2 Lawmakers Urge Dual Use of State Hospital

Two Ventura County legislators urged Gov. Pete Wilson Wednesday to back a plan to save Camarillo State Hospital by opening a California State University campus on the sprawling 750-acre mental hospital site within the next year.

In a letter to the governor, state Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-San Luis Obispo) and Assemblyman Brooks Firestone (R-Los Olivos) said joint use would accomplish two major goals for this county: save 1,500 jobs at the state hospital and move forward plans for a four-year public university that have languished for decades.

Although refusing to be specific, Firestone suggested that Wilson may support the proposal. “I believe he’s leaning in this direction, just reading between the lines.”

In a statement released through a spokesman, Wilson said local lawmakers and his staff members worked together on the issue.

“While a decision has not been made, the administration is working closely with Mr. Firestone on his joint proposal with Mr. O’Connell, and a decision should be forthcoming soon,” Deputy Press Secretary Jesus Arredondo quoted the governor as saying.

Wilson, who in January proposed closing the Camarillo hospital for the mentally ill and disabled to save money, is scheduled to release a revised recommendation Tuesday when he presents his final 1996-97 budget to the Legislature.

Despite its reputation for excellence and its physical beauty, Wilson has favored closing the 60-year-old Spanish-style hospital because it has the fewest patients in the state system and is among the most expensive to operate.

“To me, it just has all the attributes of a great university. I can just see it there,” said Firestone, chairman of the Assembly Higher Education Committee. “To me it has the quad, the atmosphere of a university. And it’s just a little bit remote.”

O’Connell said he sees dual use of the hospital site as a good match. “It’s an opportunity to make an immediate investment in the future, and I’m pushing it.”

Ventura County’s five state lawmakers--including Assembly members Nao Takasugi (R-Oxnard) and Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills) and Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley)--have participated in discussions about keeping the underused hospital open by setting up a university on the site, possibly within a year, Firestone said.

“We’ve all been talking about this up here in the Legislature,” he said. “I just believe it makes so much sense that it will ultimately go in that direction.”

As envisioned by O’Connell and Firestone, the 840-patient hospital would continue to treat both mentally ill people and those who have developmental disabilities such as mental retardation and autism.

There is enough extra space at the hospital, which once housed 7,000 patients, to easily accommodate the core operations of a new university, the lawmakers said.

O’Connell and Firestone said they have discussed the joint-use proposal with Cal State University Chancellor Barry Munitz, but have received no commitment of support so far.

“I know he’d like to build a brand new university, but I also know he recognizes the funds aren’t there,” Firestone said. “His response is he’s very enthusiastic for working out a plan for a four-year university.”

O’Connell said Munitz did not discourage him from nudging the governor toward establishing a university at the hospital. “They have always had it as an option.”

Munitz could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.

Cal State University officials have not publicly expressed much interest in taking over Camarillo State Hospital, or any part of it, saying they do not want to interfere in the already complicated discussions over the fate of the hospital.

Instead, university officials have said they want to move forward with plans to build the campus on 260 acres of farmland the university recently acquired west of Camarillo, if the money becomes available.

J. Handel Evans, the acting president of the yet-to-be-built Ventura County campus, was unavailable for comment Wednesday. He was moving his family from San Jose to a house he recently bought in Camarillo.

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But Joyce M. Kennedy, a university official working closely with Evans, called the proposal an intriguing idea in Cal State’s 33-year quest to launch a four-year campus in the state’s largest county without a public university.

“The university has always been open to new options,” said Kennedy, director of the Cal State Northridge’s satellite campus in Ventura. “We are living in different times, trying to put together a four-year university without a lot of money.”

Although Cal State planners have penciled in nearly $50 million to build the first phase of the campus over the next five years, it could easily take twice as long given the state’s cash crunch and competing needs of the nearly two dozen existing Cal State campuses.

O’Connell and Firestone bring up these economic realities in their letter to the governor, mentioning how Cal State Monterey Bay, managed to skip ahead of the long-sought Ventura County campus by converting the closed Fort Ord Army Base into a university.

The hospital campus, the lawmakers wrote, “presents us with a tremendous opportunity to afford the current generation of Venturans and Central Coast residents with a four-year university quickly.”

They argue that placing the university on hospital grounds makes better economic sense than starting from scratch on the 260 acres now planted with lemon trees.

“The construction of a full-time, four-year university at the Ventura County site recently acquired by CSU will cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars and will take a generation to build out,” the lawmakers wrote. “Within one year, [the hospital campus] can open its doors to students.”

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Local environmentalists also embraced the concept of the university abandoning development of its $7.7-million lemon orchard in the heart of a county farming zone.

“Maybe here is an opportunity to undo a poor planning decision and protect the greenbelt,” said Neil Moyer, president of the Environmental Coalition of Ventura County. “One would like to think that the state could find a buyer who wants to keep it in agricultural production.”

If the new plan goes through, it would eliminate the need to save the hospital’s $80-million-a-year payroll by converting the campus into a hospital for mental patients suspected or convicted of committing crimes.

An Assembly subcommittee last week rejected Wilson’s call to close the hospital and voted instead to study the plan to convert the facility to a treatment center for mentally ill prisoners. A Senate subcommittee delayed a vote on the same issue this week.

Although backed by the county Board of Supervisors and a Camarillo City Council majority, that plan to create a more secure hospital by installing high fences and hiring guards was attacked by many in Camarillo.

Opponents, including council members Charlotte Craven and Mike Morgan, favored converting the hospital site into a Cal State campus.

“This is what we’ve been recommending all along,” Morgan said. “Let’s put the university out there. It would be a perfect laboratory for students.”

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In their letter to Wilson, O’Connell and Firestone also addressed the lingering concerns of the parents of Camarillo State Hospital patients, who have praised the quality of their children’s treatment and feared moving them either into homes in the broader community or to less-costly state facilities.

“Forced relocation is potentially disruptive to families,” many of whom live in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, the lawmakers said. “Clients’ emotional well-being can be jeopardized by the relocation.”

Leo O’Hearn, founding president of a group of parents who lobby for the mentally ill children at Camarillo State Hospital, welcomed the announcement.

“It’s a good idea,” O’Hearn said. “There is space. Some of it would lend itself to classrooms and some to administration.”

At the urging of Firestone, Republican activist and longtime university booster Carolyn Leavens also wrote to Wilson encouraging him to consider the state hospital as a possible university site.

“The state hospital is a lovely site,” she said. “If this gets us a university faster and does the job well, then it may be a good fit.”