Fund children’s mental health grants

“Perhaps this is a world in which children suffer, but we can lessen the suffering of children and if we do not do this, who will?” – Albert Camus.

State budget shortfalls are happening all over America. Maine addressed its budget without raising broad-based taxes. Our Appropriations Committee passed a unanimous bipartisan budget which cut three-quarters of a billion dollars from the state budget. That budget then passed with an overwhelming bipartisan vote from the full Maine legislature. The budget that ultimately passed was very similar to the original budget Gov. Baldacci proposed.

That said, children’s mental health grants were cut 57 percent in the original budget presented by the administration. With the exception of the elimination of liquor enforcement officers, few, if any, other parts of the new five billion dollar budget face such a drastic cut.

Thanks to the work of the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee, more than $2 million was restored to children’s mental health grants in the budget. The Appropriations Committee restored an additional $2 million to the children’s mental health grant budget. Special thanks to our Democratic leadership and committee chairs for backing Appropriations committee Democrats who sought additional restorations to the children’s mental health budget. We are very appreciative of our governor’s decision to modify his budget in this regard. Again, this modification was accomplished with no broad state tax increase.

Happy ending? Not by a long shot. As legislators personally involved in the restoration of millions in children’s mental health grants, we are obligated, first, to face an uncomfortable truth: the original proposed cut to children’s mental health grants amounted to 57 percent over the biennium. Unfortunately, even with the above restorations, the total cut is still a draconian 44 percent.

This 44 percent cut to children’s mental health grants is an unfair and disproportionate violation of our obligation to our most vulnerable Maine citizens: children. Not only do these drastic cuts directly affect children with mental illness and mental disabilities, but the vulnerable children at issue here often live in low-income families. There are no more vulnerable citizens facing such a disproportionate cut.

Even naming the cut as a 44 percent cut does not tell the full sad story. The children’s mental health grant programs most drastically cut (community support, case management, home based family services, outpatient services, and flexible funds) are ironically exactly the programs that are most meaningful to prevention of mental health crises. The Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services agrees these cuts will mean mentally ill children and children with mental disabilities will be more likely to go into crisis. This result is both wrong and fiscally unwise. Prevention saves money. Studies show that a dollar of prevention avoids seven dollars of “cure.” Children put in crisis situations, as the administration concedes, will mean not only quite costly – and avoidable – crisis services, more mentally ill children end up in the juvenile corrections system and, later, jail. This terrible result costs Maine in both human and fiscal terms.

Even with our (modest) restorations, this funding level for children’s mental health grants threatens public health and safety.

We now approach the so-called Part II budget process facing 50 million dollars in unspecified reductions to appropriations in the upcoming two years. Also – let’s face it – more shortfalls loom if Maine’s economy fails to revive. Children’s mental health grants have already taken a radical cut disproportionate to other cuts. As a state we must do better.

If there are to be new revenues from tax reform, children’s mental health grants should be first in line for restored funding. We, like the vast majority of the legislature, voted for the biennial budget which includes no new taxes, but we need a more intelligently designed tax system with a broad and stable base to which both business and individuals contribute a reasonable share.

How’s this for justice? Create health taxes (on cigarettes, alcohol and soda) to restore children’s mental health grant funding. Health taxes are good policy in and of themselves, and the revenue could be dedicated to no better cause.

Should there be no new revenues, then cuts should be considered elsewhere to restore children’s mental health grants. One thing is certain: the cuts to children’s mental health grants are unacceptable. Maine must do better.

Rep. Sean Faircloth, D-Bangor, is the first Bangor legislator to serve on the Appropriations Committee in a decade. Rep. Marie Laverierre-Boucher, D-Biddeford, is a member of the Health and Human Services Committee and co-chair of the progressive caucus.