Darrell Steinberg and the Campaign for Mental Health

More on Voter Education Day

It's a bit technical, but here's an explanation of how the funds raised by the initiative will be spent, and what the money will do.

Once the initiative is passed, the Franchise Tax Board will collect and deposit an estimated $250 million into the Mental Health Services Fund for the 2004-05 fiscal year. In that first fiscal year, 45 percent of the funds will go to education and training to increase the number of people qualified to provide services for individuals with severe mental illness - for example, to train more doctors to practice child psychiatry. Another 45 percent will be given to counties for capital facilities and technological needs they will need to implement three-year integrated plans, required under the initiative, for prevention, innovation, and system of care services. Five percent will be spent for local planning, and the remaining five percent will be spent for state planning.

In the 2005-06, 2006-07, and 2007-08, fiscal years, 10 percent will be allocated for capital facilities, 10 percent for education and training programs, 20 percent for prevention and early intervention programs, five percent for innovative programs, and up to five percent to the State Department of Mental Health for administration. The remaining funds, approximately 50 percent of the total funds, will be distributed to county mental health programs for services to individuals with severe mental illness, pursuant to the Children's System of Care and the Adult and Older Adult System of Care.

From the 2008-09 fiscal year onward, 20 percent will be allocated for prevention and early intervention programs, five percent for innovative programs, five percent for administration, and the balance, or approximately 70 percent of the total funding, will be distributed to county mental health programs for services to persons with severe mental illness, with some allowance for further spending, as necessary, for capital facilities and human resource needs.

Thus, the initiative will provide an initial infusion of money to increase human resources and capital facilities, and then it will provide money to fund more of the community mental health services that have already proven to be successful through AB 34 programs and the Children's System of Care, both which funding to serve only a fraction of all of those who need help. And it will fund prevention and early intervention programs, and also innovative programs.

In these tough economic times, we need to show what we are doing is cost effective and, in the long run, will save government dollars. This investment in mental health will, according to the Legislative Analyst and the Department of Finance, save state and local agencies "potentially amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars annually on a statewide basis from reduced costs for state prison and county jail operations, medical
care, homeless shelters, and social services programs."

Please join us tomorrow for Voter Education Day and help us spread the word about what $1 billion in new money will mean for mental health care in California. If you are a Team member you will automatically be emailed with instructions for how to participate. If you are not a Team member, you can sign up today, or sign up as an Online Volunteer. Or, you can get instructions and a sample email on this blog.

Click here to start or join a Team >>

Click here to sign up as an Online Volunteer >>

Advocacy Day Photos

We've just posted the first of our Advocacy Day Photos.

Click here to view the photo gallery >>

Be sure to come back for more.

Voter Education Day, June 1

This month's voter education day is about what the initiative's funding will do for people who have severe mental illness.

As part of getting an initiative qualified for the ballot, we are required to submit the language of the initiative to the Attorney General's office, and the Attorney General's office prepares a summary of the initiative for the ballot. The Attorney General's office also works with the Legislative Analyst and the Director of Finance to prepare a fiscal analysis. Both this summary and the fiscal analysis were on the petition you signed, and will also be on the ballot. Here's what the Attorney General says our initiative will do:

"Provides funds to counties to expand services and develop innovative programs and inegrated service plans for mentally ill children, adults and seniors. Requires state to develop mentalhealth service programs including prevention, early intervention, education and training programs. Creates new commission to approve certain county programs and expenditures. Imposes additional 1% tax on taxable income over $1 million to provide dedicated funding for expansion of mental health services and programs. Current funding for mental health programs may not be reduced because of funding from new tax."

And here's what the Legislative Analyst and the Director of Finance say about the "fiscal impact" of our initiative:

"Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local governments: Additional revenues of approximately $250 million in 2004-05, $680 million in 2005-06, $700 million in 2006-07, and increasing amounts annually thereafter, with comparable imcreases in expenditures by the state and counties for the expansion of mental health programs."

Finally, the Legislative Analyst and the Director of Finance address the issue of savings to the state as a result of this initiative:

"Unknown savings to the state and local agencies potentially amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars annually on a statewide basis from reduced costs for state prison and county jail operations, medical care, homeless shelters, and social service programs that would partly offset the additional cost of this measure."

And all of this is from official sources after their close analysis of the initiative's language.

On June 1, please share this information with your friends. We will make it easy for you to do, by creating email language you can cut and paste here on the blog.

