Page 14 THE EVERETT ADVOCATE – FRIDAY, JULY 16, 2021 Massa named to Dean’s List at University of Maine E LEGISLATURE | FROM PAGE 10 Understanding that the pandemic has been a stressor on mental and behavioral health, the FY22 budget invests $175.6M for substance use disorder and intervenverett resident Deanna Massa was named to the Dean’s List at the University of Maine for the spring 2021 semester. Because of the challenging circumstances presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, the university modified the Dean’s List policy for the spring 2021 term. The requirement that students earn 12 calculable credits to be eligible for Dean’s List was waived. Instead, students were eligible if they earned a minimum of nine letter-graded (A–F on the transcript) credits in addition to the criteria in the catalog. tion services provided by the Bureau of Substance Addiction Services. It also invests $12.5M to support a student “telebehavioral” health pilot, public awareness campaigns, loan forgiveness for mental health clinicians and initiatives to mitigate emergency department boardings for individuals in need of behavioral health support, as well as $10M for Programs of Assertive Community Treatment grants to provide intensive, community-based behavioral health services for adolescents. Other health care and public health investments include: • $98.4M for children’s mental health services, including $3.9M for the Massachusetts Child Psychiatric Access Program (MCPAP) and MCPAP for Moms to address mental health needs of pregnant and postpartum women • $25M for Family Resource Centers to grow and improve the mental health resources and programming available to families • $56.1M for domestic violence–prevention services • $40.8M for early intervention services to ensure supports are accessible and available to infants and young toddlers with developmental delays and disabilities, including funds to support health equity initiatives To support economic development, the FY22 budget increases access to high-quality and reliable broadband – which is crucial for businesses, students and families – by moving the duties of the Wireless and Broadband Development Division to the Department of Telecommunications, which is working to facilitate access to broadband and has the institutional ability and knowledge to address broadband access issues. The budget also includes a $17M transfer to the Workforce Competitiveness Trust fund, $15.4M for Career Technical Institutes and $9.5M for One-Stop Career Centers to support economic recovery. Other investments in economic and workforce development include: • $15M for the Community Empowerment and Reinvestment Grant Program • $6M for Regional Economic Development Organizations to support economic growth in all regions of the state • $2.5M for the Massachusetts Cybersecurity Innovation Fund, including $1.5M for new regional security operation centers, which will partner with community colleges and state universities to provide cybersecurity workforce training to students and cybersecurity services to municipalities, nonprofits and small businesses To protect residents of the Commonwealth, the FY22 budget codifies and expands the existing Governor’s task force on hate crimes to advise on issues relating to hate crimes, such as ways to prevent hate crimes and how best to support victims of hate crimes. The conference report makes the task force permanent and expands its membership to include members of the Legislature and an appointee from the Attorney General. The conference report also contains a provision that supports immigrants who are victims of criminal activity or human trafficking. The budget also authorizes funds from the Massachusetts Cybersecurity Innovation Fund to be used for monitoring and detection of threat activity in order to investigate or mitigate cybersecurity incidents. To proactively combat threats and attacks, the budget provides funding for a public-private partnership with the goal of engaging educational institutions to jointly expand the training, employment and business development in cyber fields in Massachusetts through a combination of regionalized instruction and business outreach, state-wide shared resources, and real-life simulations for cyber training and business development. Having been passed by the House and Senate, the legislation goes to Governor Charlie Baker for his signature. He has 10 days to review the budget, approve or veto the entire budget or specific parts or make changes – or to submit budget amendments to be considered by the Legislature.
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