The Baldwin County delegation to the state legislature said that the Department of Human Resources may be stepping back from plans to privatize the state’s mental health system.

Despite DHR’s having issued Request For Proposals to privatize the state’s forensics services and the Georgia Regional Hospital in Atlanta, state Sen. Johnny Grant, R-Milledgeville, said that budget appropriations committee hearings with DHR Commissioner B.J. Walker Friday morning showed a possible retreat, or at least a delay, in plans to privatize mental health services in the State of Georgia.

Grant said legislators hammered away at perceived flaws in DHR’s gameplan to find private vendors to construct three new mental health hospitals across Georgia and to close the seven existing hospitals.

“I think it is an unachievable goal, it is the wrong goal to have and it puts undue stress on the people who are currently working in the system,” he said. “I am very disappointed in the tactics proposed by DHR’s leadership.”

State Rep. Bobby Parham, D-Milledgeville, said that he asked Walker to speak to what her department has learned from other state’s attempts to privatize their mental health systems. Walker had little response to Parham’s specific questioning about North Carolina, which wasted $400 million on a failed attempt at privatization, Parham said.

“Someone has got to take care of mental health patients,” Parham told the Union-Recorder Friday. “You can’t throw them in jail or prison and expect they’ll get the care they need.”

The state proposals to privatize mental health come at a time when Georgia is settling with the U.S. Department of Justice over civil rights violations in the state’s seven mental health hospitals.

Governor Sonny Perdue recently signed a yet-to-be-disclosed settlement with the Justice Department concerning the complaints and subsequent investigation.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported last week that the settlement obligates the state “undertake its best efforts to find enough money to transform the hospitals.” But Grant said that Commissioner Walker’s appropriations committee testimony would lead one to believe that DHR can make good on the settlement without any additional funding. The state’s mental health system is slated for a $29 million budget decrease in Perdue’s proposed budget.

“It is very frustrating, in previous years the Department of Corrections and the Department of Juvenile Justice have had to make settlements with the Justice Department that are very costly,” Grant said. “To think that this DOJ settlement is going to cost less or cost the same is seemingly pollyanna-ish.”

The few details to emerge about the state’s Justice Department settlement concerning the state’s mental health system call for a five-year plan to improve services.

Grant said Commissioner Walker seemed very optimistic that DHR will be able to meet those stipulations put forth in the settlement, but he’s not sure about her department’s ability to meet those expectations.

“Over the years we have been driven by federal requirements and by budget restrictions and that has resulted in a continual reduction in the number of [mental health] bed space available, which has in turn exacerbated the state’s problem in [the Department of] Corrections,” Grant said. “It has lead me to perceive the failure of the entire system to deal with people with mental illnesses.”

Grant said the coming weeks of the legislative session will be fraught with very tough decisions on matters that are not limited to how the state provides mental health services, but he urges people to remember that there are many talented and dedicated state employees that are trying to do the best they can in this dismal economic situation.

The Georgia General Assembly will begin convening again Monday.