The action by the Massachusetts Legislature, affirming an amendment written by Senate Majority Leader Frederick Berry and Assistant Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, reiterated a commitment to the hospital first made last spring with $500,000 for emergency surgical services.

Mayor John Bell called the new award to Addison Gilbert "great news."

Tarr said the funding reflected the Legislature's belief the hospital is "strategically important" in the state's public health system. He said it is reasonable to conclude the grant means Addison Gilbert is secure into the foreseeable future.

"The sense of crisis has passed," Tarr said.

Addison Gilbert was one of 30 community hospitals to split more than $33 million distributed to "distressed" hospitals.

Gov. Mitt Romney preferred the funds distributed according to nonpolitical criteria. Last month, he returned to the Legislature the bill, an amendment to the state budget, after stripping a politically influenced list of favored hospitals, leaving the choice to the professional health regulators in his administration.

In his message, Romney said, "I propose to require all the fund expenditures to be allocated in accordance with the regulations of the (Department of Health and Human Services)."

There are more than 60 community hospitals in Massachusetts. But the Legislature reasserted its decision of which hospitals would get the grants. The governor allowed the bill to become law without his signature at the end of July.

Northeast President and CEO Stephen Laverty announced the grant Monday and thanked "the legislative leadership" for "acknowledging the merit of our proposal." The first thank-you was offered to Berry, a Peabody Democrat. Laverty also thanked Tarr, a Gloucester Republican, state Rep. Anthony Verga and Bell.

The initial $500,000, announced last spring, was directed solely for use in maintaining all-hours emergency surgery, which Laverty had cited as too expensive to be underwritten by the system's resources. Last October, Northeast's board of trustees empowered him to consider dropping off-hour surgeries required after emergency room examinations.

The move would have necessitated rushing emergency room patients needing off-hours surgery to Beverly Hospital. It also might have jeopardized Addison Gilbert's license as a full-service, acute-care hospital.

The uncertain fate of 24/7 emergency surgery was the flash point in a yearlong struggle between community leaders including Bell, Tarr and Verga, all members of the Task Force for the Preservation of Addison Gilbert, and Laverty.

At its meeting yesterday, the task force shifted from crisis oversight to a less intense form of advocacy. After meeting biweekly during the uncertain times, the task force set its next meeting for mid-September.

On the table, said Tarr, the task force's founder and chairman, is "what is the role for us now that the storm clouds have passed."

For more than a year, until the state's first $500,000 grant, the fate of the hospital had seemed to hang on Northeast's bottom line, which has been improving steadily, and Laverty's reorganization of the system's two acute care hospitals.

Northeast is investing heavily in its main Beverly campus, upgrading diagnostic and surgical capabilities while halving the number of impatient beds to 30 in Gloucester and introducing a geriatric psychiatric unit. Northeast has been seeking new uses for the unused portions of the campus and removing others, such as the French Center, for additional parking.

The consolidation of beds and the opening of the geri-psych unit are set for Oct. 1, Shawn Middleton, a Northeast spokesman, said yesterday. He said no date has been set for demolition of the French Center, which is separate from the main hospital structure.

In his statement, Laverty said Northeast would also dedicate the new $500,000 to subsidizing 24/7 emergency surgery, though the Distressed Hospital Trust Fund bill's language allows the money to be used for any purpose at Addison Gilbert.

"These funds will be earmarked to Northeast's budget process to support the continuation of all-hours emergency surgery at the Gloucester campus," he said.