Bill to protect CVTC dies in House committee

RICHMOND — A bill that would have required the General Assembly’s approval before Virginia officials could close any mental-health training centers failed on a 19-2 vote Thursday in a House of Delegates committee.

The bill’s rejection helped clear a way for Virginia to negotiate with the U.S. Department of Justice on how it will comply with a federal ruling and move people out of its five training centers and into the community, said Bill Hazel, the state secretary of health and human resources. Hazel told the committee that Gov. Bob McDonnell opposed the bill.

Del. Ben Cline, sponsor of HB 2146, told the House committee that he sponsored the bill at the request of employees and parents at Central Virginia Training Center in Madison Heights.

“What I have learned after introducing this bill is that the administration (governor’s office) is proceeding with a plan to close all the training centers,” Cline said.

Cline argued that the General Assembly should make any decisions about the training centers because it has provided many millions of dollars to renovate them.

The Department of Justice launched an investigation of CVTC four years ago, and then widened the probe to look at all Virginia training centers.

“We anticipate that they will be contacting us in February to negotiate a settlement on how we will comply” with requirements of a U.S. Supreme Court decision known as the Olmstead ruling, Hazel said.

That 1999 ruling held that people with disabilities have the right to live in community-based homes rather than institutions.

The negotiations will deal with how Virginia will “move people out of training centers and into the community” where they would live in smaller homes, Hazel said.

If legislators were to pass Cline’s bill, Hazel said, it would “not help us negotiate a very organized and optimal exit from this problem for the Commonwealth.”

Hazel added that, “We sympathize very much with the issues surrounding employees and employment. I would say we sympathize equally as much, if not more, with the issues of the residents” who either don’t want change or fear for their safety.

With just more than 400 residents and 1,400 employees, CVTC is Amherst County’s largest employer.

Cline said afterward that he was disappointed that the Health, Welfare and Institutions committee rejected the bill, and that he was convinced some residents at CVTC would not fare well in smaller, community-based homes where a physician is not present all the time.

Martha Bryant of Amherst County, speaking for a parents’ group called Families and Friends at CVTC, said their next big question is whether the state will keep one of its training centers open.

“Families and friends will do our best to keep CVTC open,” Bryant said.

The Olmstead ruling, Bryant said, left room for doctors and families to choose to keep some residents in training centers if they needed to be in an institutional setting.

But many of those residents would be better served by living in community homes rather than the segregated setting of an institution, the Supreme Court ruled.

In the Olmstead case, the court ruled that residents of mental-health facilities were entitled to live in community-based homes rather than institutions, so long as physicians approved their moves and the residents’ families agreed.

The Olmstead case has led most states to close some of their mental-health institutions and reduce the number of residents overall. Twelve states have closed all of their training centers, Hazel said.

In Virginia, the population in five training centers has been reduced over the past 10 years, but none of the training centers has closed, Hazel said.

Cline said the Olmstead case involved more than just a transition from an institutional environment into smaller homes.

“I believe Olmstead is requiring us to do that which is best for a patient. They may be best served by a center like CVTC, or the may be best served by a patient or group home,” Cline said.

“But I believe it should be up to a patient and their family to make that decision.”