Key Hearing Today on Fate of Camarillo State Hospital

Supervisor John K. Flynn will be there.

So will Brian Bowley, president of the local psychiatric technicians union. Except for a scheduling conflict, Camarillo Councilman Mike Morgan said, he would be there too.

The occasion today in Sacramento will be a hearing by the state Assembly’s budget subcommittee, a panel of legislators charged with weighing plans for the future of Camarillo State Hospital.

Their recommendation, along with that of a similar subcommittee of state senators meeting May 13, will go a long way toward determining what’s next for the underutilized state hospital.

“They’re very key hearings,” said Bowley, the union leader who represents about 600 Camarillo State technicians. “Whatever decisions they make in these subcommittee hearings is the way it’s likely to go.”

At the two hearings, the subcommittees will consider budget proposals from the Department of Mental Health and the Department of Developmental Services, which spend about $2.5 billion between them each year.

What concerns Supervisor Flynn, as well as hospital employees and other community members, is the January recommendation by Gov. Pete Wilson to close Camarillo State and move its 875 patients somewhere else.

That would cost Ventura County more than 1,500 jobs and an $80-million annual payroll.

Some people want to see the hospital remain open by converting it to a forensics facility that treats mentally ill prisoners--a plan now embraced by state mental health Director Stephen W. Mayberg.

Others are lobbying for the 85 buildings constructed on 750 acres to be converted to a state university. Even the Camarillo Chamber of Commerce has launched a political campaign, urging its members to fight the prospect of bringing more prisoners to Ventura County.

Meanwhile, relatives of those now being treated at the hospital are worried that the current mix of patients would not receive the same level of care if they were transferred to another state institution or to community group homes.

Each of those perspectives will be presented during public testimony at the hearings.

*

Most likely, however, is that Wilson will rethink his recommendation for closure and propose an alternate use for Camarillo State when he unveils his revised spending plan May 21, according to various sources.

“We can probably count on Camarillo State Hospital remaining open,” said Flynn, who met privately in Sacramento with several key lawmakers late last month.

Flynn and his camp have one probable vote in Antonio Villaraigosa, the Los Angeles Democrat who sits on the Assembly budget subcommittee.

“I’m very sympathetic to the concerns of the disabled community regarding state-provided services,” Villaraigosa said last week. “We need to be providing and expanding those types of services--not continuing to downsize them.”

If Wilson does revise his closure plan for Camarillo State, both subcommittees would hold more hearings on the hospital’s fate later this month. Recommendations then would be sent to the full budget committees before reaching the Senate and Assembly floors.

In fact, both subcommittees already have public hearings scheduled to consider budgetary items that will change in Wilson’s revised spending plan.

Under the hospital conversion plan backed by Mayberg, millions of dollars would be spent upgrading security at Camarillo State, which is now an unguarded, ungated facility.

The increasing number of patients ordered into institutions by judges could then be housed at Camarillo State. That would help decrease per-bed costs, which have soared to more than $100,000 a year.

But there may not be as dire a need for mental-hospital beds for inmates with the state Supreme Court having recently ordered a review of a new law dealing with so-called sexually violent predators.

A state appellate court is now considering the constitutionality of institutionalizing sex offenders beyond the length of their original prison terms.

Nonetheless, a separate federal court has ordered the state Department of Corrections to begin providing mental health services to prisoners who require such treatment.

That could mean thousands of new patients for Camarillo State and other state institutions, if Wilson determines that those prisoners can best be served in the more costly environs of state hospitals.

“You’ve got to have someone decide on a policy basis that it’s appropriate to treat mentally ill prisoners in a state hospital setting,” said Randall Feltman, the Ventura County mental health director.

“That decision has got to be made by the governor,” said Feltman, who does not plan to attend the subcommittee hearings.

Some experts have estimated that as much as 10% of California’s prison population suffers from some form of mental illness.

State prison and mental health administrators have been negotiating terms for treating mentally ill prisoners in hospitals rather than prisons, although the expense is roughly double.

