By Trevor Brown, For the News & Eagle
CNHI
PAUL'S VALLEY —
After narrowly escaping closure earlier in the year, lawmakers say a state-run mental health facility faces tough odds of surviving the next legislative session.
An interim Senate study is investigating the feasibility of continuing operations at Pauls Valley-based Southern Oklahoma Resource Center, which currently treats 135 patients from across the state who mainly have severe or profound mental retardation or other disabling conditions. However, with the center carrying an annual price tag of $24.3 million, several lawmakers said cost-cutting needs caused by the state’s financial position could doom the facility.
One possibility if SORC is closed would be to move an unknown number of patients to Northern Oklahoma Resource Center of Enid.
Sen. Jim Wilson, D-Tahlequah, who is one of the eight Senate members on the interim study, said SORC plays an essential role in caring for some of most difficult-to-treat patients in the state. Although he supports keeping the center running, Wilson said he is pessimistic about how useful the study will be in preventing SORC from closing.
“The interim study is just a vehicle the (Republican) leadership will use to justify the closing,” he said. “I plan to be vocal against closing it, but I will fail.”
Sen. Jim Halligan, R-Stillwater, who also is on the study group, said it is too early to forecast if legislators will continue to fund the facility because the state’s budget situation has yet to be fully realized. However, he said many important services might be on the table next session, especially if State Question 744, which would dramatically increase education funding, is passed.
“From a general perspective, we always have to look at all programs across the state and look if they are effective and efficient,” he said. “There are a whole myriad of possibilities, but we heard about (SORC’s) situation and its census, and it is something we need to look at along with a whole host of other things.”
Keeping the center alive
SORC’s initial brush with potentially being shut down came during the tail end of the 2010 legislative session when language was added to House Bill 2456 to authorize the closure. But sharp criticism of the move from several groups and legislators, including Rep. Lisa Billy, R-Lindsay; Rep. Wes Hilliard, D-Sulphur; Sen. Johnnie Crutchfield, D-Ardmore; and Sen. Susan Paddack, D-Ada, blocked its passage and led to the creation of the interim study as an alternative.
Paddack said she remains hopeful the center will continue to operate and more legislators will see the need for the facility. She said the interim study group’s meeting last month at the facility showed legislators a variety of reasons to keep it running. She said she also was buoyed by comments from Sen. Brian Crain, R-Tulsa, who is chairing the interim study and was among those who pushed for closure last session, that he feels the decision of keeping the center open is worthy of review.
“I think the legislators that attended the meeting now see that many of the (SORC) residents need this 24/7 care,” she said. “I feel moving them could cause (the patients) great harm or even potentially death, so I’m hopeful people saw that importance.”
Added capital project costs
Potentially adding to the difficulties for lawmakers’s continued funding of the facility is the state’s request to spend money on capital improvement projects that would be necessary if it is left open. Sheree Powell, director of public information and provider relations with OKDHS Developmental Disabilities Services Division, said the department recently submitted a request to lawmakers asking for more than $12 million worth of upgrades and repairs to the facility.
Powell said the requests have been submitted to the Legislature in each of the past dozen years, but they have gone unfunded. Although she said many of the projects do not necessarily need to be completed immediately, they can’t be ignored for much longer.
“These items must be fixed, and they needed it for a long time,” she said. “If the facility is kept open, these are things that must be addressed at some point.”
Options if SORC is closed
Powell said state DHS officials already are in the process of preparing plans for the possibility lawmakers decide to close the facility. She said potential options include transferring patients to NORCE and integrating patients into smaller community-based private facilities.
“We are working on plans of care for the individuals that live in the facility to see what their needs are and what type of services they need if moved,” Powell said. “If the Legislature does make the decision to close, we will have more in-depth planning with their parents or guardians of where they want to live and how they can be supported.”
Representing the state’s various private facilities, Judy Goodwin, executive director of Oklahoma Community-based Providers Inc., said the private sector is fully capable of serving SORC’s residents if the facility is closed. She said there are plenty of facilities throughout the state that have room and the ability to treat even some of the most severe cases.
Goodwin said her organization also has been working with SORC patients and their parents or guardians to discuss possibilities of transferring if the center closes. She said the process can be complicated, but talking with mental health advocates and other stakeholders is helping them see they have viable choices rather than a large state-run facility.
“I think the more information we can give, the better they are served and the more at ease they are,” she said.
Wilson said he remains suspicious of attempts to privatize services when he doesn’t see the proper justification to do so. He said eliminating state employees and their services is not worth turning over the responsibilities to others.
“(Unlike the private sector), the state doesn’t make a profit,” he said. “I just don’t buy it.”
Even if lawmakers decide to stop funding the center during the 2011 session, the closure likely would not be immediate. Powell said she doesn’t know a specific timeframe, but she said the process of properly placing the center’s residents in new places involves many steps to ensure each is put in the best environment.
“It takes a lot of careful planning,” she said. “It wouldn’t happen overnight, that’s for sure.”
Brown is CNHI News Service Oklahoma reporter.
