Panel to Study Optional Uses for State Hospital

Gov. Pete Wilson has agreed to form a special task force to study alternative uses for Camarillo State Hospital, a move that a top Ventura County legislator hailed Thursday as a sign that the 60-year-old hospital might not have to close after all.

State Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) said late Thursday that the governor is willing to consider an array of options to keep the mental hospital open, but has not abandoned his plan announced in January to close the underused facility if costs remain extraordinarily high.

One item the governor has ruled out is bringing in sexual predators to bolster the hospital’s dwindling population of mentally ill patients, Wright said.

“The governor has no intention of having sexual predators going to Camarillo State Hospital and never has,” she said. “It is definitely off the table.”

That proposal, first pitched by the state Department of Mental Health, had been one of the most controversial ideas in recent months, though this week state Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-San Luis Obispo) and Assemblyman Brooks Firestone (R-Los Olivos) proposed opening Ventura County’s long-sought Cal State campus on the hospital grounds.

Wilson has not responded to the joint-use proposal, but Wright, whose district includes the state hospital, said it seems unworkable. And she criticized O’Connell and Firestone for crowding her turf.

“It’s not possible,” Wright said. “I wonder how they would feel if there was a controversial issue in their district and I stepped in supporting one side or another.”

She said the task force may very well consider pairing a state university alongside mental-health wards at the 750-acre facility a few miles south of Camarillo. The panel, she said, will include state economic experts as well as local public officials and civic leaders, so that any decision over the hospital’s future will have community support.

The formation of the task force comes as lawmakers, educators and mental-health workers debated the merits of placing a Cal State campus in the midst of a state hospital. While some called it an innovative idea worth investigating, others stressed that the Legislature should focus on maintaining state mental-health services.

“I would never want to say no to opening up a new educational institution,” said Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles), a longtime advocate for the mentally ill.

“But I really feel that Camarillo State Hospital ought to be preserved to take care of the tremendous growing mental-health needs,” she said.

Assemblyman Tom J. Bordonaro Jr. (D-Paso Robles), who sits on the subcommittee looking at mental-health funding, welcomed the joint-use concept as an alternative to closing the institution.

“It may be a little bit late, but I don’t believe we should ever close the door on this type of deal,” he said. “We ought to slow down and take a look at all the options.”

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The idea is to keep Camarillo State Hospital economically viable by continuing to treat the 450 mentally retarded patients at the facility, while also hosting the 1,500 students now enrolled at a Cal State Northridge satellite campus in Ventura.

But the 400 schizophrenics and other mentally ill patients would be sent to other state hospitals.

“The governor’s initial plan was for complete closure and to move every patient to other state facilities,” O’Connell said. “We are trying to have maximum utilization of this facility.”

But Assemblywoman Martha M. Escutia (D-Huntington Park), who also sits on the budget subcommittee studying mental-health funding, was skeptical.

“I don’t think it would work,” she said. “That’s just my gut reaction.”

Cal State administrators are intrigued by the idea. They said taking vacant buildings on the hospital grounds makes economic sense in the long-delayed plan to build a four-year university in Ventura County.

Moving onto the hospital grounds could shave years and millions of dollars from the time and expense of building a university from scratch on a nearby 260-acre lemon grove that the Cal State system recently acquired.

“I’ve seen the facilities, and they do lend themselves easily to conversion in most cases,” said J. Handel Evans, an architect and acting president of the yet-to-be-built Ventura County campus.

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At the same time, Evans stressed that no matter how intriguing the proposal, Cal State officials do not want to be poaching territory from a sister state agency.

“We are in a rather interesting and delicate position,” he said.

Furthermore, Cal State officials have reservations about placing university students near patients in locked mental wards.

“I have no idea how this sharing proposal would work,” said Jim Considine, chairman of the Cal State University Board of Trustees.

“The safety of our students is of primary importance,” he said. “It would definitely be an obstacle that we would have to overcome.”

Randy Ferguson, a deputy director of the Department of Developmental Services, said he was much more concerned about severely retarded patients being victimized by college students.

“I don’t think in general our residents would be a threat to others,” Ferguson said. “Individuals could be, but for the most part the vulnerability is on the other side.

“That’s awfully close proximity for such dissimilar enterprises,” he added.

Assemblyman Firestone, one of the architects of the proposal, said pairing the hospital and university could be serendipitous, providing an educational opportunity for students interested in mental-health professions and providing the hospital with volunteers.

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“It could be a very good thing for the students and a very good thing for the disabled,” he said. “I’m assuming there would be no safety issue because it would be carefully and sensitively planned.”

Some local officials and business advocates have been pushing the state hospital as a perfect site for a full-fledged public university ever since they learned about the proposal to turn the hospital into a secure facility for violent sex offenders.

The local group put together a 10-minute videotape with footage of the handsome red tile roof buildings and circulated the electronic pitch among Cal State officials. The local activists have been snagging Cal State officials and escorting them around the state hospital grounds.

Randall Feltman, Ventura County director of mental health, said he would worry for the safety of retarded patients if the two agencies shared one facility.

“That would conflict with the security and protection you want for people who are very seriously developmentally disabled,” he said. “It’s hard enough to protect college students from each other.”

Hospital union leaders also questioned the concept of combining the university and developmental center at one site, saying keeping such severely disabled patients near college students is a bad idea.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Brian Bowley, who represents about 600 hospital technicians.

“It’s going to take several years and hundreds of millions of dollars to convert Camarillo State,” he said. “What happens in the meantime? How do you just move out half a population?”

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McDonald is a correspondent, and Weiss is a Times staff writer. Times staff writer Daryl Kelley also contributed to this report.