Yesterday, I wrote a post about the mysterious affair in Waterbury Village: police officer Andy Hubacz was in line to lose his job because Washington County State’s Attorney Tom Kelly refused to handle any of his cases. My complaint was about the complete lack of information made public by local officials.
Well, Burlington Free Press to the rescue. The Freep obtained much of the documentation regarding the case. So now we know that Hubacz applied for a job with the St. Albans police and was given a lie-detector test. And during the test, he admitted to a series of legal and ethical violations. Some of them were penny-ante, some were more substantial, and some are still unknown — the material given to the Freep had “several lengthy passages removed.” Kelly based his decision on the results of the polygraph.
Which seems reasonable to me. One thumb up to the Burlington Free Press for getting the goods on the case.
The other thumb goes to Patrick Flood, Vermont’s Mental Health Commissioner.
On Tuesday, there was a legislative hearing on Governor Shumlin’s plan to replace the Vermont State Hospital with a beefed-up community-based system plus a few small inpatient facilities. At the hearing, numerous mental-health professionals testified in support of better community-based services but also in support of a larger central inpatient facility.
This post isn’t about the merits of that argument. I’m simply noting a comment by Commissioner Flood after the hearing, as reported by Vermont Digger:
Mental Health Commissioner Patrick Flood, who sat in on the hearing, has said he finds the testimony in support of community services “very affirming” about the state’s direction. But he insisted despite the criticism Tuesday that the state’s proposal for acute-care replacement beds is “on the right path” and at this point said there was no plan to change it.
Well, Christ on a cracker. Thank you, Commissioner, for highlighting the parts of the testimony that support your plan while completely dismissing the rest of it. Why not just give the finger to all those who took the time to go to Montpelier and testify?
Now, I can’t say whether Patrick Flood is a weasel or not. Insufficient evidence. But that was a profoundly weasely thing to say. One thumb down.
Don’t be so eager to ascribe such negativity to Flood. He did just get this position very recently and has hit the ground running full tilt.
The discussion about the state mental hospital has been going on for decades, with closing the existing hospital and regional beds being one option at the top of the list. Political will just wasn’t there to make any actual decision; Irene made that decision for us.
The current administration has latched on to the destruction of the old state hospital as the breakthrough needed to move forward on regional community services.
This isn’t Patrick Flood’s plan, it’s the Shumlin Plan, and Flood has been told to implement it. Flood is in the Shumlin Administration and Shumlin says community-located services are where he wants to go, so Flood is working to make that happen.
The way you describe the hearings mental health professionals testified to both arguments, and I’ve heard those arguments too. Some want one central hospital, the way things used to be, and another group wants regional facilities located around the state so the patients can be closer to their homes. These are the same factions that argued the same points before Irene made the hospital inhospitable.
I don’t understand why you are so seriously pissed off that Flood can not possibly accommodate both opposing factions at the same time, while fulfilling the mandate from the Governor. No matter what Flood does, he will anger someone. And the article you quoted here does NOT provide Flood’s actual statements, only five words. Unless you were standing right there, you don’t know how Flood phrased it. It is the article author who makes it sound like Flood casually dismissed everyone that aren’t fervent believers in Shumlin’s plan.
And why would you even expect a major change of direction of a decades old problem from the Executive Branch instantly upon hearing testimony before the Legislative Branch from the administrator who came to sit in on the hearings? At best Flood would have to arrange a meeting with the Gov’s staff to relay what he heard and re-examine the current plan, etc, etc, all of which take a lot of time.
It makes me want to ask you, what’s your stake in this that Flood isn’t headed the direction you want him to go? So Flood restated Shumlin’s plan, what’s it to you?
BTW, one of his kids played a great trumpet in the high school pep band and was a counselor at an acting camp last summer, and the other of his kids put his body on the line trying to stop mountain-top removal coal mining in West Virginia and helped my family move when no one else did. So Patrick’s track record of helping strangers is clearly bourn out in the community values he’s instilled in his children!
Look around at what has happened recently in other states that abandoned their core public mental health structure(s)in favor of scaled-down, “more compassionate” care. In many cases, it hasn’t worked out so well. There’s a reason Massachusetts just opened a 250+ bed mental health facility and that New Hampshire turned tail a few years back and decided to return to what worked, which were core public mental health facilities. Naturally, it’s a given that there is most definately a critical place for community-based mental health services in any Vermont system. However, there’s also a place for a primary acute facility. Doctors and nurses from nearly every hospital currently being given money to house patients normally assigned to the state hospital have testified that they support one central facility. They provide vivid details of how and why patients they would normally treat are not being seen right now due to disruptive patients fomally cared for at the state hospital. Should we doubt what they are saying and seeing is true? Do we question their support for a centralized acute mental health facility with a proper number of beds? It’s not an easy issue, and it’s true we’ve pissed away ten years waiting for someone to seriously address the antiquated state hospital, but rushing into a system unknown could lead to some very difficult years for Vermont’s mental health system and Vermonters. We have a chance right now to show the nation what a well-integrated mental health system looks like and how it should operate. Privatization is not the answer.