We've got to keep spreading the word so that people recognize the need for the money and services this initiative will provide, and the fact that the funding from this initiative will provide services to people with severe mental illness that will be cost effective and save money for state and local agencies.

2,000 People at Thursday's Mental Health Advocacy Day

I don’t think I’ve ever in my political career been so moved by an event as I was by Mental Health Advocacy Day yesterday. This event brought over 2,000 people to west lawn of the State Capitol to protest cuts in mental health spending, and to support the initiative.

Ten busloads of people traveled to the State Capitol for this event. I was on the Assembly Floor during most of the rally, but I heard the event from inside and took a minute to sneak away from the floor to take a peek from the balcony. I’ve never seen so many people at an event at the Capitol.

I went outside at 2:00 p.m. and gave a talk was able to meet dozens of people who were there and posed for photographs with people. Many of those who came were in, or had been in, AB 34 programs throughout the state. These were people who had suffered as a result of the cuts in mental health funding over the last 36 years, and it was just fantastic to see the people and hear their stories and hear their successes as a result of the treatment and services offered to them through the AB 34 programs. And it was just really powerful to see so many of the initiative’s supporters in one place.

One of my friends who heard the talk said he had never seen me so fired up. It is a day that I will never forget. It was just incredibly moving to see everyone there, and to talk to them. And it was just overwhelming to realize that what we are doing will create a dedicated funding source of $700 million a year for services for these people who have waited a very long time, and that the money will fund services that save millions of other people from the suffering that many of our supporters have had to endure because of lack of services.

Hundreds of the people who attended went into the Capitol to meet with their Members and personally voice their objections to cuts in mental health services. Senator Torlakson, Senator Kuehl, and Assembly Member Leno all spoke as well, and encouraged people to tell their stories to the other Members in the Building.

We’ve got to keep telling our stories, because it is those stories that will make people understand the need for this initiative.

We'll have photos of the event on this blog and the site this weekend.

Click here to share your story >>

Thank you very much to all of you who were at this event, and to those of you who supported this event in any other way.

Today is a big day for mental health

If you are a regular reader of this weblog you know that today is Mental Health Advocacy Day. We expect over 1,000 people to rally at the Capitol to opposed budget cuts and support the initiative.

The big rally is at 2:00 this afternoon. Be sure to check back tonight or tomorrow to view photos from the rally.

One more thing, next Tuesday June 1, is our second Voter Education Day. That's the one day each month that our online network of supporters reaches out to others via email and in person to educate people about the initiative. In May we focused on how the initiative helps children. On June 1, we'll focus on what $1 billion dollars in new money or mental health care will mean for people suffering from mental illness.

Please plan to participate. We'll post directions here on the weblog. If you are a member of one of our online Teams, you will automatically receive email instructions. You will be able to send out emails that are already set up for you in your Participant Center. You can personalize these messages and I urge you to do so.

If you are not already a Team member, please participate by joining an existing Team or starting your own Team. Or you can sign up as an Online Volunteer, and participate that way.

Click here to learn more about joining or starting a Team >>

Click here to sign up as an Online Volunteer >>

Tomorrow is Mental Health Advocacy Day

"United in their commitment to end more than three decades of California's broken promises to children and adults with mental health needs, more than 1,000 advocates will rally on Mental Health Advocacy Day with this year's theme of FANS (Fairness, Awareness, New Hope and Success)."

This quote is from the press release that is going out this morning to inform the press about Mental Health Advocacy Day. Click here to see the release >>

Please take a look at it for details about the event >>

As you can see from the press release, Mental Health Advocacy Day is going to be lively and informative. It will be an excellent opportunity for you to connect with mental health advocates and your elected officials, to learn about the broken promises in mental health funding, and to learn from people with personal stories about the recovery and success that they have achieved with adequate community mental health services. We want to see funding expanded to ensure that community mental health services are available to all who need them, and mental health supporters will be at the Capitol tomorrow to advocate against cuts in the state's existing funding for mental health services, and in support of passing our initiative, which will expand the state's funding for mental health services.

Ten busloads of people will be caravaning from Los Angeles for this event, and many advocates will be here from other parts of the state as well. We would like to see the turnout be as big as possible.

The rally will be from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m., and I'll be speaking on the West Steps of the Capitol Building. Several of my colleagues will be speaking as well. Hope to see you there.

