Senator Murray is working to advance $2.4 million in federal funding to support Phase II of the Compass Health Broadway Behavioral Health Campus Redevelopment project
***PHOTOS, B-ROLL HERE from today’s visit and tour**
Everett, WA – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and a senior member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, visited Compass Health in Everett to tour Phase II of their Broadway Behavioral Health Campus Redevelopment project—which will expand critical mental health treatment services for adults living with severe and persistent mental health conditions, especially those who are low-income or without income. Joining Senator Murray for the visit were Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin, Compass Health CEO and President Tom Sebastian, and Compass Health Board Chair Macaulay Ivory.
The visit began at “Andy’s Place,” Phase I of the redevelopment project, which was completed in 2021 as a short-stay facility for individuals experiencing behavioral health crises to receive support in a safe and recovery-oriented environment. Next, Senator Murray toured the construction site for Phase II of the redevelopment project—the Broadway Behavioral Health Facility. When completed, the new 72,000 square foot facility will include a 16-bed evaluation and treatment unit and a 16-bed crisis diversion unit, alongside other treatment beds that will collectively allow Compass Health to serve hundreds of new patients each year. The building will also house offices for crisis prevention and outreach, expansion of community services for older adults, and an on-site pharmacy. Compass Health is one of the leading behavioral health providers in Northwest Washington; however, right now they are forced to turn away hundreds of people from their Evaluation and Treatment Facility due to lack of bed availability.
Senator Murray is currently working to secure $2.4 million in federal funding through Congressionally Directed Spending to support Phase II of Compass Health’s redevelopment project. The funding for the Broadway Behavioral Health Facility was included in legislation Senator Murray negotiated that passed out of the Senate Appropriations Committee in August 2024; the outcome of the legislation depends on negotiations over final spending bills for Fiscal Year 2025 with House Republicans.
“Compass Health does such important work to help people experiencing mental and behavioral health crises in Northwest Washington, and it’s exciting to see firsthand and discuss how I can best support them in Congress,” said Senator Murray. “As Vice Chair of the Appropriations Committee, I’m working hard to make sure our annual government funding bills include the strongest possible investments, despite tough fiscal limits, to support community solutions for people in crisis. I’ve worked in a bipartisan way for many years and under multiple administrations to get more resources out to our communities to tackle the opioid epidemic and help more people get the mental health support they need, when they need it—that’s exactly what I’ll continue to do.”
“Senator Murray has long been a champion for behavioral health in Washington and throughout the U.S. Today, we’re honored to host her for a tour of our Broadway Campus Redevelopment, and deeply appreciate her support and advocacy for this regional solution to meet the needs of community members with significant mental health challenges,” said Tom Sebastian, President and CEO of Compass Health. “We thank Senator Murray and her staff for their ongoing partnership and for including our project in her federal Community Project Funding appropriation request.”
As the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Murray has made securing additional federal resources to help combat the opioid crisis a top priority. In the Fiscal Year 2024 spending bills she got signed into law in March 2024, Murray was able to secure $4.6 billion to support substance use disorder treatment and recovery programs, despite tough budget caps, alongside millions in Congressionally Directed Spending for community-level substance use disorder treatment programs and care clinics across Washington state. She also secured key investments for mental health programs, including $1 billion for the Mental Health Block Grant and $153 million for the Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training Program to support community-based clinical training and strengthen the mental health workforce.
In previous government funding legislation signed into law at the end of 2022, Senator Murray secured the inclusion of a bipartisan mental health and substance use disorder package she negotiated, which has helped improve access to substance use disorder treatment and naloxone for overdose reversal, and provided an additional $345 million in federal funding for opioid crisis response. And in the annual funding bill before that, Murray secured a $300 million boost for the Department of Health and Human Services’ work to address substance use disorders.
Senator Murray has a long bipartisan record on this issue—most notably, in 2018 as the top Democrat on the HELP Committee, Murray negotiated and got passed into law the largest-ever federal legislation to tackle the opioid crisis, the SUPPORT Act. Senator Murray is working with HELP Ranking Member Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to reauthorize the SUPPORT Act, and she is leading the push to reauthorize key prenatal and postnatal health initiatives she helped establish in the original legislation.
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