{"id":2599,"date":"2026-05-22T21:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T21:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/portaltohope.org\/new-wp\/?p=2599"},"modified":"2026-05-22T21:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T21:34:09","slug":"talk-priorities-with-legislators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/portaltohope.org\/new-wp\/talk-priorities-with-legislators\/","title":{"rendered":"Talk Priorities With Legislators"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Portal To Hope<\/strong>,\u00a0Medford Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn<\/strong>,\u00a0Police Chief Jack Buckley<\/strong>\u00a0and the\u00a0Medford Police Department<\/strong>\u00a0hosted a community forum,\u00a0“Talk Priorities With Legislators”<\/strong>, with\u00a0Maeve Kidney, Director of Policy & Legislative Affairs – Massachusetts Office for Victim Assistance (MOVA)<\/strong>, and\u00a0Nithya Badrinath, Policy Director – Jane Doe, Inc.<\/strong>; and\u00a0State Representatives Christine Barber<\/strong>,\u00a0Paul Donato<\/strong>,\u00a0Steven Ultrino<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0State Senator Sal DiDomenico<\/strong>\u00a0shared their time to address issues impacting survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking crimes.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Important discussion was focused on the fact that agencies across the Commonwealth, incuding Portal To Hope, are facing a drastic 42% budget cut –\u00a0effective July 1, 2026<\/em>\u00a0– which will cause closure of program services and significant delays in serving domestic violence crime victims.\u00a0 To ensure that services are maintained, MOVA has asked the Massachusetts Legislature to create a $13.8 million\u00a0MOVA TRUST Line<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Agencies serving violent crime victims have long relied-upon funding support under the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) – Crime Victims Fund.\u00a0\u00a0The Crime Victims Fund is not supported by taxpayer dollars.\u00a0 Rather, the fund is\u00a0supported by federal criminal fines and penalties.\u00a0 Because federal funds have been diverted away from the Crime Victims Fund over the last few years, federal funding is no longer reliable, and states have had to look at bridging the gaps in funding to continue to protect domestic violence and sexual assault survivors.
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The TRUST Line is essential to sustaining victim services in Massachusetts.\u00a0 Without the support of our Massachusetts legislators and Governor Healey in creating a dedicated TRUST Line, Portal To Hope will be forced to\u00a0eliminate<\/em>our emergency shelter program, after-hours hotline, youth programs and other advocacy care as of this July.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Portal To Hope needs your help!\u00a0 To learn more and to get involved in supporting the MOVA TRUST Line, please call Portal To Hope at (781) 338-7678.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Portal To Hope,\u00a0Medford Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn,\u00a0Police Chief Jack Buckley\u00a0and the\u00a0Medford Police Department\u00a0hosted a community forum,\u00a0“Talk Priorities With Legislators”, with\u00a0Maeve Kidney, Director of Policy & Legislative Affairs – Massachusetts Office for Victim Assistance (MOVA), and\u00a0Nithya Badrinath, Policy Director – Jane Doe, Inc.; and\u00a0State Representatives Christine Barber,\u00a0Paul Donato,\u00a0Steven Ultrino\u00a0and\u00a0State Senator Sal DiDomenico\u00a0shared their time to address issuesContinue reading “Talk Priorities With Legislators”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[29,40,42],"class_list":["post-2599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","tag-mova","tag-trust-line","tag-voca","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/portaltohope.org\/new-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/portaltohope.org\/new-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/portaltohope.org\/new-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/portaltohope.org\/new-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/portaltohope.org\/new-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2599"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/portaltohope.org\/new-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2603,"href":"https:\/\/portaltohope.org\/new-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599\/revisions\/2603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/portaltohope.org\/new-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/portaltohope.org\/new-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/portaltohope.org\/new-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}