Help People, Forget the Furniture
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has decided, quite wisely, to put the needs of sick people ahead of purchasing new furniture.
The board’s decision reorders the priorities of Francis Dowling, the acting director of the Mental Health Department. At a time requiring budget cutbacks, he had decided to spend a departmental “surplus” on new workstations, office furniture and other improvements for the offices of mid-level management and administrative employees.
The supervisors have said they are willing to make necessary safety improvements in those offices, but the cost of the improvements is expected to be less than one-tenth of the “surplus” of more than $1.5 million.
How can the Mental Health Department have a surplus when the need for services is so urgent and unmet?
The budget cutbacks in recent years in the county’s mental health programs have eliminated services for as many as 30,000 mentally ill people. The loss of community-based programs, clinics, outpatient programs, inpatient beds and crisis intervention teams has forced the county jail system to become the hospital of last resort and the streets to become the only other alternative.
The urgent shortage of mental health services for poor people prompted Supervisor Gloria Molina to question spending $1.5 million on office furniture and other physical improvements in the Mental Health Department. More than half of the money had been spent on new furniture by the time Molina found out, but she and the other supervisors were able to redirect more than $700,000 toward care programs.
Can that money reopen inpatient psychiatric treatment beds? Can the funds pay for more psychiatric emergency teams for the already overcrowded jails?
The board has asked the county’s mental health experts to recommend the best way to spend that money. Then it’s up to the supervisors to act.
Tough times call for tough decisions. The Board of Supervisors made the right call when it voted to give a higher priority to mentally ill people.