S257 - 2026 Appropriations Act. (SL 2026-41)

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Session Year 2024

Overview: Section 9G.3 of S.L. 2026-41 (Senate Bill 257), as amended by Section 4.5 of S.L. 2026-61 (House Bill 268), requires the Department of Health and Human Services, Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities, and Substance Use Services (DMH/DD/SUS), to allocate $2 million in recurring funds beginning in the 2026-2027 fiscal year to provide competitive grants under the MAT Grant Program (Program). MAT is defined as medication-assisted treatment. The purpose of the Program is to provide grants on a competitive basis to sheriffs' offices to assist in establishing, maintaining, or expanding MAT programs for alcohol and opioid addiction in jails (categories) and DMH/DD/SUS must use the allocated funds as prorated for each of these categories.

Receipt of a grant is prioritized based upon the following criteria for the county in which that sheriffs' office sits: (i) the rate of opioid-related deaths, (ii) the rate of opioid-related hospital admissions, (iii) the rate of violations of probation or parole due to ongoing opioid or alcohol use, and (iv) the accessibility of mental and physical healthcare. Additionally, no sheriff's office can receive grants in more than one category in any fiscal year nor can a sheriff's office receive grants totaling the entire yearly allotment of funds provided for one of the categories in any fiscal year.

If qualified grant applications do not exhaust the funds allotted for one of the categories in a given fiscal year, the remaining funds for that category for that fiscal year may be redistributed equally between the other two categories.

The Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (Secretary) and must convene a working group comprised of (i) the Director of the Division of Community Supervision of the Department of Adult Correction or the Director's designee, (ii) the Director of the Office of Rural Health of the Department or the Director's designee, (iii) the Section Chief for Addictions and Management Operations of DMH/DD/SUS or the Section Chief's designee, and (iv) other relevant stakeholders as determined by the Secretary.  The Secretary may assign support staff.

The working group must (i) evaluate applications for each of the categories and may award lower amounts than requested to individual sheriffs' offices in order to assure broader access to funds, (ii) ensure all FDA-approved drugs for the treatment of opioid dependence be considered as options for treatment, including long-acting, injectable medication regimens, and use any operational criteria and application processes for the MAT grant program established by State law in 2021.

This section became effective July 1, 2026.

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