Volunteer to Help Create A Dedicated Funding Source for Mental Health Services

As we move toward the election, I want to make sure that there are volunteer opportunities for everyone who wants to be a part of this campaign. We are working on developing a list of those opportunities, and we'll post them on the site. We'll need people to reach out to friends and neighbors before election night, to have signs in their yards before the election, and to walk their precincts or neighborhoods and drop off fliers that can be downloaded from the Internet.

Meantime, the most important volunteer effort is to tell your friends about our campaign, and ask your friends to tell their friends. You can also lead a team or share your story. We'll have house party packages available next week, and people will then be able to host parties for the campaign at their homes. You can attend public events, like Mental Health Advocacy Day, to show your support.

I believe this initiative, which will create a dedicated funding source for mental health services, is the most important thing I will do in my life. I hope you'll feel the same, and I know that many people do, and that you'll be part of this campaign with me. Every effort matters, and every vote counts, because some elections come down to being decided by just a few votes. We really need all the help that we can get. And it is very important to me to make sure that there's a way for everyone to be a part of this effort and to contribute to the success of the campaign.

And, after all your hard work, let your final effort on this campaign be an election night party for you and your friends to celebrate your efforts! In fact, I'll ask our webmaster right now to make himself available on election night so that we can update you on the website with every bit of initiative-related news that we hear from our sources.

Incarcerating the Mentally Ill: Twin Towers

"Johnny Jackson suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, for which he receives treatment from some of the best professionals in the Los Angeles Mental Health Department. The problem is that Jackson isn't being treated in a hospital but in L.A.'s Twin Towers jail, America's largest mental health institution -- by default, not design.

With too few resources to serve the mentally ill, caring for persons with psychiatric disorders has increasingly fallen into the lap of law enforcement, from police officers to prison guards. It's a national crisis, and one that L.A.'s Sheriff Lee Baca calls "immoral."

This is a quote from the "California Connected" website. Sheriff Lee Baca is a friend of mine, and soon to be an endorser of the initiative, I believe.

California Connected just did a piece on PBS regarding people with mental illness in jail. At the end of the piece, they mentioned the initiative and showed our web site. I heard about the show from a staff member today, and I checked out the show's web site and found a link to our website. There's also a link to "MHA Village," which was one of our first AB 34 pilot programs. (MHALA is Richard Van Horn's organization - see my last post)

And, tying in to another of my recent posts, the website also has a link to the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department's step-by-step instructions to people with mental illness who find themselves being arrested, and also to their families.

Please go to this link and share it with your friends.

More About Our Campaign Team

I can't let another day go by without writing about my close friend, Richard Van Horn. Richard is also a close friend to the campaign.

I've written before about the AB 34 programs, which began as a three-county pilot based on legislation I authored in 1999. Los Angeles was one of those pilot counties, and The Village, which was founded by Richard and his organization, the Mental Health Association of Los Angeles, was among the first of the AB 34 pilot programs.

The Village is a very successful program with very positive outcomes for its participants, most of whom were homeless and mentally ill when they found their way to The Village. Many of those early particpants in the program are now employed full-time and living productive lives, and some of them are now working at The Village and helping others live with dignity. The success of The Village played a large part in the success of my legislation, subsequent to AB 34, that established the AB 34 program as a permanent program statewide. And it was the success of those programs that led to the development of the initiative.

Richard's staff, many of whom I have come to know, describe him as the embodiment of the civil rights movement for equal rights for people with mental illness. Richard is at the forefront of connecting people of influence, monetarily or politically, with those in need and their families, those who help them, and the community at large. As a result, the California Community Foundation called Richard one of Los Angeles' Unsung Heroes. In my opinion, he shouldn't be unsung, and I'm here to sing his praises.

I've said before that this initiative is the most important thing in which I will be involved in my lifetime, and Richard feels the same way. For Richard, his work is not a job. It's a cause. Thank you, Richard, for your commitment to this cause.

Our Email Update List

I encourage all of you to join our email update list. Aside from our goal of getting 5,000,000 votes to pass this initiative in November, one of our primary goals is to organize ourselves to advocate for mental health issues in the future.

Please take a moment to add your name to our list. You'll receive weekly campaign updates. You can also help our campaign by telling your friends about the campaign, and by asking them to join our email list. Our polling shows that mental health is an issue that is close to, and matters to, almost half the people in this state.

Click here to sign up for email updates >>

Click here to tell your friends about our campaign >>

Let's keep spreading the word. After the election, we'll make every effort to keep you informed when important mental health issues are being considered in the Capitol, because this is a cause that matters to us.