Ottawa Recovery Court leaders: Abrupt revocation, restoration of grants prompts concerns

OTTAWA COUNTY — One of the most celebrated and recognized programs in Ottawa County was nearly shuttered overnight earlier this month when the Trump Administration sent hundreds of termination letters, effective immediately, for $2 billion in federal grants supporting mental health and drug addiction services.

The money had been cut off late Jan. 13 without warning, sending shockwaves through a segment of the country's patchwork system of public health that relies on grant funding.

“I’m recovering from the peptic ulcer from last week’s stress,” Andy Brown told the Ottawa County commissioners on Jan. 20 at the board's Finance & Administration Committee.

What is recovery court?

Brown is the program director of the county’s Recovery Court, a program that accepts defendants convicted of non-violent drug- or alcohol-related felonies in Ottawa County’s 20th Circuit Court.

“We're a jail and prison diversion program. We work with high-risk defendants with substance use and mental health disorders,” Brown said.

Recovery courts, or drug treatment courts, are specialized, treatment-focused programs designed to reduce recidivism and substance abuse among nonviolent, high-risk offenders. As an alternative to incarceration, these courts provide intensive, judicially supervised treatment, regular drug testing, and counseling to address the root causes of criminal behavior. 

Ottawa County’s recovery court, which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, was the first recovery court in the state, and one of the first in the country, to employ recovery coaches to work with participants, according to the court’s website.

The local court has been selected twice as one of eight national mentor courts out of 3,200 drug courts across the United States by the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Association of Drug Court Professionals.

The court has accepted over 500 participants, and has a 65% graduation rate. It’s funded through grants from the Michigan State Court Administrative Office, Bureau of Justice Assistance and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA.

“Our program has been operating for 22 years. Uniquely, we have been and for now remain, 100% grant funded. Our funding comes through state and federal grants, federal grants being the most instrumental to our survival,” Brown said.

Funding suddenly revoked

The abrupt cuts were issued by SAMHSA, causing Brown to act immediately.

“On Tuesday, Jan. 13, I received an email shortly after 10:30 p.m. … to see a title of an email from the federal Department of Health and Human Services notifying me that our grant award from SAMHSA was being terminated, and that no expenses starting Jan. 14 onward could be expensed to the grant, which meant at midnight, I was calling the director of our treatment providers to terminate service contracts,” Brown told commissioners. 

“I had an employee that I had to lay off. He woke up at 6 a.m. to a text from me that he literally did not have a job that day as of Wednesday, Jan. 14,” he said.

Brown said Ottawa County was one of nearly 3,000 grantees nationwide that were “arbitrarily and abruptly terminated.”

Those grantees included Muskegon County’s Recovery Court.

“As some of you may already know, late last night, we were notified by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) that our federal grant funding for the Muskegon County Recovery Court has been terminated, effective immediately.  We are currently assessing the long-term impact of these cuts on our program,” 14th Circuit Court Judge Matthew R. Kacel posted on the recovery court’s Facebook page Jan. 14.

“I know that this post may cause anxiety to our participants.  Please know that the Recovery Court staff and I, along with our circuit court administrators, are working hard at this moment to ensure the longevity of this program,” Kacel said.

Funding quickly restored

The fallout of the cuts inspired a swift rebuke from members of Congress, Brown told commissioners.

“Following national outcry and bipartisan congressional pressure, grant funding was restored by early afternoon Thursday, Jan. 15. It was a two-day roller coaster, certainly, the whiplash of which is strongly to be remembered,” Brown said. 

Official notice of grant restoration began reaching organizations Jan. 15. According to a letter sent by SAMHSA to a care provider in upstate New York, which was shared with NPR, the termination of federal funding communicated Tuesday "is hereby rescinded."

“The unpredictable business practices of the federal government over the past 13 months have put our program in the most precarious funding position we've been in the 16 years that I've been at the helm,” he said.

That was also the takeaway of agencies that work to reform the criminal justice system.  

“The cuts were obviously very surprising and quite abrupt and the challenges that they present to the providers that are providing the kind of services that were cut is really … the way that cuts happen like that can be very abrupt and can really destabilize nonprofits and service providers,” said Rosemary “Ruby” Nidiry, senior counsel at the Brennan Center’s Justice Program. 

The program works to educate the public and advance policies that promote bipartisan solutions to address the problems with incarceration, mass incarceration and inequities in the criminal justice system. 

Nidiry said it’s good that congressional leaders were able to get the cuts reversed quickly, but that it highlighted the fragility of sustainable funding for these programs.

