HAMPSHIRE COUNTY – With the fiscal year 2022 Massachusetts state Senate budget finalized, Hampshire, Franklin, and Worcester state Sen. Jo Comerford discussed some of the amendments she supported.

Going into her third annual budget season, Comerford said she felt a responsibility to focus on local funding.

“I felt a real responsibility to make sure my local priorities were right. So, I thought a lot about funding that would have a direct impact on Western Massachusetts, and that was in the form of grants to Northampton, Amherst, and Greenfield around crisis response,” she said.

With Northampton establishing a Department of Community Care as a result of the findings of the Northampton Policing Review Commission, Comerford said she was moved by the conversation about police reform in the community and wanted to provide additional funding. The budget amendment would give the department an additional $150,000.

“I have been very moved by the community conversation that is happening. I have responsibility in the police reform conversation, I was on the committee that drafted that first piece of legislation last summer. I also have responsibilities to listen to communities that want to go into almost an expanded direction,” she said.

Comerford added that she wanted to show her support for the department through state funding.

“The Northampton and Amherst money represents communities wanting to think beyond the bill and this is my way to offer support to the work the City Council and the commission that created the department of care is trying to do,” she said.

Along with providing funding for the Department of Community Care, Comerford said she also helped secure an additional $35,000 for Community Action Pioneer Valley to hire a director for the city’s new Resilience Hub.

“The Community Action Pioneer Valley has been working with Northampton on a service hub and that $35,000 is really going to augment the money the Community Action folks were able to get together for the Resilience Hub to hire a director at the salary we believe is going to be needed to get the best person in,” she said.

One of the amendments Comerford said she supported was $13 million in grants for boards of health across the state, which was up from an initially proposed $10 million.

“It was very important to me to get this funding. The chair put in $10 million as a base, that is a pretty darn good base for funding that has not been in a senate budget before. I felt very proud the senate recognized the work of local public health,” she said.

Comerford said one of the driving forces behind the additional grant funding for boards of health across the state is to incentivize more regional services.

“The money is basically following this hope in time to winnow down from 351 boards to a much more manageable number. That manageable number would allow communities to share services, collaborate, and to build capacity, while raising the basic minimum standards for local public health,” she said.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic Comerford said she saw both heroism from local public health officials and a need to reinvest in public health.

“We saw unbelievable acts of heroism from public health officials during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also saw real challenges in our public health infrastructure. Both should lead us to this wake-up call where we have to really reinvest in local public health,” she said.

One of the other programs Comerford said she helped secure funding for is the Safe Havens program through the state’s Department of Mental Health.

“Safe Havens is a program out of the Department of Mental Health, and we have no Safe Havens programs in Hampshire and Franklin County. It is a very intensive sheltering program for people who are without homes and who also are living with challenges such as mental health and substance abuse challenges that make it difficult to find stable shelter,” she said.

Comerford added the $422,000 in Safe Havens funding for Western Massachusetts will be enough to stand up a shelter to serve Hampshire County and Franklin County, as well as into Berkshire and Hampden counties.

Comerford said she also supported an amendment for $110,000 for the funding of the Hampshire and Franklin County Children’s Advocacy Centers.

“The Senate made a pretty clear statement that the Children's Advocacy Centers from here on out are funded by the core budget in the Senate’s proposal and I think that is a critical advance. Also embodied in the Senate’s budget is a recognition there are funding inequities between what our CACs get and other CACs in the commonwealth. There is a pot of money of over $300,000 that hopefully will help level out some of those inequities,” she said.

In addition to funding for the CACs, Comerford said she also supported funding for a pediatric sexual nurse at the centers.

“Another critical advance is the recognition that we needed a pediatric sexual nurse examiner in Hampshire County. This was a regional inequity; our CACs were operating without this critically important person as a part of the team,” she said.

She added the advocacy from Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan and the Hampshire and Franklin County CAC directors helped push for the pediatric sexual nurse in the budget.