Officials would not comment on the ongoing discussions, but sources said Camarillo State executives have offered to treat each prisoner for $80,000 a year and prison officials have countered at $45,000 apiece.

Those who work at the state hospital think some inmates would benefit from treatment.

“We need the prisons for the real prisoners, not the people who are mentally ill and happen to commit a crime,” said Cindie French, chief steward of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents 150 Camarillo State workers. “It’s not fair to them.”

Through proper medical treatment at forensic state hospitals such as those in Atascadero and Patton, mentally ill inmates can be reintegrated into society and become productive citizens, French said.

“We hope to encourage the Legislature to find the funding to make it work,” she said. “We’re trying to show that the standard of care that Atascadero and Patton provide is necessary.”

But a whole contingent of Camarillo residents, including council members Morgan and Charlotte Craven, oppose adding fences and guards to the hospital to make it secure for criminal patients.

Organizers of the group Concerned Citizens of Camarillo, which distributed 20,000 fliers opposing the conversion plan, have not decided whether traveling to Sacramento to testify at the hearing is worth their while.

“Most of us have families and hold down full-time jobs, so we’re trying to decide if it’s better to go to Sacramento and attend the hearings or whether we should write letters and contact legislators directly,” said Jan McDonald, who opposes bringing mentally ill prisoners to Camarillo.

Regardless of whether members of the Concerned Citizens group show up today, they will make their opinions known to lawmakers.

“You’re either for it or against it,” McDonald said. “There aren’t very many people in the middle, so participating in the process is what it’s all about.”

*

Members of the grass-roots coalition fear that converting the hospital to a forensic institution would jeopardize community safety and erode the quality of life most residents now enjoy.

“It would have a long-term negative effect on our community,” McDonald said.

Even if Camarillo State remains open and its jobs and payroll stay put in Ventura County, relatives of current patients are worried that there will be no place for their sons and daughters after a conversion.

A small but vocal group of parents is lobbying key legislators to safeguard a portion of the campus for those patients who would not adjust to a community group home or another state hospital.

“Change is very difficult,” said Marcia Flannery, an Oxnard woman whose son has lived at Camarillo State for almost 30 of his 57 years. “I’ve seen [son] Paige react badly when there is a new employee or a new client.”

Because of the threatened closure, home-placement workers have for months been quietly steering Flannery and others toward community group settings--a situation that Flannery believes would endanger her brain-damaged son.

“My son needs 24-hour care,” said Flannery, who testified at the Capitol 10 years ago over another threatened closure. “He needs medication. He is destructive, and when he gets hyper, he will tear a place up.

“I don’t think he would last six months outside.”

Flannery and other patients’ relatives in her position have an ally in state Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley), who serves as vice chairwoman of the powerful Senate Budget Committee, which will consider the pending subcommittee recommendations.

Wright said her schedule may prevent her from attending both the Assembly and Senate subcommittee hearings. But she will be watching them closely.

“I am willing to support any proposal that will keep the hospital open and make it cost-effective,” Wright said. “But with the understanding that the people who are already there can remain.

“Some of these people have been there 25 or 30 years,” Wright said. “If they had been able to be released, they would have been released already. It seems terrible to uproot them.”

Essie Rodgers is president of the Green Line Parents Group, a nonprofit corporation that lobbies on behalf of Camarillo State patients. She’ll be there when the Assembly subcommittee convenes today in Room 126 of the state Capitol.

Rodgers knows she gets just two minutes to tell why her 42-year-old daughter relies on the staff and services at Camarillo State.

“She went out into the community 10 years ago and within 2 1/2 years she was back,” Rodgers said. “She had been physically, mentally and sexually abused.”

Like Wright and Flannery, Rodgers will urge the subcommittee members to set aside some room at Camarillo State for her daughter and others like her.

“I plan to talk as fast as I possibly can,” Rodgers said. “They don’t have to listen, but I’m going to say it anyway.”