State Hospital Employees Seek Ways to Save Jobs

Hours after Gov. Pete Wilson made good on his pledge to mothball Camarillo State Hospital in his latest budget proposal Tuesday, workers huddled in a corner of the hospital searching for means to save their jobs.

More than 75 Camarillo State technicians, therapists and dietitians packed a staff conference room to review closure plans and listen to the efforts of Sacramento lobbyists working to change Wilson’s mind.

“It’s not over until the signatures are on the page,” said Cindie French, a music therapist who also serves as a union steward. “The feedback I’m getting is very sympathetic.”

But others were not so optimistic. Lobbyist Ken Murch recommended that Camarillo State workers start looking for new jobs.

“If you have a job opportunity now, take it,” Murch told the assembly. “My advice to you is to plan for the eventuality of closing. But don’t give up hope.”

Several hospital employees said they would take any new state job they could get. But others said they would not move to Norwalk, where hundreds of Camarillo patients are scheduled to be transferred to Metropolitan State Hospital.

“I’m not transferring south,” said Dennis Price, a technician at Camarillo State for the past 21 years. “I’ve been there and I don’t like it. I want to go north.”

Meanwhile, a group of Ventura County leaders, union representatives, lobbyists and patients’ parents met in Supervisor John K. Flynn’s office Tuesday afternoon, plotting strategy about how to stop the proposed closure.

“We’ve been knocked back about 50 yards,” Flynn said. “But we’ve got to get our strategies in order and try to get what we want accomplished.”

Closure plans for the 60-year-old state hospital were detailed in Wilson’s revised budget for the upcoming fiscal year, a thick blueprint for California spending between July 1 and June 30, 1997.

Although legislators, mental-health officials and hospital workers spent most of this year hoping Wilson would budge from his January recommendation to shutter Camarillo State, the governor announced last Friday that his plan would remain intact.

Citing a continuing drop in the number of institutionalized patients across California, the revised budget released Tuesday confirmed that sentiment.

If it does close as scheduled by July 1997, Camarillo State would become the second state institution to shut down in as many years. The Stockton Developmental Center closed last year, and its last few patients were moved this past February.

A task force of local and state officials and Ventura County business leaders is being set up to examine potential uses for the 750-acre Camarillo State property.

Cal State University officials already have expressed interest in the site. But there are road, sewer and other problems associated with converting Camarillo State to a public university.

“I think the university is going to find out that they jumped the gun,” said Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley). “If it’s so wonderful an idea, why didn’t they get in the mix and give us input earlier this year?”

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Wilson’s recommendation now goes before state Senate and Assembly budget subcommittees, which will accept or reject the plan after hearings scheduled for today.

“If they vote to go along with the governor’s proposal, then we’re done,” said Brian Bowley, president of the union that represents about 600 Camarillo State technicians.

“But if even one of those two subcommittees rejects that plan, then I think we have a chance,” Bowley said.

Wright said her first priority is to buy more time. She said she lobbied her colleagues to support a six-month delay in implementing the closure.

“It still has to go through the Legislature, and the Legislature has to be part of the decision-making process,” Wright said. “They may go for a six-month extension.”

More time is just what the Camarillo State union officials and their lobbyists say they need.

Sacramento lobbyist Dan Western said Tuesday that the extra six months would give hospital supporters the time they need to convince legislators--and even Wilson--that closing Camarillo is short-sighted.

For one thing, Western told the group clustered inside Flynn’s office, California prison officials have yet to fully resolve a federal court case requiring them to provide proper mental-health treatment for inmates.

“If we can buy some time, that would give us time to talk to the [federal court],” he said.

Negotiators are now determining whether the California Department of Corrections has complied with its federal court order.

In announcing the Camarillo State closure, Wilson said that prison officials can treat their mentally ill prisoners inside jails for roughly half the $80,000 annual cost of treating those inmates in a hospital.

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That decision, along with the lower-than-expected number of judicial commitments to state hospitals, has derailed plans to convert Camarillo State to a medium-security facility for mentally ill criminals.

Not surprisingly, hospital workers say the level of mental-health care that inmates would receive inside jails is below the standard they would receive at a hospital.

“It’s just a bunch of political posturing,” said Bowley, the technicians’ union representative. “It always comes down to dollars and cents.”

If the Senate and Assembly subcommittee vote today to reject Wilson’s closure plan for Camarillo State, funding for the hospital could be included in 1996-97 budget legislation that would be forwarded to the governor.

But Wilson, who has line-item veto power, could slice that money from the bill. Overturning that veto would require support from two-thirds of the members of both the Senate and the Assembly.

“That would be very difficult,” said Western, the union lobbyist. “There isn’t enough votes up there to override the governor.”

NEXT STEP

The state Senate and Assembly budget subcommittees that review mental health spending will consider Wilson’s recommendation to close Camarillo State Hospital at separate hearings this morning in the state Capitol. It would take two-thirds of lawmakers in both houses, however, to override the governor’s decision.