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Christine Matlock Dougherty received the text just after noon on the last Friday in August.

The mental health legislation she’d been advocating for in memory of her son was dead, held indefinitely by the state Senate Appropriations Committee in an annual culling of bills.

Just like that.

Poof.

By Jocelyn Wiener

CalMatters

In the text, Sherry Daley, a lobbyist with the California Consortium of Addiction Programs and Professionals, which sponsored the bill, explained simply:

“The bill was held. It won’t be moving forward this year. Sorry.”

More than four years have passed since Dougherty lost her 23-year-old son, Ryan Matlock, to a fentanyl overdose after his insurance refused to cover his stay in resi

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