The money is included in a $123.2 million capital spending bill, H.543, that was given preliminary approval by the House on Friday.
The bill includes investments in public safety, corrections, clean water and other projects over the next two fiscal years. But one of its most significant allocations is a two-pronged attempt to replace the Middlesex Therapeutic Community Residence.
The money shows that “we are no longer interested in kicking the can down the road,” said Rep. Alice Emmons, D-Springfield and chair of the House Corrections and Institutions Committee that crafted the capital bill.
Middlesex serves an important role as a secure “step-down” facility for psychiatric patients who are able to leave the hospital but are not yet ready to return to the community. It accepts patients who are in the state’s custody under an order of nonhospitalization.
But officials say the residence is “failing.” It has only seven beds housed inside two mobile homes that were erected as a “temporary” solution after Tropical Storm Irene’s flooding closed the Vermont State Hospital in 2011.
The trailers are “well beyond their useful lives,” said Rep. Butch Shaw, R-Pittsford and vice chair of House Corrections and Institutions.
The House Health Care Committee got a first-hand look at that problem earlier this year when visiting Middlesex. Rep. Anne Donahue, R-Northfield and the committee’s vice chair, recalled officials discovering that the facility’s “fire exit door was jammed shut and unable to be even forced open” during that visit.
While the problem was quickly rectified, it’s another example of why Middlesex must be shuttered, Donahue said. “We support the urgency of this, and we support the efforts in this bill to ensure that there really is significant progress in closing that facility,” she said.
The capital bill follows what Emmons called a “parallel path” in seeking a replacement for Middlesex.
First, it allocates $4.5 million over two years to support land acquisition, design, permitting and the beginning stages of construction for a new, 16-bed, state-owned secure residential facility. Officials have said they want to build that facility in central Vermont, but they’ve not yet found a property.
Emmons said the total cost for the state’s plan could be $14 million to $16 million.
Separately, the capital bill allocates $100,000 to support an eight-bed “therapeutic community residence” that’s been pitched by Rutland Regional Medical Center and Rutland Mental Health Services. Administrators have proposed building the facility on the hospital campus and operating it under a contractual agreement with the state.
The capital bill is the Legislature’s first explicit endorsement of the Rutland plan, though it comes with caveats. The bill orders the state Human Services secretary to begin negotiations with the two Rutland entities with a targeted completion date of Dec. 1; beginning in August, the secretary would report to legislators “at least monthly” on the status of those talks.
In a joint statement issued Friday, Rutland Regional President and Chief Executive Officer Claudio Fort and Rutland Mental Health Chief Executive Officer Dick Courcelle said they are “pleased to put forth a proposal that we believe can be part of the state’s efforts to improve mental health care for some of our most vulnerable citizens.”
“We appreciate the hard work the House has already undertaken in the capital bill and look forward to the discussion in the Senate,” the statement said. “We are ready to work with the Department of Mental Health to determine if our proposal is in line with the overall needs of the state’s mental health system.”
The capital bill also lays out next steps for the state’s planned 16-bed secure residential facility. By Oct. 15, the commissioner of Buildings and General Services should develop a proposal that “expedites the closure” of Middlesex and provides for construction of the new treatment center; legislative consideration would follow.
It’s clear that officials still are considering their options for replacing Middlesex. An Appropriations Committee amendment of the capital bill orders a report comparing the state’s costs of operating a secure residential facility to the costs of a Rutland-based facility.
Lawmakers need that report “so that we can have the information we need to make a sound fiscal decision,” said Rep. Peter Fagan, R-Rutland and ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee.
In an interview, Shaw said “nothing’s firm yet” on the secure residential proposals – including the facilities’ size and purpose. “Everything’s on the table,” he said.
In addition to investing in the future of mental health treatment, the Human Services section of H.543 also looks to the future of corrections. It sets aside $250,000 to begin the process of replacing the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility – the state’s only prison for women, and an aging building that has been the site of numerous inmate grievances.
The bill orders a report, due next January, on options for replacing Chittenden. That evaluation “shall be within the context of developing an overall strategic plan for statewide correctional facilities,” and it should examine “whether the new correctional facility should be a separate facility or part of a campus,” the document says.
“It’s our intent to go forward with this,” Emmons said. “This is a big step. This is not cheap. But we need to do something.”
Other significant allocations in the capital bill include $26 million for clean water projects; $8.65 million for the state’s “integrated eligibility” effort to streamline state benefit applications; $10.5 million to repair a parking garage under the Zampieri State Office Building in Burlington; and $5.4 million for designing and permitting a new Williston Public Safety Field Station.
In the education section, the bill sends $2.4 million over two years to the University of Vermont for construction, renovations and maintenance. The Vermont State Colleges get $4 million for the same purpose.
Additionally, the bill allocates $1.5 million in fiscal 2020 for the School Safety and Security Grant Program, which allows schools to receive up to $25,000 each. It’s a continuation of an initiative started last year.
The capital bill says the safety grants will be available to an eligible school that applied for but didn’t get funding in the current fiscal year. It delays the repeal of the program from July 1 to Oct. 1 of this year.
