The original House budget gave the counties $60 million. An amendment that passed early in the debate increased the amount to $100 million.
One disturbing amendment removed a provision that would have provided money for three clean needle exchange programs if separate legislation authorizing them passed this session. An amendment to remove the needle exchange money was narrowly defeated in the House Appropriations Committee Wednesday and that apparently shook the House leadership.
After a discussion in the House Democratic Caucus, Representative Verla Insko offered the amendment on the House floor to delete the needle exchange provision from the budget before Republicans had the chance try again. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the issue is dead. Separate bills to allow the pilot programs are still alive in the House and Senate, but it appears the House leadership is not willing to fight for them.
Never mind the 30,000 people in the state infected with HIV/AIDS or that the number of people infected grows by 20 percent a year and that studies show that needle exchange programs reduce infections and result in more addicts seeking treatment for their addiction.
The claims by the opponents of needle exchange programs that they encourage drug use are apparently too politically risky to confront, even though the arguments are absurd and have been disproved by studies. Public health officials, substance abuse professionals, and some law enforcement officials have also supported the programs in the past.
State Public Health Director Leah Devlin supports the needle exchange initiatives too, though it would help if her boss, Governor Mike Easley would weigh in to save people’s lives. But don’t count on it.
Speaking of the Easley Administration, outgoing Secretary of Health and Human Services Carmen Hooker Odom didn’t fare very well during the debate either. Wake County lawmakers are understandably upset that Hooker Odom has not yet obeyed the law that requires her to submit a report to the General Assembly before the state closes Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh and transfers some of the patients to a new mental hospital in Butner.
The budget prohibited the state from opening the hospital until the report was made, but Rep. Jim Crawford offered an amendment deleting that provision and it passed. Crawford himself said “it was a disgrace” that Hooker Odom has not yet submitted the report.
Several Wake County lawmakers opposed Crawford’s amendment, saying that Hooker Odom should not be allowed to ignore state law and that families with patients in Dix deserve to know how the transition process will be handled.
Odom recently announced she was leaving her post after the legislative session to become president of a health policy organization in New York. That doesn’t leave much time for report writing.
Much of the broad budget debate was predictable, Republicans charging that the budget wildly overspends and Democrats countering with a long list of important programs that it funds. As the night grew long, some of the rhetoric morphed into hyperbole, with some Democrats calling the House budget the best spending plan they had ever seen.
It’s not a bad budget overall and makes important investments in education, children’s health care protecting the environment, but there are huge holes too, mental health prominent among them.
Democrats tried to dismiss suggestions that the $17 million in new mental health spending was inadequate, saying that the new funding was all that the current system could absorb, apparently a reference to reports that some counties have returned money to the state this year.
The problem with that claim is that the General Assembly’s own mental health oversight committee recommended spending $135 million on mental health services and Rep. Verla Insko filed legislation asking for $190 million next year. Advocates for the mentally ill are not the only ones saying the budget doesn’t invest enough in mental health. Leading lawmakers have already made it clear they think it too.
Republican objections to the budget focused on the decision to continue two temporary tax increases, but their rhetoric was generally more restrained. That was not the case earlier in the week when Senate Majority Leader Phil Berger reacted to the House budget with a remarkable assessment of life in North Carolina. Turns out the sky is falling.
Berger said that the state is not providing basic services, and that “North Carolina’s public education system is failing our students, our roads are crumbling, congestion is choking economic development, there is retrogression in the provision of mental health services, our Courts are unable to efficiently move cases in the criminal justice system, and state government is failing to meet the basic needs of our people.”
Wow. That must be why nobody is moving to North Carolina.
