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OFF PAGE ONE
East Oregonian
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
State needs more resources for local mental health treatment
By SAM STITES
Oregon Capital Bureau
SALEM — Reforms to
Oregon’s system for dealing
with those unfit to stand trial
aren’t working as planned,
with judges challenged to
find local treatment options
for those they used to send to
the Oregon State Hospital.
As a result, the state hos-
pital has not seen a sig-
nificant reduction in the
number of patients need-
ing hospital-level care. And
mental health advocates say
legislation passed earlier this
year inappropriately left in
place language that contin-
ues to stigmatize those need-
ing public help.
In recent years, Oregon
judges have sent more and
more patients to the state
hospital for treatment to
regain competency to help
in their own defense against
criminal charges. From 2017
to 2018, there was a 15%
increase in patients sent to
the facility, from 610 to 719.
So far in 2019 there have
been 633 patients found unfit
to stand trial sent to the state
hospital.
Under legislation passed
this year, judges were asked
to find local treatment for
those deemed unfit to stand
trial, reserving hospital-level
care for those found to be
dangerous to themselves or
others.
In the 12 months lead-
ing up to Senate Bill 24, the
state hospital received on
average 59 “aid and assist”
patients per month. In the
four months following SB
24’s passage, the hospital
received an average of 54 per
month.
While mental health pro-
fessionals agree that treating
patients in their own com-
munities leads to better out-
comes, many Oregon coun-
ties don’t have the ability to
provide this treatment, forc-
ing judges to either keep
defendants jailed — violat-
ing their civil rights — or
releasing them to the streets.
A workgroup of 50 indi-
viduals representing the
courts, public defenders,
prosecutors, mental health
advocates and behavioral
health professionals is now
working on fixes to ensure
mentally ill criminal defen-
dants get the help they need.
One of those members is
Multnomah County Judge
Nan Waller. She recently
addressed lawmakers on the
legislative joint Judiciary
Committee on what’s being
done to fix issues created by
the reform measures.
“All the players to the
aid and assist process have
one goal, and that is to make
sure that people get the treat-
ment we’re obligated to pro-
vide them in the most appro-
priate setting. Nobody wants
people languishing in jail.
Nobody wants the capacity
“THERE IS NOTHING MORE
DISHEARTENING THAN TO SAY
TO SOMEBODY, ‘DO YOU HAVE
A COAT? IS THERE ANYONE YOU
MIGHT CALL? IS THERE ANY PLACE
YOU HAVE TO GO?’”
— Nan Waller, Multnomah County Judge
issues at the hospital to get
out of hand. Nobody wants
mentally ill people on our
streets,” Waller testified.
According to Waller, her
court time includes dealing
with individuals who suf-
fer from significant men-
tal health issues, many of
whom have committed mis-
demeanors that often relate
to poverty and homelessness.
She said the Oregon Judicial
Department is hiring six new
employees to collect data to
identify the gap between the
services people need and
what’s currently available.
Researchers will report
on the numbers of cases
where a defendant is unfit to
proceed or pending an evalu-
ation for fitness, evaluations
ordered, those transferred to
the state hospital communi-
ties, number of in-custody
review hearings held, num-
ber of cases dismissed due to
a defendant’s lack of fitness
and more.
“As somebody who every
week has to make decisions
about releasing people from
jail who do not have any
place to go, there is nothing
more disheartening than to
say to somebody, ‘Do you
have a coat? Is there any-
one you might call? Is there
any place you have to go?’”
Waller testified. “I have
released people because we
haven’t had any place and
not met hospital-level of care.
That is unfortunate and not
as a society what we should
be doing.”
Most stakeholders agree
the recent legislation was just
one step to address Oregon’s
mental health issues.
“We all realized this bill
had some big missing pieces,
so the crux of this workgroup
is to look at some of those big
cracks and figure out how to
ensure there’s a smooth, effi-
cient and constitutional pro-
cess,” said Emily Cooper,
legal counsel for Disability
Rights Oregon.
Disability Rights Ore-
gon has played a lead role in
holding the state and the hos-
pital accountable for ensur-
ing defendants are given
access to mental health treat-
ment. Earlier this year, the
group sued the state for not
complying with a 2002 rule
requiring criminal defen-
dants needing treatment be
admitted to the state hospital
within seven days of a court
order.
In 2018, more than 200
patients had to wait longer
than seven days, a problem
which hospital administra-
tors blamed on an unfore-
seen influx of aid and assist
patients the facility wasn’t
equipped to handle.
Cooper said SB 24 per-
petuates bias in determining
an individual’s “dangerous-
ness,” a term the legislation
uses to define who judges
can send to the state hospital.
