Hurricane Helene damaged about 6% of Virginia’s economy. That’s according to an update provided Tuesday by the Commonwealth’s Secretary of Finance. But federal aid is expected to improve the region.
The damage and loss of life in the area are heartbreaking, but Secretary Stephen Cummings said the federal response has been massive and future funding to help rebuild is likely to improve the region.
“People who go through this all the time, a quote from Florida was ‘these things are devastating but, in the end, they end up being net positives’ given all the rebuilding and what’s spent with workforce and goods to rebuild things to a more modern state,” Cummings told the Senate Finance committee.
About $20 million in emergency funds have been made available in the short term, but Cummings said it will take time to understand the total cost of the storm. Optimism for recovery was so high Cummings used a slogan coined by President Joe Biden to describe post-Covid recovery.
“Another part of the FEMA program is a grant that gives extra money on top of public assistance and individual assistance which can come to us for flood preparedness expenditures, so it would be exactly what we’re talking about, building things back better to be prepared and cleaning up the areas that do create the problem,” Cummings said.
The secretary also said FEMA programs may require the state to spend funds before getting reimbursed. That ask could come during the 2025 legislative session.
Senator Scott Surovell praised Governor Glenn Youngkin’s response to the storm, saying he’d “engaged in a lot of sincere efforts to help the area,” but he also hit the administration for its views on climate change in the storm’s wake.
Recent questions to Youngkin about climate change’s role in increased storm severity were met with a uniquely strong response.
“I don’t have a lot of time for folks who are trying to politicize this moment,” he told reporters when asked about the planet's warming climate and its impact on Helene earlier this month.
“Climate change exacerbates the damage we’re now having to pay for as taxpayers,” the Fairfax Democrat said. He pointed to the state’s membership to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, which he said had hundreds of millions of dollars that Youngkin could have used to aid in preparedness ahead of the storm.
Cummings said those funds would have to be appropriated by the General Assembly, and that money, over $200 million, had been added to resiliency projects in recent budgets. But Surovell pressed more.
“Are you aware if the administration is considering dropping its effort to leave RGGI and spend those funds helping that region?” he asked.
Cummings said Virginia’s membership to RGGI, and the monthly $4 added to each energy bill, was a regressive tax Youngkin refused to support.
“The governor feels strongly the RGGI payments are nothing more than an additional tax, passed through to ratepayers,” he said.
Youngkin took steps to pull the state out of the compact earlier in his term. A legal fight over his ability to do so is ongoing.
Surovell has long held Youngkin lacked such authority.
Earlier reporting by Radio IQ found only about $40 million of the more than $800 million the state received remained unspent or allocated in Virginia’s RGGI fund. Any future spending of those funds would likely require legislative approval.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
