The fate of a $1.4 million crisis stabilization grant from the state remains up in the air.
On Dec. 10, the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) announced it would channel $1.4 million CARES Act dollars into Haines via Bartlett Regional Hospital in Juneau to expand behavioral health services in the community and support displaced residents with housing assistance in the wake of the Dec. 2 landslide.
“We were counting on this money,” interim Haines Borough manager Alekka Fullerton said. “It was given to us at a time that we were in a huge crisis. In our minds, we were allocating things to be paid by those funds. Now we are having to regroup.”
Haines Borough School District superintendent Roy Getchell said he remains hopeful that funding will eventually come through. “Student mental health is really important. We’re also concerned about the aid for the community,” he said.
At the time the $1.4 million grant was announced, CARES Act funds had to be spent by the end of 2020, leaving Bartlett and community stakeholders including the borough, the school district and the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC) just two weeks to come up with a plan. Then on Dec. 27, president Donald Trump signed a bill extending the spending deadline by a year.
Around the same time, Bartlett, which is owned by the City and Borough of Juneau, said it was returning the grant money to the state due to unforeseen logistical complications.
“The City and Borough of Juneau determined that Bartlett Regional Hospital did not have the authority to expend those funds outside of Juneau, thus the services could not be provided in Haines,” DHSS spokesperson Clinton Bennett said.
Fullerton said this is when she began to worry that the funding might not come through. “The moment I heard that Bartlett was walking away from it and gave it back to the state, I felt that it was slipping away,” she said.
Since then, Fullerton has been in regular contact with state officials, trying to determine if and when the funding will come through.
At borough meetings in January, Fullerton said she had received assurances that the funding would come through, despite the extension of the CARES Act spending deadline. But more recently, she said the fate of the funding has become less certain.
“The state continues to work with stakeholders on this issue but nothing, including a funding source, has been finalized at this time,” Bennett said in response to questions about whether Haines will receive the $1.4 million grant.
Fullerton said she has been in contact with Haines’ representatives in the state legislature who have said that talks with the governor’s administration about the funding are ongoing.
“It might not be dead yet. I talked with Senator Jesse Kiehl. I was pleased to find out that (the $1.4 million) hasn’t been reappropriated any place else, so we continue to have an opportunity,” Fullerton said.
On Friday, Kiehl said he and Rep. Sara Hannan had met with high-level officials in the governor’s administration about the funding that day and hoped to have more details the following week.