AUGUSTA — The Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation recommended Monday that Bangor Mental Health Institute be closed by the year 2001 and all patients be consolidated at Augusta Mental Health Institute.

“Augusta’s central location makes it clearly the preferred choice from the point of view of patient care,” states the 25-page report. It was submitted to the Legislature’s Human Resources and Appropriations committees on Monday afternoon.

The report said the preferred course would be to build a new 175-bed mental-health hospital to replace both BMHI and AMHI. But if the cost is too steep, the department favors AMHI over BMHI.

About 240 patients currently are at BMHI and about 210 patients at AMHI.

At the request of the Legislature, consolidation of the two mental health facilities has been studied by the department for a year. Its recommendation to close BMHI while keeping AMHI open must be approved by the Legislature. The plan is bound to stir up contro- versy.

“It flies in the face of what we had originally been led to believe,” House Speaker John L. Martin, D-Eagle Lake, said. “In my opinion, it’s another attempt by the McKernan administration to cut off northern Maine. I hope we and legi- slators of northern Maine can reverse the decision.”

Gov. John R. McKernan quickly rejected the advice of one of his Cabinet-level departments.

“This report does not build a convincing case that closing BMHI will either safeguard the needs of its clients in northern Maine, or significantly reduce mental health costs,” McKernan said.

McKernan said he wouldn’t support a consolidation plan unless it protected both northern Maine residents who need mental health services and the 550 employees at BMHI.

Mental Health Commissioner Sue Davenport, who’s been on the job for only a week, pointed out the seven-year timetable for implementing the consolidation. She said the chorus of protests was premature.

“Certainly, this is not going to happen tomorrow morning,” Davenport said. “This is a report to the Legislature. Period.”

In a Monday letter to N. Lawrence Ventura, BMHI superintendent, Davenport outlined the reasons for recommending that Ventura’s facility be closed.

“In making the required choice of location, the department had to determine what would be the greatest good for the greatest number,” Davenport said. “The reality that the center of population in Maine is somewhere south of Augusta made the more southerly of existing locations clearly in the best interest of patients.

“It guided the decision of the acting commissioner, the associate commissioner for administration and the director of adult mental health to recommend the Augusta site. I, as your new commissioner, support this decision.”

The report recommends that general hospitals throughout Maine become equipped to handle some of the short-term patients now housed at the state mental-health institutes. It calls for a six-year development of a community mental-health system that will care for all but 175 severely mentally ill persons who would be housed at AMHI.

If one or both of the hospitals were closed, it would open up a great deal of office space to the state which could stop leasing private offices. The opportunity to move from leased space to state-owned space is greater in Augusta than in Bangor.

Ventura declined to comment on whether he was kept informed of the development of the plan to close BMHI. Like Davenport, he said it was a little early for protests.

“It’s just a proposal the department gave,” Ventura said. “There’s going to be a lot of debate about this. I don’t think this is a concrete, solidified situation.”