A Maine psychiatric hospital has been recertified and its $20 million in annual funding has been restored.
The Bangor Daily News reports Riverview Psychiatric Center opened in 2004. It was decertified in 2013 for overcrowding, inadequate staffing and the use of stun guns and restraints to subdue patients.
The federal government had asked Maine to pay back more than $50 million in federal funding in 2017, which the administration of then-Gov. Paul LePage resisted. Page, a Republican, used the decertification of Riverview as a justification for building an ancillary Bangor facility without legislative approval.
Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, hasn't committed to opening the facility, but a 30-year lease signed last year under LePage obligates $11.3 million in payments to a private contractor. It's unclear how that will be resolved.