About two dozen of Montana’s most vulnerable individuals in need of care due to acute developmental disabilities will be without a home in less than six months if the legislature does not act, backers of House Bill 387 told a legislative committee last week.
“You’re talking about those who are at the greatest risk of harming themselves or others,” Montana Budget Director Dan Villa told the House Human Services Committee February 15. “We have 24 individuals out there who don’t know where they’re going to be in six months,” he said, referring to the remaining Montana Developmental Center client roster. The bill proposes to extend operations at the MDC through June 30, 2019. The committee took no immediate action following the nearly hour-long initial hearing.
Introduced by Rep. Kirk Wagoner, a Jefferson County Republican, HB 387 would also establish a 12-bed intensive behavior center (IBC). Wagoner said the bill is needed to serve the needs of the roughly two dozen clients at the MDC who “no one is ready or willing to accept at this time” into community settings.
Bill supporters and opponents both told the committee extending the MDC closure deadline set in previous legislation is necessary, but some opponents said the location of the IBC should not be in Boulder because of abuse and neglect concerns. Opponents also asked for a sunset date on the IBC and urged passage of an alternative bill that would tie in changes allowing more funding for community placements.
Wagoner told the committee there have been many successes in implementing Senate Bill 411, adopted by the 2015 Legislature and mandating the transfer of MDC clients to community placements and closing the facility by June 30, 2017. Backers of that bill said client abuse and neglect made the closure necessary, something opponents disputed.
Since the passage of SB 411, ”We have moved over half of the residents out to community homes,” said Wagoner. But the two years allowed by SB 411 was not enough time, he said.
Dan Villa, state budget director and chair of a council created in SB 411 to oversee the MDC closure, said many other states undergoing similar closures are given longer transition periods and more money.
The Montana bill “said you get two years and no money,” he said. He said, “I can tell you that the process I’ve gone through with closing MDC has changed me.” He told lawmakers he had seen employees who cared deeply and stayed at the MDC in spite of problems created by the transition. He also said he had received “I can’t tell you” how many phone calls from families frightened about what the closure would mean for their loved ones being served at the MDC. Despite the best efforts of the transition council,
“We have 24 souls who still need to be cared for,” said Villa. “So we have done our best. We are not asking for more money. We are asking for more time.”
Carol Dailey, mother of an MDC client and a member of the transition council, said her son has suffered due to the changes and asked what would become of him and others like him who fail at community placements, something that has happened to her son twice. There needs to be a “facility of last resort,” she told the committee.
Drew Dawson, Boulder citizen and chair of a citizen group to respond to the changes, said “the remaining tasks are daunting and we just don’t see how they can be accomplished” by the SB 411 deadline.
Eric Burke, a member of the transition council, said the current deadline “was too ambitious when it was passed…it was too tall an order in the two year period.” Others who spoke in favor of the bill included county commissioners from Fergus, Cascade, Toole and Jefferson counties as well as union representatives for MDC employees. Among opponents were three representatives of Disabilities Rights Montana, a group charged with advocating for individuals with developmental disabilities.
Bernadette Franks-Ongoy of DRM told lawmakers, “We are not rising in opposition to the extension of time” but said Boulder should not be a long term service alternative. Abuse and neglect rates at the MDC have remained steady, she said. She alleged MDC staff “don’t provide the appropriate treatment, in our opinion, for the folks” who are clients.
Charlie Briggs, the DRM representative on the transition council, expressed concern that there is no sunset in the bill on continued use of the secure unit dubbed the IBC. He told the committee an alternate bill, to be introduced by Sen. Fred Thomas, is a better choice because it also contains provisions to be sure community providers get access to funding needed to pay direct care providers better.
Beth Brennaman, DRM counsel, echoed those concerns and said the state has not allowed the closure to succeed because community providers need access to more funding. Others speaking in opposition to the bill were parents of former MDC clients who have found success in community placements and an advocate from a group against violent and sexual assault.
In response to questions from committee members, Villa said eliminating client abuse and neglect may be unrealistic. Abuse happens in community placements as well, he noted, citing abuse statistics in community placements in the tens of thousands.
“Zero is a goal, but I don’t know that any provider, anywhere will ever get to zero,” he said. Villa also said the funding proposal contained in the alternate bill will be “far more expensive” and he said lawmakers should first look into potential inefficiencies in the system that could be eliminated to raise pay for community service workers.
Costs for implementing community provider staff increases cited in testimony by the Montana Association of Community Disability Services before the governor’s council ranged into more than $13 million before inflation adjustments. No fiscal note on the bill proposing those changes has yet been released.
Wagoner told the committee HB 387 is necessary for some of the state’s residents with the greatest needs. Without it, they could wind up in jail or prison, he said.
“We do not throw away the unwanted,” he said with emotion. “We provide for them, small children trapped in adult bodies.” The next step for HB 387 is for review and action by the committee. No date for that had been announced as of press time.
The alternate bill, SB 271 by Sen. Fred Thomas, was slated for hearing in the Senate Public Health, Welfare and Safety Committee Monday, February 20. Results of that hearing were not available at press time.
