Both Missoula County and the Helena Public School District are challenging the state's decision to divide nearly $9 million among six groups located in counties that account for less than 25 percent of the total population.
Missoula and Helena say they can serve more people with less money. Both cities are desperate to find funding for long-standing, award-winning programs in their communities that are set to run out of money this year. Meanwhile, they say, the grant recipients will have to spend taxpayer dollars to set up a program and collect data, rather than spending it on the people who need it.
Helena, Missoula and a long-established coalition from Great Falls, the Cascade County Alliance for Youth, were not funded, as well as the Rocky Boy Reservation, Meagher, Stillwater or Pondera counties.
Those that received money included Havre, Browning, Butte-Silver Bow County, Jefferson County and the Flathead Reservation and Lake County and six counties in Montana's far northeast corner.
Missoula and Helena officials suggested that the state divvy the money among all the applicants to serve more people.
“It doesn't make sense to penalize us because we're successful, and ... penalizing the citizens of Montana because it's going to a limited part of the population,” said Joe Furshong, of the Helena Public School District.
This week, state health officials traveled to Missoula to meet with Mayor John Engen, the Missoula Board of County Commissioners and members of the Helena School District to explain why these two cities didn't get any money.
Montana was one of 32 states to receive money from the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention. The state received $11.6 million. Of that, the state awarded $9 million to six applicants over a three-year period.
Missoula County asked for $970,000, but says now that it could operate with less. The average grant reward was $1.4 million.
The Missoula Forum for Children and Youth, operated by the county, applied for the needs-based grant because its funding sources are set to dry up this fall. It's a local prevention coalition that recently received national accolades for its work on underage drinking.
“Never did we get a chance to talk about how our program serves as a model to other programs,” Engen said at Tuesday's meeting.
Commissioner Larry Anderson is worried that if Montana can't prove it's having an impact on binge drinking when the grant runs out, it could jeopardize federal funding for alcohol prevention in the state's future, he said.
Helena has a similar program to that of Missoula. Youth Connections is a prevention coalition that began five years ago. It supports nonprofits and after-school groups that deal with dating violence, media literacy, and alcohol prevention. Like Missoula, its funding is set to expire in 2008.
“We were really looking towards this funding to sustain a lot of our work,” said Tracy Moseman, Helena's school-based prevention coordinator.
State health officials are the first to admit it was a difficult grant to administer because of the guidelines established by the federal government.
“We all have to have some cynical humor because it was not fun,” Cassidy said.
“How do you level the playing field with a program that is advanced and gets awards?” said Jackie Jandt, of the Chemical Dependency Bureau and who worked as the staff person to the committee. “The small work group wanted to make sure everyone had the same chance. They didn't want to limit those who were inexperienced.”
Missoula is in the process of submitting an appeal to the state. Helena has already submitted theirs.
The chance that some money will find its way to Missoula is slim, however.
The state's appeal process looks at whether the health department did what it said it was going to do. It doesn't look at the criteria by which the grant was allocated, which is precisely what both Missoula and Helena take issue with.
In addition, Missoula County questions the openness of the process the state used to determine who got money. Local leaders were concerned they were never invited to any of the small work group meetings to make their case.
“It sounded like they were all closed meetings,” said County Commissioner Jean Curtiss. “Maybe that is our legal recourse” for appealing the state's decision.
She added that “in no way do I want to take money away from those who see problems and would like to address them. We need to look at the outcome. If we want to touch more people across the state, then we need to do it in a different way.”
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