County committees review OLO report and press for faster data sharing, phone upgrades and more MCOT capacity

Montgomery County council members and county and nonprofit officials on Friday reviewed OLO Report 2025‑10, a county Office of Legislative Oversight analysis of how local call centers respond to mental‑health crises and how those centers handle heavy call volumes.

OLO staff told the joint Public Safety and Health & Human Services committees that the county’s community crisis system includes five call‑taking entities: the county crisis center (operated by the Department of Health and Human Services), EveryMind’s 988 center, the longstanding Montgomery County crisis hotline, the Emergency Communications Center (911/ECC), and 311. The report compared definitions of imminent risk, routing practices, backup arrangements, and the availability of text/chat options.

Why it matters: OLO found wide differences in how calls are routed and resolved. For example, 988 resolved 98.1 percent of contacts by phone in 2024, while nearly 98.8 percent of ECC’s mental‑health calls resulted in an in‑person police response. OLO recommended increasing the crisis center’s call‑taking capacity, creating formal interoperable transfer protocols (including direct transfer lines), and improving disaggregated demographic data collection to identify racial inequities and service gaps.

OLO presentation and key findings Gabriela Reynolds of OLO…