Witnesses Give Warning on Mental Health Cuts
A mental health system undermined by years of inadequate funding will collapse entirely in Los Angeles County if $40 million in cuts are imposed by the Board of Supervisors, mental health officials, workers and patients testified at a special hearing this week called by Supervisor Ed Edelman.
No other supervisor attended the hearing, but scores of advocates for the mentally ill did. More than two dozen of them gave vivid and, at times, emotional accounts of a mental health system already overburdened and inaccessible to some of the neediest in the county.
Edelman said he plans to send transcripts of the hearing to state and county officials in the hope of finding additional funding. He also said he would ask the supervisors to endorse Proposition 134, the liquor tax measure that would give 15% of the revenue it raises to mental health services.
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