FOR OBVIOUS REASONS, there’s been a lot of talk lately about the under-funding of mental health care in Portland. But who or what is to blame? And what is to be done?
First of all, anyone complaining about under-funding of anything needs to know how much money Portland and Multnomah County have lost due to property tax cuts.
In 1990 and 1996, Oregon voters passed Ballot Measures 5 and 47, which cut property taxes dramatically and said that the assessed value of any property can’t increase by more than 3 percent a year—even if the actual value of the property goes up by 20 percent.
According to the Multnomah County Tax Supervising and Conservation Commission, rolling back Measure 47 alone would allow the city and county to collect approximately $150 million more in revenue. That could buy a lot of mental health. Going back to the pre-Measure 5 tax rates would raise over $450 million.
Secondly, some might argue for scaling back urban renewal. If all the money diverted from the normal tax rolls to urban renewal projects, like the Pearl District, were instead sent back to the city, county, and school district general funds, the city and county would have an extra $20 million apiece. But urban renewal advocates would probably argue that some urban renewal money is set aside for low-income housing, and without that more people with mental illness would be homeless.
Third, I think the county would love to adopt a beer and wine tax, use the money to fund alcohol and drug treatment—especially for people involved in the criminal justice system—and free up other funds for mental health treatment. And I think Multnomah County voters would go along. But though Oregon has a really low beer and wine tax, state law prohibits local taxes. We need to lobby in Salem to change that.
Fourth, we could redirect some of the money we now spend on prisons to fund mental health care. One of the few areas in which we have really increased public spending in this state in the past 20 years is prisons—we passed mandatory minimum sentencing laws for certain offenses and locked up a lot of people for long periods of time. That costs a lot of money.
Crime experts say increasing the “swiftness and certainty” of sanctions for offenders, plus treatment when appropriate, is more important than increasing the severity of sanctions. If you lock someone up for 3.5 years instead of 2.25 years, you probably aren’t significantly increasing the deterrent effect on that offender, but you are spending a bunch of money that you could use to do other things.
For example, you could use the extra money to throw parole violators in jail for a couple of days instead of letting them slide until they get out of hand. You could pay for more alcohol and drug treatment for offenders. Or you could pay for more services—not just mental health treatment per se, but wraparound services like housing and employment assistance for people with mental illness who have gotten mixed up with the criminal justice system.
Listening to the experts, I came up with an idea I call the “public safety kicker.” I’m no expert, but some certified crime-smart people have told me it might work.
In our balkanized criminal justice system, counties pay for prosecution and “community corrections,” while the city pays for police and the state pays for prisons. But we know where the prisoners come from. How about having the state make a deal with the counties, saying, “If you reduce the number of years served by people from your county in our prisons, we’ll send you a public safety ‘kicker.’ We’ll give you the money we save and you can spend it on local crime-fighting programs, from jails to drug treatment to assistance for people with mental illness.”
The county commissioners, district attorneys, community corrections directors, and human services folks would have to work together to make this work. Maybe it can’t be done without tweaking the mandatory minimum sentencing laws, but I think it’s worth a shot.
Steve Novick is a known guy who knows a lot about politics and money stuff. In addition to being a Portland Mercury columnist, his resume includes running for US Senate in the Democratic Primary in 2008.
I like this idea. I also think we could turn 100 or so of our police into ‘mental police’, like Chiers with more teeth and better funding. They would not carry guns, but would have all the less lethal options. They would be trained in deescalating conflict and would work with the drunks, druggies, and homeless types once they break a law. They could help steer people to the newly funded treatment options available with your kicker. The cops complain that they are expected to do do this stuff anyway, why not recognize it is their job, then train and equip they accordingly. It would not have saved Campbell since he reportedly had a gun, guns get the regular cops, but Collins would maybe still be alive. Just an idea, and I can think of a couple good arguments against it, but I still kinda like it.
You have my vote (again) next time you run for anything, keep up the good work.
Great suggestion, thought police. Mr Novick, whom I respect greatly, addresses the how, how to fund mental health, but not the what, what to fund that works. Though community mental health programs could always use more money, that doesn’t cover all the problems the public wants addressed, visible problems, crises and tragedies. It’s time for some deep benchmarking, looking at other cities, even other countries, to understand what works.
PS, great suggestion on corrections. And I’m sure some NOPO homeowners are happy that their homes are worth 3x or more the assessed value too, and are taxed 1/3.
“Third, I think the county would love to adopt a beer and wine tax, use the money to fund alcohol and drug treatment” – *cough* tax marijuana, heroin, and meth *cough* use the proceeds to pay for addiction treatment *cough* it’s a system proven to work *cough*
Is there a way I can blame this on Sam Adams?
Hi Steve: Some of your suggestions are very good, and I’ve made the same suggestions.
But, as usual, I’m the guy who’s actually worked at “ground zero” with these issues for most of my life, which is why I keep running for office, being really fed up with these decisions being made by lawyers, not people who actually have to do the work (no offense to lawyers, but would you ask a “shrink” to file a lawsuit?).
People without housing have mental health issues. I once worked in a federally funded national mental health system, right here in the United States. It was one of the first things Reagan erased in 1981, and no one even noticed. All of our clients/patients who got an SSI check (which paid for their housing/food) got cut off. The money for their weekly anti-psychotic injection also got cut off, and suddenly we got homeless people.
Now Nick Fish (who is a friend) is touting a “mental health levy”. We need housing, and the current way of providing it is not working fast enough, so logic suggests we need to find different ways to create it, but so far the status quo seems stuck with building glittering palaces in the sky that cost about $125,000 each to build. There’s going to be a riot over this stuff because between the police and the ongoing broken promises over housing, a growing group of people have lost hope and are tired of waiting.
Next, actual mental health treatment, is not treatment because of “Evidence Based Practice”, and experiment passed by the state about a decade ago.
I’ve done mental health and addictions treatment work for almost 30 years. The principle factor in treatment success is the relationship between the treatment professional and the clients. That relationship is now eviscerated because the counselor is forced to follow a script that meets the state/county requirements of “Evidence Based Practice.”
In other words, we pay a lot of money for someone to sit with a group of people and review a workbook or a sheet of questions/topics, instead of actually work with the core issues of their illness.
At one large treatment agency, which gets millions from the state to serve alcohol & drug offenders, the concept of abstinence while in treatment is not even enforced. It’s called “Harm Reduction” and the goal is to get the addict to “just use less” which is contrary to every principle of addiction treatment for the last 60+ years.
But we are paying for this, to the tune of about $50 per “group” per client.
I’d love to work with you, or anyone else on this issue. We don’t have tax dollars to waste on this anymore.
And lastly, I have a Masters, two clinical licenses (the from CA had a higher first time failure rate than the Bar exam), and 30 years professional experience (9 in management). So please, show some respect, it’s appreciated.
Regards, Ed Garren, MA, LMFT