The governor has recession-era news for New Haven’s last stop for poor people with mental health problems: the state’s cutting its budget mid-year.
The cut in state support for the Connecticut Mental Health Center on Park Street appears in the second round of rescissions Gov. M. Jodi Rell has announced in the current budget in the wake of Wall Street’s meltdown.
CMHC is often the only place that indigent and uninsured people can turn when they wrestle with mental health crises or substance abuse.
The Rell administration attached a note to the rescission announcement for CMHC: “This reduction can be absorbed without significantly affecting the program.”
That depends on the meaning of “significantly.”
The facility, a block from Yale-New Haven Hospital, serves about 5,000 people annually, mostly from New Haven but including East Haven, West Haven and a few other area towns, said associate administrator Tom√°s Reyes.
Almost all are out-patients, including the 400 people a year seen at La Clinica Hispana at 1 Long Wharf Dr. That number does not include those served by 40 in-patient beds.
“We’re under the same constraints as everybody else,” in these tough budgetary times, Reyes said. “We’ve imposed a hiring freeze.”
Reyes said he wasn’t sure of the number of positions affected.
Jim Simianowski is a spokesman for the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, which funds CMHC. “To put it in context,” Simianowski said, “CMHC’s total budget is $50 million, so the cut [$221,070 to be exact] is less than half a percent. Right now we’re evaluating the cut that is determined in another state agency — the Office of Policy and Management — and passed on to us. We’re trying to get greater clarity. Often these cuts are done to deal with positions that may already be vacant. We need to stay within our means.”
Altogether, 50 programs were cut in the latest round of state rescissions, saving a total of $34 million.
Asked if there’s $221,000 of fat in the CMHC budget that can be absorbed without impacting services, OPM spokesman Jeffrey Beckham replied, “I wouldn’t describe it as ‘fat.’ But every agency is being called upon to see where we can make rescissions. We’re in tough times, and our ability is being compromised by the economic downturn to fund programs as robustly as we would like to.
“We are not optimistic in the short term — we’re projecting a $300 million deficit for the current fiscal year ending June 30, 2009. Certain revenue comes in monthly, other quarterly; and none of our numbers take into account what’s happened in the financial sector, so it might get worse.”
He cited one hope for limiting the budget damage short term: if some Wall Street high-rollers who live in Connecticut get taxable golden parachutes.
Beckham said his office hasn’t done an analysis of which departments got hardest hit by OPM’s mandated $130 million in rescissions in June and another $34 million in September. “We’ve tried to spare programs that serve our most vulnerable citizens, as well as public safety and public health,” he said.
Reyes said CMHC is the lead mental health agency in the greater New Haven area. “These services are primarily for the indigent; if someone has insurance, they typically don’t come here.” An individual in need of help would be seen in the acute services department for an initial assessment, then be referred to a multi-disciplinary team. Staff members treat individuals with psychiatric disorders as well as substance abuse issues, and those who are dually diagnosed with both kinds of disorders. Both group and one-on-one treatment are available.
Of those in the treatment beds, he said, “We try to get them into out-patient services as soon as possible, but there’s no average length of stay because it’s an individual matter. The lack of in-patient beds is a major problem in New Haven.”