County Battle Over Mental Health Care Escalates

In an escalating debate that has cost three top officials their jobs, two Ventura County supervisors with opposing views have plunged into the political war over mental-health services.

In a memo this week, Supervisor Kathy Long has ordered Health Care Agency Director Pierre Durand to immediately stop the shake-up at the vexed Behavioral Health Department.

Forcing out department Director Steve Kaplan and his two top aides only threatens to mar the county’s team approach to mental health treatment, known as Systems of Care, which serves as a state model, Long wrote Tuesday in a memo to Durand and fellow supervisors.

But Supervisor Judy Mikels disputed Long’s assessment. In a memo written the same day, Mikels defended Durand and said his administrative housecleaning posed no danger to the teamwork approach.

“It’s been ‘memo wars’ this week,” Supervisor Frank Schillo said Wednesday, adding that Kaplan needed to be held responsible for exposing the county to substantial financial loss.

The dispute began in April, when a sharply divided Board of Supervisors voted to merge the county’s mental health and welfare services departments. But after the federal government threatened to cut as much as $15 million in medical reimbursements, the county dismantled the superagency in December.

Long said her written demand was a response to state Sen. Cathie Wright’s (R-Simi Valley) concerns that Durand had placed the local health-care system in jeopardy by dismissing veteran administrators who knew the system best.

Wright, who sponsored a 1984 bill that established Ventura County as a statewide mental-health model, said if more employees were removed she would attempt to cut the $5.4 million in annual funds the county receives from the program, which provides training to other counties.

“Frankly, I’m alarmed at the actions taken,” Long said Wednesday, referring to the ousting of Kaplan, along with his top aides Kevin DeWitt and Judy Balcerzak. “And I’m worried that Sen. Wright is concerned. I feel we are at risk of losing our Systems of Care model. . . . Without Steve Kaplan and Kevin DeWitt, who is there who understands the system? Leadership does make a difference.”

Long said she is concerned there may no longer be sufficiently experienced staff members available to train visiting mental-health professionals, and thereby placing state funding at risk.

But Mikels, who sits on the Ventura County Medical Center Oversight Committee with Long, said Durand’s dismissals were warranted and should have no direct effect on patient care.

“Anyone who argues otherwise is speaking without the benefit of factual information,” she wrote in her memo.

The latest skirmish is part of a larger political turf battle between county bureaucrats over who should lead the Behavioral Health Department. Those on both sides of the issue say the public should be worried how the feud might affect services for the mentally ill in Ventura County.

Advocates for the mentally ill, along with relatives of those being treated, have pleaded with supervisors for the past year to concentrate on the welfare of patients.

Kaplan’s supporters say his ouster and Durand’s shuffling of other employees at the Behavioral Health Department are demoralizing staff members and disrupting the county’s mental-health programs.

But Durand and his advocates say he is trying to save millions of taxpayer dollars that could be lost because of last year’s bungled attempt to blend Kaplan’s department with the county’s social services agency. Kaplan was a primary architect of the failed merger.

The U.S. Health Care Financing Administration has audited the county hospital, Behavioral Health Department and the social services agency to determine whether Ventura County violated federal billing rules and should return millions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid payments.

Also, Thomas O. Mahon, county auditor-controller, is investigating the source of an anticipated $1.5-million budget deficit that occurred during the nearly 10 months the agencies were combined.

In her memo, Mikels called for a meeting with Wright, Durand, county Chief Administrative Officer Lin Koester, Social Services Director Barbara Fitzgerald and supervisors to discuss the matter.

“I’m pleased she’s taking the bull by its horns and getting everyone together to talk,” Schillo said of Mikels.

“I agree with her that Steve Kaplan wasn’t let go because he was dismantling” the teamwork approach, Schillo said. “It had nothing to do with the Systems of Care. It had to do with misleading the board about [the financial dangers of] the merger.”

Mikels said she believes she can persuade Wright that the quality of the county’s mental-health system has not been compromised.

“The Systems of Care is not about a few individuals,” Mikels said Wednesday from Washington, where she was lobbying Congress members for funding for local military bases. “It is a process, a way to integrate services for the mentally ill. If one or two people leave, the system is not going to fall apart.”