Twist of Fate May Benefit Mental Health System

This is one of those tales about being in the right place at the right time. Actually, it’s about the right person being in the right place, etc. That person is California’s first lady, Sharon Davis.

There’s a slight twist. It’s not Davis who stands to benefit, except in a psychic rewards sort of way. The potential beneficiaries are countless thousands of other people.

The immediate beneficiaries are two assemblymen--freshman Democrat Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento and Republican leader Scott Baugh of Huntington Beach. Their cause is mental health, a state government shame for three decades.

Here’s the synopsis:

Steinberg and Baugh are joint authors of legislation to rebuild California’s local mental health system--and get those sick, homeless people off the street. Those people who panhandle, urinate and stagger drunkenly on downtown sidewalks, disgusting would-be shoppers, scaring off tourists and distracting cops from real criminals.

Cleaning up this mess ultimately will cost $350 million a year, experts estimate. The two lawmakers aren’t asking for that kind of money now. They’re looking for relatively small change--$10 million to plan local treatment systems and expand some local programs that have proven successful.

They did get their $10 million included in the $82-billion budget the Legislature sent Gov. Gray Davis last Thursday. But earlier, word had gotten back to Steinberg that the governor was troubled by this $10 million and might veto it. Innately cautious and often a tightwad, Davis fears the inevitable economic downturn and is leery of approving new, permanent spending programs.

So Steinberg turned to Senate leader John Burton (D-San Francisco) to argue his case to Davis during budget negotiations. And it just so happened that Burton was pitching the governor last Monday evening in the Ronald Reagan Cabinet Room when in walked Sharon Davis to tell her husband, Leaving now, see you at home.

A light clicked on in the governor’s head.

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You know, the governor interjected, Sharon has some expertise working with the homeless. In the early ‘90s, she was on the board of a Westside L.A. homeless assistance organization. She also was a Ralphs foundation director, reviewing grant requests and choosing worthy, efficient community programs to fund.

Maybe, Davis suggested, his wife could get involved with this mental health bill--now in the Senate--and help reshape it to assure that the $10 million isn’t wasted.

Yeah, sure, why not? Burton replied.

Fine then, Davis agreed. The $10 million stays.

“I walked in on them,” Sharon Davis recalls, “and walked into this.”

Mental health hasn’t been her recent cause; education has, along with children’s foster care. But she signed on at her husband’s request.

“Gray said ‘If I’m going to put this money in the budget, I want to make sure it goes to programs that are effective,’ ” Sharon Davis says. “And it is hard to ignore the fact that the mentally ill need assistance.”

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This is Sacramento’s latest effort to make amends for past wrongs. Historically, it’s the old story of good intentions leading to unintended consequences.

In the late 1960s, when Reagan was governor, the state began closing most of its hospitals for the mentally ill in a tragic “reform.” This was an era of too many unjust, involuntary hospital commitments followed by patient neglect and abuse--”One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” The do-gooders’ idea was to provide treatment in the community, close to family and friends. New medications could control behavior.

The problem was, the state unloaded its headache on the communities without providing enough money to treat patients. So many went on the street. Meanwhile, the new “reform” made it virtually impossible for communities to reinstitutionalize the mentally ill--at least until they committed crimes.

Some simple stats: Since the mid-’60s, the state mental hospital population has fallen from 36,000 to less than 4,000. There now are an estimated 50,000 severely mentally ill people on California streets, representing a third of the homeless. Another 30,000 are in costly prisons or jails.

“We go out to lunch, the homeless are all around us and we’ve become numb to it all,” notes Steinberg. “It’s a disgrace.”

Says GOP leader Baugh, whose sister-in-law is schizophrenic: “I’ve heard some Republicans say homeless people are there because they choose to be. I get rather offended at that comment. These people have no place else to go--and a lot don’t even know to go anyplace else.”

Now the two lawmakers have lucked into the best possible consultant and lobbyist: somebody who routinely tells the governor, See you at home.