Are your LACDMH MHSA Funds at Risk due to State Budget Crisis?

The answer seems to be NO.........

I have been getting questions about the urgency to sumbit a LACDMH MHSA IT Project Application. I.e. if you have not yet submitted an application, or have not yet spent all your allocated dollars, are you at risk to lose this funding source to the state's budget crisis?...based on pending legislation to scoop up all un-encumbered dollars......


This is in reference to the first Distribution Based on $345M State Funding HERE.


I talked to those close to this issue, including LACDMH and ACHSA, who have indicated that all funds for this project have already been awarded to DMH and incorporated into the master MHSA Agreement between LACDMH and DMH, and  therefore has encumbered the funds.

The remaining MHSA Distributions that have not yet been allocated to/by the County are definitely at risk.

LACDMH gave you a timeline to submit project applications requesting the portion of their funds they have alloacted to each of your agencies, and after that the unused dollars must be returned to the State. I would think the County will plan to spend those funds themselves, rather than send them back. We will know more when the deadline approaches...2018. So be sure to apply and spend before 2018!
See here:

• The ten year timer has already started; it does not start with the approval of your project. We want to be sure that everyone understands that the ten year time-line to spend your MHSA dollars does not begin at the time that your project gets submitted or approved. The clock already started on July 1, 2008 for CFTN and it ends on 6/30/2018.