Panel Puts Off Vote on the Fate of State Hospital

The chairman of a state Senate budget subcommittee criticized Gov. Pete Wilson on Monday for withholding key details from a report concerning the future of Camarillo State Hospital.

Without those financial details, Sen. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) said he could not make an informed decision on Wilson’s January proposal to close the institution.

Thompson’s comments came at the beginning of a subcommittee meeting in Sacramento on the governor’s call to shut down Camarillo State and move its 875 patients elsewhere.

The Senate group took no action, unlike an Assembly subcommittee that last week rejected Wilson’s call to close the hospital and voted to study a plan to convert the facility to a treatment center for mentally ill prisoners.

Even though the Senate subcommittee listened to more than two hours of public testimony, including comments by Ventura County officials, hospital employees and area residents, the senators decided to delay issuing a decision until Wilson releases a revised budget next week.

That spending plan is expected to include more specific recommendations to either close or convert Camarillo State. State mental health Director Stephen W. Mayberg, however, now supports converting the hospital to a medium-security facility.

Thompson and other subcommittee members chastised Wilson for waiting until mid-May to release details about the future of Camarillo State.

“This is illustrative of the problem we’re facing,” Thompson said. “This is one of those items that doesn’t have to wait until May 21. We should have had this material by now.”

The hearing drew dozens of speakers, many of whom traveled from Ventura County to make their points before subcommittee members.

Many of those who offered testimony urged lawmakers to close Camarillo State if they could not continue to operate the hospital as it has been run for more than 60 years.

“The vast majority of the citizens of our area do not want Camarillo State Hospital to convert,” said Jan McDonald, a Pleasant Valley School District trustee. She said crowded public hearings earlier this year did not reflect true community sentiment on the issue.

“A lot of us have had trouble getting heard,” she said. “I myself had to drive to Sacramento to get the opportunity to talk.”

But others called the hospital a valuable community asset and a vital component in California mental health services.

“We are almost treating mentally ill people like throwaways,” Ventura County Supervisor John K. Flynn said. “We need to treat them much better than we are.”

Much of the testimony came from parents and other relatives of some of the patients at Camarillo State, who face an uncertain future if they are moved to group homes or other institutions.

“Some of the clients there can be rehabilitated to go out into society and some will never be able to,” said Essie Rodgers, who has a 42-year-old daughter at Camarillo State.

“Camarillo has dealt exceptionally with its clients,” said Rodgers, who echoed her testimony from a week ago, requesting that some room be kept at Camarillo for patients whose families live nearby.

But Dennis Amundson, director of the state Developmental Services Department, which oversees Camarillo State, was noncommittal.

Monday’s “testimony shows the complexity of the issues and the variety of feelings,” said Amundson, who earlier this year suggested moving all of his 500 or so patients at Camarillo to group homes or other state facilities.

“We will do our very best, no matter what the outcome, to make it as easy as we can for the people who work [at Camarillo State] and the people who live there,” Amundson said.

The father of one patient said that without the help of the Camarillo State staff, his son would be forgotten in a facility with inadequate levels of service.

“The last thing in the world I’d like to do is condemn him to a life of over-medication,” the man said.

A glaring disagreement in testimony came when Camarillo Councilwoman Charlotte Craven lobbied against converting the hospital--a plan endorsed by the majority of that council.

She said she did not believe that a screening process proposed by Mayberg would weed out dangerous prisoners from Camarillo.

“I don’t have a lot of trust in evaluation instruments,” said Craven, who said she was speaking only as an individual.

But Camarillo Mayor David M. Smith said the community--and City Council--supports keeping the hospital and its 1,500 jobs and $80-million payroll in Ventura County.

“It’s been part of our community since 1935,” said Smith, who said his first official trip to the state Capitol was well worth the trouble.

“It’s difficult to tell whether we made any headway,” Smith said. “But I think there was some progress made in educating the Senate subcommittee members about how important this issue is to our area.”

Some mental health advocates said the limited money available for mentally ill and developmentally disabled patients could be better spent outside expensive facilities such as Camarillo State.

“The system is a $1.6-billion system in California and we’re still short of funds,” said Jerry Reynolds, a representative of the United Cerebral Palsy organization.

“We believe that most people with developmental disabilities can and will thrive in the community.”