Mental health providers give their two cents on $25 million windfall

By: GIG CONAUGHTON - Staff Writer | Monday, August 29, 2005 8:35 PM PDT ∞

SAN DIEGO ---- More than 100 people from businesses and agencies that serve the mentally ill jammed a two-hour meeting Monday to tell San Diego County leaders how to best spend $25 million in new state funding for mental health programs.

It was the first time that mental health care providers were allowed to give their opinions about how to spend money from Proposition 63 ---- a statewide initiative that voters approved in November 2004.

The new law imposes a 1 percent tax on California millionaires to help bolster cash-poor mental-health programs across the state, including in San Diego County, where budgets have been repeatedly cut in recent years.

At the meeting, providers, which include county agency officials, private companies, hospitals and law enforcement such as the sheriff's and probations departments, questioned ---- sharply at times ---- several of the funding ideas. The general funding proposals were broken down into categories of services for children, teens, adults and the elderly.

The most controversial issue at Monday's meeting was housing, and the county's decision to spend Prop. 63 money to rent temporary housing, rather than buy permanent units, to help keep roofs over the heads of teens and adults faced with fighting mental illness.

Critics said spending the money on temporary quarters could leave mentally ill patients back out on the street after the money runs out in a year.

"We all know that we need to have a permanent place to stay," said July Rose of the Creative Arts Consortium, a Del Mar network of artists who help the mentally ill. "So when are we going to get what we really need? And not pieces of it?"

Tony Potter, the county's former housing director for mental health services, also criticized the plans. Potter's job was eliminated recently by state funding cuts that prompted county reductions in mental health services.

"You say you're going to do housing," he said. "But you eliminated the housing coordinator position. You've eliminated the adult (services) coordinator position. You've eliminated the vocational educational position. I, too, am kind of sick of hearing the talk that we're going to transform the mental health system. When's it going to happen?"

Some local mental-health providers, meanwhile, were infuriated by the county's ruling two months ago that they could not be part of the committees created to set priorities for how the Prop. 63 money should be spent.

County lawyers said allowing people from businesses that earned money by providing services to the mentally ill on the committees would be a conflict of interest.

Providers, however, said the county's definitions of "provider" went too far, and said excluding them kept valuable experts off the panels. They said their absence could make the county's final spending plan ---- which must be approved by the state ---- inadequate or weaker.

None of those issues were raised at Monday's meeting, which was held at the county's health services offices in Point Loma.

Contact staff writer Gig Conaughton at (760) 739-6696 or gconaughton@nctimes.com.