers take the next step toward home ownership.
Some of these programs offer down payment assistance or grant funding that may help cover part of the upfront cost of purchasing a home. Grants are especially helpful because they generally do not have to be repaid. There are also organizations that provide homebuyer education, financial counseling, and guidance to help individuals understand the home buying process before they begin. The goal is simple: to help more families become informed and prepared for home ownership. If owning a home is something you've been thinking about, start by visiting toolsforhomeownership.com.
This message is brought to you by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling's Paving the Way Forward initiative. This is Troy Millings from Earn Your Leisure. On Earn Your Leisure, we're all about smart money moves. And here's one most people skip. And it starts with Insurify.
Most of us never shop our car insurance. The policy renews every year, the rate creeps up a little at a time, and nobody calls you to tell you. You stay with the same company because it's easy, and that convenience costs you real money. That's what Insurify fixes. Real quotes from more than 120 top insurance companies side by side.
About two minutes free, no phone calls, no pressure. And if there's nothing better for you right now, Insurify keeps watching and tells you when that changes, so you're never stuck overpaying. Millions of people have used Insurify to shop for their car insurance.
So Insure with Insurify. Go to Insurify.com. That's I-N-S-U-R-I-F-Y dot com. Insurify.com. Good morning again.
It's 5:54. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT. If you head on over to the North Carolina General Assembly website this morning, you will note that the North Carolina House and Senate both have 12 noon session start times. We have seen a couple of these over the last few months will pass along that there will be no votes in either chamber today. These are continuing.
Lawmakers are continuing what are called skeleton sessions in Raleigh as lawmakers are expected to reconvene sometime after Election Day. We've got a couple of November and December dates on the calendars where on the calendar where lawmakers, if they so decide to do so, will return to Raleigh and deal with any remaining legislative business. A lot of that likely will depend on what the results of the midterm elections. Look like for the 170 members of the North Carolina General Assembly, 120 in the House, 50 in the Senate. As Republicans look to maintain in the Senate their supermajority and continue to hold or get close to a supermajority in the House on the flip side, Democrats looking to flip what has been 15 years of Republican control here in North Carolina.
Looking at our most recent Carolina Journal poll, which was out just back a couple of weeks ago, we asked, if the 2026 general election were held today, would you vote for the Republican or Democratic candidates for the North Carolina state legislature? 49.5% of respondents said that they would vote for the Democratic candidates compared to 41.3% that said they would vote for the Republican candidates. It is important to note. That out of the 170 seats within the General Assembly, there are only between 20 and 30 that are deemed areas where you could see a flip of one seat or the other. Many districts across the state, solidly Democratic, solidly Republican, and we don't expect any major changes there.
But there is the possibility, and we'll be, of course, keeping an eye on this through our polling and other data in the weeks to come. What exactly those numbers will look like in terms of a majority for Republicans if they are successful in holding that and on the flip side, potentially flipping the North Carolina House from Republican to Democrat for the first time in 16 years. If Democrats have a very good night on November the 3rd, just recapping that, a skeleton session in Raleigh today. No votes expected between now and November the 3rd from the North Carolina legislature. If anything changes on that front, we'll, of course, bring you the latest over on our website, Carolina.
Journal.com and as always, right here on the Carolina Journal News Hour. That's going to do it for a Monday edition. WBT News is next. Followed by Good Morning BT. We're back with you tomorrow morning, 5 to 6, right here on Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT.
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