Leoni entered this world on Jan. 23, a daughter of Donnie Red Hawk McDowell and his wife, Humming Bird, hurricane survivors and members of the Tuscarora Nation. In March, Leoni, her 3-year-old sister, Dyani, and their parents moved to a room on the second floor of an Extended Stay America in Fayetteville while their new mobile home was installed near Maxton.
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Laura Hogshead
Laura Hogshead
Laura Hogshead did not lose her job as the head of ReBuild NC on Wednesday, as many hurricane survivors had hoped. Instead, several state lawmakers on a government oversight committee used the hearing as another opportunity to publicly berate Hogshead for the many deficiencies of the hurricane recovery program. An abysmal number of home completions and a lack of accountability. A pattern of deception and a culture of secrecy.
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They arrived with folded papers pulled from their pockets. Some came carrying folders that brimmed with documents neatly arranged in binder clips. Others arrived empty-handed, but hoped to leave with answers. With scores more watching in person and online, survivors of hurricanes Matthew and Florence spoke before a state government oversight committee Wednesday about the injustices they have endured – a direct result of the bungled disaster relief program run by the NC Office of Recovery and Resiliency, also known as ReBuild NC.
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In some ways, of course, there’s nothing new or terribly surprising when large bureaucracies – be they government agencies or big corporations – are revealed to be plagued by waste and malfeasance. Humans and their institutions being as they are, flawed and prone to human foibles like incompetence, greed, sloth, overpromising, and favoritism, such revelations have been a constant in the American experience since prior to the country’s founding.
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