Monroe County Executive Adam Bello wants to use $405,000 in opioid settlement funds to keep a 24-hour addiction treatment facility at Delphi Rise open, as the federal government moves to cancel its grant funding.
In late March, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that it would be canceling a slew of grants totaling over $11 billion awarded to public health organizations nationwide, including Delphi Rise. The federal government justified that termination by noting the public health threat of COVID-19 no longer justified the grant funding.
"Now that the pandemic is over, the grants and cooperative agreements are no longer necessary as their limited purpose has run out," the administration wrote in a termination letter sent to grant recipients.
Delphi Rise offers substance abuse support to about 2,000 clients annually and relied heavily on reimbursement from the federal grant. The organization’s last reimbursement came on March 26, said Delphi Chief Executive Officer Jennifer Cathy. She called the opioid settlement funds a “medium-term solution” to the grant cut.
“As a community, we cannot rely on federal dollars the way we have before, not at this time,” Cathy said at a news conference Monday. “We need to rally and find a solution that works, so regardless of who is in office, where the administration is, we sustain.”
The money received from state settlements from opioid manufacturers totals $11.3 million to Monroe County beginning in fiscal year 2023. Bello said the county has taken the approach of keeping the money in a “lockbox” to be opened only for causes which directly target substance abuse issues.
He also emphasized that the settlement money funding is finite and cannot permanently fill the gap left by the loss of federal grants.
Prior to the pandemic-era grants, Delphi was largely funded by a series of state grants, many of which no longer exist, Cathy said. The organization is now largely supported by two grant sources through the state Office of Addiction Services and Support (OASES), the larger of which is funded by the federal grant dollars.
“These cuts were not made in the spirit of efficiency,” Bello said. “They were done in the spirit of government by press release, by email, by breaking contracts, by swinging chainsaws, not scalpels. And most importantly, they hurt people.”
In total, New York stands to see $300 million in lost funding for public health, including a $40 million cut to OASES, according to a news release from Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office.
A Rhode Island federal judge temporarily blocked the federal cuts late last week in response to a complaint filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James and other attorneys general and governors representing 22 states and the District of Columbia.
The complaint argued that there was never any stipulation that the grants would be rescinded when the pandemic was deemed over, and pulling the funding now would cause undue harm.
“Defendants’ unlawful withholding of funds has already caused substantial confusion and will result in immediate and devastating harm to plaintiff states (and their local health jurisdictions), their residents, and public health writ large,” the complaint reads.
On March 18, about a week before the federal government announced the grant cuts, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. signed a declaration renewing the public health emergency of the opioid epidemic.
Congressman Joe Morelle said signing that declaration while taking actions to cut funding to facilities like Delphi seem incompatible.
“You can’t fight an epidemic while cutting the very tools we need to confront it,” he said.
