Hagan Company Pocketed Stimulus Cash

The North Carolina GOP is accusing Sen. Kay Hagan of lying about the benefits her family received from the 2009 stimulus for which she voted. 

“Senator Kay Hagan kept her stimulus payday hidden away for years. And now she is lying about the fact that she and her family profited off her vote for stimulus in 2009,” North Carolina Republican Party executive director Todd Poole said in a statement Tuesday. 

“It’s absolutely shameful that JDC Manufacturing applied $114,000 in budget savings to their own bottom line instead of returning the money to taxpayers. It is not their money and they didn’t do anything to earn it or use to create economic growth,” he added.

Poole was reacting to a new report from the Carolina Journal which details how, JDC Manufacturing a company co-owned by Hagan’s husband Chip Hagan and highlighted as a beneficiary of the 2009 stimulus by Politico last month, overestimated the cost of a stimulus project and did not return the excess $114,519 in federal grant money. 

The Carolina Journal’s Don Carrington reported Tuesday:

The company’s original application stated the total project would cost $438,627, and said JDC would contribute ‘leveraged funds’ amounting to $187,983, or 43 percent of the total. As the project reached completion, however, JDC revised the total budget downward by $114,519 and applied all the savings to its share, keeping all the taxpayer funding.

The matter was further complicated by the fact that JDC hired another company, Green State Power, co-owned by Chip Hagan and son Tilden, to complete part of the project:

Also, JDC’s decision to hire Solardyne/Green State Power, a separate company co-owned by Chip Hagan and the Hagans’ son Tilden, to install a portion of the stimulus-funded energy project at the JDC building appears to violate a conflict-of-interest provision that was included as part of the original application for the stimulus grant.

Hagan is in a tight reelection bid against Republican state House Speaker Thom Tillis. 

Last month, when it first came to light that JDC Manufacturing received grants from the stimulus, her campaign stressed to Politico — which broke the story — that every thing was above board and “disputed any suggestion they have profited off the law.”

According to the Tillis, campaign, however, which sent out a blast email highlighting the Carolina Journal’s article, “The report directly contradicts statements made by both Kay Hagan and her campaign.”