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Kansas lawmakers override governor's veto on MH funding
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
mental health weekly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1556-7583
pISSN - 1058-1103
DOI - 10.1002/mhw.31948
Subject(s) - veto , governor , mental health , agency (philosophy) , public administration , government (linguistics) , political science , state (computer science) , payment , business , law , medicine , politics , finance , sociology , psychiatry , engineering , social science , algorithm , aerospace engineering , computer science , linguistics , philosophy
Kansas lawmakers restored mental health funding for Sedgwick County's Community Crisis Center and two other mental health centers, KMUW reported May 30. They voted to override Gov. Laura Kelly's line‐item veto in the 2019 budget despite a last‐minute agreement to resolve the funding issue. Before lawmakers convened for their last day in the session, the governor's office announced the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services had shifted money in its budget to cover the $1.9 million cut and assured that the mental health centers in Wichita, Topeka and Salina would receive their funding. Sedgwick County's Comcare, the state's largest community mental health agency, operates the Community Crisis Center. The supplemental funding was to pay for the second half of the fiscal year 2019 (January to June). The center received its first payment of $650,000 from the state in late 2018. The lawmakers said the veto override provides certainty that mental health services would be funded. The governor said in a news release that cutting $1.9 million in supplemental funding for community mental health centers was “an effort to more evenly distribute reinvestment in Kansas government.”