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Davis Behavioral Health seeks modest county increase as state grant cuts loom
Summary
Davis Behavioral Health told the Davis County Budget Committee it is requesting a roughly 2.5% increase in county funding to offset state and federal grant variability, warn officials, who also flagged uncertainty over Medicaid rates and the future of the State Opioid Response program.
Davis Behavioral Health asked the Davis County Budget Committee for a modest county funding increase, citing shifting federal and state grant allocations and ongoing uncertainty about Medicaid rates and opioid-response funding. "A little over 240,000 services are provided to Davis County residents," said Brandon Hatch, director of Davis Behavioral Health, as he reviewed service volumes and client trends.
Hatch and Ronnie Westergaard, the center's chief financial officer, said the number of unique clients has fallen slightly while total service contacts have risen, a pattern they interpret as clients presenting with more severe needs. Officials reported crisis services are down by a little more than 1,000 contacts compared with the prior reporting window and said most crisis calls are driven by stress and suicidal risk, with psychosis accounting for repeat crisis contacts.
Westergaard outlined fiscal-year funding shifts that complicate the center's outlook. He said certain federal block grants have fallen (the transcript records decreases of about $400,000 for the mental-health block grant and about $600,000 for the substance-abuse block grant) and that state pass-through allocations have been rebalanced (the transcript records state pass-through figures presented as 1.3 and 8.4 for different categories; units were not specified in the meeting record). Westergaard warned committee members to "plan on having a reduction" in federal block-grant allocations because of pending federal funding changes.
The center is keeping its Medicaid-match assumptions unchanged while negotiations with the state on Medicaid rates continue. Westergaard said a state finance representative indicated a planning assumption of a 25% cut in that office's budget outline but added it was unclear whether that planning number would translate directly to the center's allocation.
Westergaard also described the drug-court contract passthrough: the total drug-court funding was presented as roughly 130,000 (units not specified), with the county retaining about 110,000 for county staff and passing a much smaller share to the center for treatment (the transcript shows roughly $20,000 remained for treatment locally); the center supplements that shortfall from other funds.
On the county request, Westergaard presented the Davis County general-fund appropriation as "1.522" in the meeting record (units not specified) and said the FY request represents about a 2.5% increase over last year, an amount that does not fully cover recent cost-of-living adjustments and other employee-cost increases. A committee member restated a "53,200" figure for the new request as presented in the meeting record; the units or currency for that number were not specified in the transcript.
Committee members praised the center's work and asked for more detail on state allocations and settlement dollars. The committee also scheduled a separate opioid-settlement planning discussion to decide priorities for settlement-funded programs and to avoid creating long-term obligations that settlement receipts might not sustain.
The Budget Committee did not take any formal vote on the center's request during this segment; staff will supply requested follow-up figures and attend the special opioid-settlement planning meeting announced by the committee.
