By Dave Ranney, KHI News Service, May 26, 2011
TOPEKA — A top official at the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services on Wednesday asked mental health advocates for help in cutting almost $40 million from the department’s $1.6 billion annual budget.
"We’d love to have your input," said Gary Haulmark, director of legislative affairs at SRS.
Haulmark, addressing a meeting of the Kansas Mental Health Coalition, said that about half of the cuts in spending are already spelled out in the agency's budget for fiscal 2012, which begins July 1.
"But about $21 million is unaccounted for," he said. "That’s what we have to find."
Lawmakers earlier this month ordered SRS to cut its state general fund spending by $9.9 million in fiscal 2012, without cutting caseload growth or Medicaid-funded home and community based services for people with physical and mental disabilities. Agency officials also were directed to cut administrative costs by $1 million.
"Everything is on the table," Haulmark said, noting that, as yet, no decisions have been made about how to make up the remaining difference.
The decision-making process, he said, will start in about two weeks.
Haulmark said SRS was especially interested in hearing about inefficiencies within the department’s own operations.
Several coalition members asked that the cuts be structured in ways that would not affect front-line services. And if such cuts become unavoidable, they asked that advocates have a say on how they would be implemented.
"We want to be clued in as early as possible," said Rick Cagan, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness-Kansas. "We want to be able to talk about the impacts, the pros and cons."
Haulmark said his boss, SRS Secretary Rob Siedlecki, was committed to transparency and would be reaching out to stakeholders.
"First and foremost, we will try not to cut programs," Haulmark said.
Eric Harkness, who runs the NAMI crisis hotline in Topeka, said recent reductions in access to outpatient services at community mental health centers had already caused worsening of some of his mentally ill friends’ conditions.
"They are deteriorating," he said. "They are isolating themselves. They don’t have any place to go. They used to have 20 hours of outpatient services (a week), now they have seven. They’re going to end up back in the (state) hospital."
Haulmark confirmed that some services already had been trimmed. He asked Harkness to encourage his friends to appeal the decisions affecting their care.
Several coalition members sought assurances that SRS would not close Rainbow Mental Health Facility in Kansas City.
"It is particularly threatening to see that we could lose what should be a model for the rest of the state," Glenn Yancey, chairman of the coalition, said, referring to Rainbow.
During this year’s legislative session, SRS officials included closing Rainbow facility on a list of potential responses to the budget cuts.
In March, SRS closed 14 of the hospital’s 50 beds after federal surveyors ruled it was understaffed.
Rainbow is the smallest of the state’s three hospitals for the mentally ill. The others are in Osawatomie and Larned.
All three often have more patients than they are licensed to hold.
Admissions are limited to seriously ill patients who are thought to be a danger to themselves or others.
"Closing Rainbow without having a clear plan would be devastating," said Lois Clendening, who oversees admissions at the inpatient psychiatric unit at Via Christi Health System in Wichita.
"Everything is on the table, but no decisions have been made," Haulmark said. "We’re not even close to a decision on Rainbow."
Asked if the change in administration following the election of Gov. Sam Brownback had altered the department’s "philosophy," Haulmark said he didn’t think so.
"It’s incumbent upon us, in these trying economic times, to maintain what’s important and to make what’s inefficient perhaps work better," Haulmark said. "There is a recognition that these services are important and that citizens do indeed need them and depend upon them. We get that."
He also assured the group that Rick Shults, SRS’ longtime director of mental health, was a "valued member of the secretary’s (Siedlecki’s) team."
Several other SRS officials have recently retired or been laid off.