According to Dr. Michelle
Guyton, director of the
Oregon Forensic Evalua-
tor Training Program and
co-owner of the Northwest
Forensic Institute, the legisla-
tion leaves room for unfairly
categorizing those dealing
with mental illness.
Guyton suggests the term
“dangerousness” be removed
from the law and in its place
require the 120 mental health
evaluators based through-
out Oregon look at a broader
range of criteria to provide
judges with a better under-
standing of who requires hos-
pital-level care and who can
be treated in local programs.
“We look forward to
defining these terms in the
rules and training certified
forensic evaluations to pro-
vide the most efficient, clin-
ically sound and ethical eval-
uations to assist the courts,”
Dr. Guyton told lawmakers.
Cooper said changing the
language would better pro-
tect the civil rights of defen-
dants dealing with mental
health and substance abuse
disorders.
She said the problem
remains that when the evalu-
ators and courts find an indi-
vidual doesn’t require hos-
pital care, they have little
option in finding treatment.
“We don’t have a system
where there is communi-
ty-based restoration in every
county. Only a handful of
counties do,” Cooper said.
“We need to shift the focus
and the funding away from
the criminal justice system
to the community behavioral
health system. I haven’t met a
single person in Oregon that
does not agree that’s the right
thing to do.”
Disability Rights Oregon
envisions the state shifting
spending from jails and state
hospital stays to more mental
health and substance abuse
care in communities.
Pat Allen, director of the
Oregon Health Authority,
told lawmakers last month
that his agency will propose
to the 2020 Legislature add-
ing significant resources to
bolster community mental
health treatment.
Impeachment: Judiciary Committee is expected to vote in the coming days
Continued from Page A1
increasingly set as the
House presses ahead toward
impeachment as it has
only three times in history
against U.S. presidents, a
test of the nation’s system of
checks and balances.
Democrats said they had
a duty to act in what is now
a strictly partisan undertak-
ing, as Republicans stand
with the president, because
Trump has shown a pat-
tern of behavior that, if left
unchecked, poses risks to
the democratic process.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler,
D-N.Y., the Judiciary chair-
man, said the president
“holds the ultimate pub-
lic trust. When he betrays
that trust and puts himself
before country, he endan-
gers the Constitution; he
endangers our democracy;
he endangers our national
security.”
“No one, not even the
president, is above the law,”
he said, announcing the
charges before a portrait of
George Washington.
Chairman Adam Schiff
of the Intelligence Com-
mittee said, “We stand here
today because the presi-
dent’s abuse of power leaves
us with no choice.”
Trump’s allies imme-
diately plunged into the
fight that will extend into
the new year. White House
Press Secretary Stephanie
Grisham said Democrats
are trying to “overthrow’’
the administration. Cam-
paign manager Brad Par-
scale said Democrats “don’t
have a viable candidate for
2020 and they know it.”
The president’s son, Eric,
embraced his father’s pen-
chant for name calling,
assailing Pelosi and “her
swamp creatures.”
Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell said he
would be “totally surprised”
AP Photo/Susan Walsh
From left House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee Maxine Waters, D-Calif., Chair-
man of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.,
Chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., House Ways and Means Chairman
Richard Neal and Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Adam Schiff, D-Calif., unveil articles of
impeachment against President Donald Trump, during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington on Tuesday.
if there were 67 votes in the
chamber to convict Trump,
and signaled options for a
swift trial. He said no deci-
sion had been made whether
to call witnesses.
In drafting the charges
against the president, Pelosi
faced a legal and politi-
cal challenge of balancing
the views of her majority
while hitting the Constitu-
tion’s bar of “treason, brib-
ery or other high crimes and
misdemeanors.”
Some liberal lawmak-
ers wanted more expan-
sive charges encompassing
the findings from special
counsel Robert Mueller’s
probe of Russian interfer-
ence in the 2016 election.
Centrist Democrats pre-
ferred to keep the impeach-
ment articles more focused
on Trump’s actions toward
Ukraine as a clearer case.
The final resolution,
slim in length yet broad in
concept, attempted to find
common ground by link-
ing the Ukraine inquiry to
the Mueller probe in two
separate lines. It said the
abuse of power was con-
sistent with Trump’s “pre-
vious invitations of for-
eign interference in United
States elections” while the
obstruction charge was con-
sistent with his efforts to
undermine U.S. govern-
ment “investigations into
foreign interference.”
Democratic
leaders
say Trump put his politi-
cal interests above those of
the nation when he asked
Ukraine President Volo-
dymyr Zelenskiy in a July
phone call to investigate his
rivals, including Democrat
Joe Biden, and then with-
held $400 million in mil-
itary aid as the U.S. ally
faced an aggressive Russia.
They say he then obstructed
Congress by stonewalling
the House investigation.
