House Appropriations panel assembles corrections budget amendments — $5M Fargo diversion grant, MRCC planning, overflow bed funding

Lawmakers in the House Appropriations — Human Resources Division on Tuesday worked through a packet of amendments to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation budget that would restore a $5 million diversion and deflection center grant for Fargo, adjust planning funds for a proposed Missouri River Correctional Center, and add ongoing and one-time dollars for county jail overflow, reentry centers and corrections staffing.

The committee’s amendments would: restore a $5 million Fargo diversion and deflection center grant that requires a 2-to-1 local match and move that $5 million from the General Fund to the Community Health Trust Fund; propose $19.5 million (subject to further adjustment) for MRCC planning and design and add steering-committee language modeled on prior projects; increase one-time payments to county jails for overflow housing; author new and shifted FTEs and operating funding for county correctional centers; and add contingency SIF funding to cover tasers, ballistic vests and body cameras if federal grant dollars do not materialize.

Why it matters: The measures affect where people with behavioral health and reentry needs receive services, how local governments share costs, and the state corrections system’s capacity over the next biennium. Committee members said the Fargo grant is intended to reduce pressure on local law enforcement and county jails by creating a place for people who need behavioral-health and reentry supports rather than incarceration.

Key provisions and committee discussion

Fargo diversion and deflection center: The committee put a $5,000,000 one-time grant for a diversion and deflection center in Fargo back into the DOCR package and agreed the grant would require a 2-to-1 local match (representing $15 million total if fully matched). Committee members and staff discussed the match requirement and local stakeholders’ interest in using Fargo as a “proof of concept” for a model that could…