Mental Health Merger

* As a taxpayer and concerned citizen, I condemn the hasty and irresponsible decision of the Ventura County Board of Supervisors to merge the Public Social Services Agency with the Behavioral Health Department, which was just reorganized about 2 1/2 years ago from the Mental Health Agency.

I am a member of the national and California Alliance for the Mentally Ill, the Ventura County Mental Health Coalition and the Mental Health Board of Ventura County. I am also a member of the oversight committee of this newly formed Human Services Agency, which was born last April as a result of the merger and continues to be debated.

I have religiously attended almost all the meetings of these different organizations, but I cannot convince myself that any advantage or benefit can be derived from the merger. The federal Health Care Financing Administration rejected the proposal submitted by the county for Medicare reimbursement. This means the possible loss of $16 million. Supervisor Susan Lacey said the situation just needs fine-tuning and can be resolved without the loss of dollars. On the day of the vote in April, Supervisor Lacey also said that transferring the license of the psychiatric hospital from Ventura County Medical Center to the Board of Supervisors was just a matter of pencil-pushing, yet the county had to hire Hooper, Lundy and Bookman to help county counsel do so. The legal counsel for the American Psychiatric Assn. is battling such a move, and I do not know how much it will cost our county to settle this.

Assuming the situation can be remedied as Supervisor Lacey said, what about the huge fees for the consulting firm that studied this case for nine months and was disregarded, the legal fees, the increasing expenses of this merger (which does not give any benefit to the mentally ill) and other allied expenses? Are these expenses not paid from the taxpayers’ funds? Until Supervisor Lacey refunds these expenses to the county, she cannot say no dollar amount is lost.

LITA Z. BIEJO

Moorpark