Jun 4, 2026 By Mike Jones 4 min read

The Pennsylvania Opioid Misuse and Addiction Abatement Trust reversed course on four grants from Washington County that it had rejected in March, approving them during an appeal hearing Wednesday in which county officials asked the board to reconsider its earlier decisions.

During the hour-long meeting held through video conferencing, the trust’s Dispute Resolution Committee listened to new information from county Human Services Director John Tamiggi and his department’s deputy, Tiffany Milovac, about why the programs met strict requirements of the state’s opioid settlement.

All four previously “non-compliant” grants were approved, which include $350,000 for the Shawn Patrick Recovery House; $80,000 to WHS Teen Outreach’s Echo Education program; $75,000 for The Childcare Group Solutions Center by Direct Consulting Solutions; and $25,000 for training and continuing education for the county’s Department of Human Services.

Mary Jo Podgurski, who founded the Teen Center, also presented to the committee and explained to its members how the Echo Education program targets at-risk youths and specifically tries to steer them away from drug and alcohol abuse, along with offering education about opioid use disorder.

“We’re consistent in our belief that intervention begins before a young person gets involved,” Podgurski said.

Mifflin County Commissioner Robert Postal, who is a member of the opioid settlement review committee, asked about the overall funding of the Teen Center and whether the grant would go into other programs. Podgurski said the $80,000 grant from the opioid settlement money would only go to the Echo program, which has 20 students and provides “intensive mentoring” and a dedicated “safe space” for one-on-one education.

“The teen outreach is fairly large, but this money only applies to one program,” Podgurski said.

Committee Chairman Thomas VanKirk was impressed by what he heard about Echo, although he suggested the committee initially rejected the grant because the program was buried in voluminous information detailing the Teen Center.

“Echo sounds like a great program,” VanKirk said before the committee unanimously approved the funding.

The $25,000 for training and continuing education for the county’s Human Services was approved without the committee hearing any more information, while there was some discussion on the other two items. The $350,000 for the Shawn Patrick Recovery House was approved unanimously, while the $75,000 for The Childcare Group Solutions Center was authorized following a split vote since there were concerns about how the money would be itemized in the overall $1.8 million budget to build the center.

This is the second time county officials have appeared at an appeal hearing trying to get the committee to reverse earlier decisions rejecting the grants. In March, the opioid settlement trust fund’s Dispute Resolution Committee upheld the decision to reject four other grants, but approved three others that were deemed “non-compliant” by that board in December.

VanKirk suggested to Tamiggi and Milovac that they improve how they file their initial grant applications in order to give the committee more specific information about how programs or projects directly address opioid use disorder in the community.

“The material you submitted (for the appeal hearing) is new, but it shed a lot of light on the subjects,” VanKirk said. “In the future, it is preferable and we may necessitate it in response to the questions we initially addressed to you.”

Tamiggi said they would work to “find that sweet spot of information” on the programs and their impacts in Washington County without overburdening the committee with redundant paperwork.

“We’re certainly going to do our best to meet that mark and meet that balance with the trust moving forward,” Tamiggi said. “We’ll work on that collectively and we look forward to that opportunity.”

Washington County has allocated about $5.5 million in grants from the settlement trust in multiple rounds since September 2024.