“It was great that it was rescinded, so we don't have to go down the path of trying to figure out exactly what would have been cut, but a lot of it was piecemeal and kind of people hearing during that day what was happening,” she said.

She said even though the funding is still in place, there was “no explanation out there really about why this happened.”

National media outlets said there was no immediate reason given for the decision — only that the programs no longer "aligned" with the Trump Administration's public health agenda.

Nidiry said that gives program organizers strong reason to worry.

“Just within the time when the cuts were announced, there were programs that would have had to close,” she said. “So it's already on top of the instability that nonprofit or service providers already experience. It's just compounding that uncertainty.”

What happens next?

Nidiry said the timing of the almost cuts was unfortunate, as recovery courts like Ottawa’s and Muskegon’s have had a proven positive effect. 

“We know from public health and law enforcement that this is the best way to help to prevent overdoses, save lives, reduce police interaction and improve chances for successful re-entry,” she said.

She pointed to encouraging data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which reported about a 24% decline in U.S. overdose deaths compared to the previous year in 2024.

“It’s still too many deaths, but we have been seeing positive trends. We've been beginning to see these innovations that communities have been beginning to try out and see,” Nidiry said. “The impact of cuts like this — that happened so abruptly, that happened within the middle of a grant cycle that just cut these programs off — really jeopardizes even the progress that we've been seeing.”

Nidiry said the programs that could have been cut were organizations, programs and nonprofits that provide direct services, such as Narcan distribution and training for first responders “that can save lives.” 

“Drug courts and mental health courts around the country work with the criminal justice system to provide accountability for people who, maybe because of a substance use addiction issue or because of a mental health crisis, have broken the law and are better served by treatment and services to ensure that they don't continue to break the law,” she said. 

“They can get on the path to recovery, suicide prevention programs, re-entry programs that help people who are incarcerated prepare themselves for physical re-entry. So there's this wide array of programs that we are hearing about that received these notices.”

She said if recovery courts and similar programs were to suddenly shutter, it would have severe ripple effects across the criminal justice system.

“Partnerships with law enforcement that provide these kinds of services, there would have been drug courts that would have had to close; that was what we were thinking on that day,” Nidiry said. And so the impact would be that many of these programs could shut down because they are already operating kind of concerned about already the instability and uncertainty about funding that service providers already experience, compounded with the uncertainty of healthcare funding, more broadly, because of potential cuts to Medicaid, other health care providers, and then on top of that, the uncertainty of these grants.”

“You can't just operate in a sustained way if you have that kind of chaos and uncertainty, so the broader concern is that without sustained funding and reliability of funding, these programs will simply shut down,” she said.

That long-term funding uncertainty is what has Brown concerned about Ottawa County’s Recovery Court sustainability.

He noted that in late 2024, the board of commissioners approved establishing a contingency fund for the program, should federal funding be permanently revoked. 

Brown said that, despite the cuts being rescinded, there is good reason to believe that federal grant funding is likely in jeopardy because of other actions out of the administration.

“The past 13 months have been unprecedented,” he said. “Beginning last March, federal grant-funded programs such as ours, nonprofits, policy think tanks, universities were abruptly terminated. We survived that round of cuts. 

“Next, the predictable schedule of releasing federal grant opportunities was paused. Almost no federal grant applications were released in 2025 across all federal departments, maybe 5 to 10% of what's normally released. And this continues as of this date.”

Brown said that means the program will need to “tap into contingency funds sooner than anticipated, which could be as early as the fourth quarter this fiscal year, as was agreed upon in fall 2024.” 

He said court officials will not use county-allocated funds until it is absolutely necessary.

“I would exhaust all opportunities to obtain grant funding before we have to begin use of the contingency funds,” he said. “Regrettably, we find ourselves in a position where new federal grant funding simply was not made in 2025. There's strong concern and reason to believe that we're not going to see federal grants released this year in 2026.”

Nidiry said there are compelling reasons to be concerned.

“I think that people are definitely on guard, seeing what will happen,” she said. 

It’s important to continue educating the public and policy makers to avoid another attempt at cuts, she said. 

“I think, once it has happened like it happened this time, it is realistic to be concerned about the possibility of it happening again. ... We need to continue to be educating and kind of prowling around and keeping an eye on making sure that this doesn't happen again. If it did happen again, it would be devastating.”

— Sarah Leach is the executive editor of the Ottawa News Network. Contact her at sleach@ottawanewsnetwork.org. Follow her on Twitter @ONNLeach.