Gov. Charlie Baker has vetoed $300,000 in next year’s budget for the Franklin County regional Opioid Task Force, which has worked locally to address the growing painkiller and heroin addiction epidemic since 2013.
Much of the money the Task Force has received from the state has gone toward developing new substance abuse education curricula in local schools, youth work programs, community policing programs, grant writing assistance for other local groups, expanding Narcan availability and training to reduce overdose deaths, and for local substance abuse conferences among other things. It works with virtually every civic-minded, socially active organization in the county including schools, courts, law enforcement, social service agencies and hospitals.
Also cut was $172,000 earmarked for the district attorney’s anti-crime task force, which helps local law enforcement investigate and prosecute illegal narcotics and firearms offenses among other criminal activities.
The reductions came as part of a series of cuts to earmarks across the budget, reducing $256 million in an unexpectedly tough budget year. We get that.
But this Task Force cut has all the hallmarks of a uninformed choice made by a bureaucrat too far from the problem this money addresses. Yes, there is other money in the budget targeting the addiction crisis in the state overall. But this earmark will sustain a groundbreaking model of community-based efforts to fight the addiction scourge.
“The Opioid Task Force has been one of most widely recognized and renowned programs. It’s been on CNN, it’s attracted national attention, so I don’t understand where this is coming from,” remarked state Rep. Paul Mark, who like other Franklin County’s legislators has promised to fight to override the governor’s ill-advised decision.
State Rep. Stephen Kulik concurred: “I realize we’ve been putting many more resources into the opioid crisis over last few years, but I think Franklin County has led the state in establishing locally based programs in education and treatment, and it’s a real shining example for the whole commonwealth for how communities can really tackle this problem in a comprehensive way,” he said. “To reduce now is penny wise and pound foolish.”
Northwestern District Attorney David E. Sullivan, a task force founder, also decried the vetoes.
“It really doesn’t make any sense, it’s a short-sighted approach,” he said. “It’s critical for the people in our region that they have a coordinated effort toward getting treatment and recovery and making smart decisions when it comes to opioid abuse.”
Launched as a collaborative effort between the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department, the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office and the local courts to address addiction and overdose deaths regionally, the Task Force includes members of law enforcement, health care, local legislators, social service agencies, educational institutions and members of the recovery community.
It’s too valuable locally and as a showcase to other regions of the state and beyond for how to rally a community to fight addiction. It doesn’t sound like we need to urge our local lawmakers to fight for an override, but it wouldn’t hurt those in Franklin County touched by addiction to reinforce that message to our lawmakers now.
Usually government officials complain when their budgets are cut. Who wants his fiefdom reduced? In this case, District Attorney Sullivan, Register of Probate John Merrigan and County Sheriff Christopher Donelan, co-founders of the task force, have all decried the governor’s veto — but not for themselves. In their jobs, at the jail, in the courts, and prosecuting crime, they see the ravages of addiction, just as do all the county’s health care providers, teachers, the recovering and the families of addicts. This isn’t a self-serving concern. They all have better things to do than support a volunteer task force that sees a long, perhaps generational struggle ahead to beat back this scourge.
The override vote, which would require a two-thirds majority the House of Representatives and then the state Senate, could come as early as next week. It must be taken by July 31.
Do what you can to make it happen.