The articles say Trump
“used the powers of the
presidency in a manner that
compromised the national
security of the United States
and undermined the integ-
rity of the United States
democratic process.”
The first article, on abuse
of power, says Trump “cor-
ruptly” solicited Ukraine
to investigate his political
rivals.
The second article,
obstruction of Congress,
says that Trump directed
defiance of the House’s abil-
ity to conduct its legal over-
sight like no other presi-
dent ”in the history of the
republic.”
Trump insisted in a new
tweet that when he asked
Ukraine’s president “to do
us a favor” with the inves-
tigations, “‘us’ is a ref-
erence to USA, not me!”
Democrats, however, say
Trump’s meaning could not
have been clearer in seek-
ing political dirt on Biden,
his possible opponent in the
2020 election.
Republicans stand with
the president even if they
don’t fully address his
actions. House GOP Leader
Kevin McCarthy said the
vote will be on impeach-
ment not “whether a call is
perfect.’’
While the impeachment
is focused on the Ukraine
matter, Trump’s actions
toward Russia continue
to underlie the debate. On
Tuesday, Trump met at the
White House with Sergey
Lavrov, the Russian for-
eign minister just back from
Paris for efforts to revive
peace talks with Ukraine.
At the same time, a top
adviser to the Ukraine
president, Andriy Yermak,
disputed key impeach-
ment testimony from U.S.
Ambassador Gordon Sond-
land, telling Time maga-
zine the two did not speak
of the investigations Trump
wanted during a Warsaw
meeting.
The next steps are
expected to come swiftly
after months of investiga-
tion into the Ukraine matter
and special counsel Muel-
ler’s two-year Russia probe.
In his report, Mueller
said he could not determine
that Trump’s campaign con-
spired or coordinated with
Russia in the 2016 elec-
tion. But he said he could
not exonerate Trump of
obstructing justice and left
it for Congress to determine.
Even as she pushed
ahead with the impeach-
ment proceeding, Pelosi
announced an agreement
with the White House on a
new U.S.-Mexico-Canada
trade deal, a top priority
for the president as well as
many centrist Democrats.
It, too, could get a vote next
week.
Schools: Pendleton High School and Sunridge Middle School are at two-thirds capacity
Continued from Page A1
The studies revealed that
all the elementary schools
are nearing their capacity.
While Marshall said
some schools, like Washing-
ton and Sherwood Heights,
could free up space by con-
verting some rooms into
classrooms, McKay Creek
Elementary School is near-
ing its 295-student limit.
With about 260 students
currently enrolled, the stud-
ies state that McKay Creek
is at “moderate risk” of
exceeding 300 students
within 21 years.
But even if that hap-
pened, Jones said it wouldn’t
automatically require the
district to build a bigger
McKay.
When the district’s ele-
mentary boundaries were
redrawn during the con-
struction of the new Wash-
ington
and
Sherwood
Heights buildings, Jones
said the district intentionally
drew McKay Creek’s area
smaller because of the other
schools’ increased capacity.
If the district encounters
an unanticipated surge in
the McKay Creek students,
Jones said the district could
send some children to the
other elementary schools or
continue to shrink McKay’s
boundaries.
But Pendleton’s sec-
ondary buildings are less
full, indicative of the dis-
trict’s continued decline in
enrollment.
Both Pendleton High
School and Sunridge Mid-
dle School are only at two-
thirds capacity. Jones said
those schools use the rest
of the classrooms for other
functions like computer labs
or clubrooms.
Overall,
Pendleton’s
enrollment is still declin-
ing. The district’s Decem-
ber enrollment report shows
that Pendleton now serves
2,992 students. While the
district typically sees its
enrollment slowly decline as
the year goes on, Pendleton
didn’t see its enrollment dip
below 3,000 in the 2018-19
school year until May.
But the studies’ enroll-
ment projections were rel-
atively rosy, with Marshall
anticipating slow to moder-
ate growth for every school
over the next 20 years.
Some school board mem-
bers seemed skeptical of
Marshall’s projections, and
Jones explained why the
studies’ data might diverge
from what school officials
are seeing on the ground.
Jones said enrollment
data tends to get less accu-
rate the further out it’s pro-
jected, and Marshall’s pro-
jections were based on a
formula that combines cur-
rent enrollment numbers
and U.S. Census data rather
than an intimate knowledge
of Pendleton’s youth drain.
Despite an overall good
score, the studies still listed
some of Pendleton’s mainte-
nance needs.
More exterior building
siding at McKay Creek, inte-
rior lighting replacements at
Sunridge, and a new ceiling
and windows at the Pendle-
ton Technology and Trades
Center were just some of the
deferred maintenance the
district could address.
But added all together,
these maintenance needs
cost millions of dollars, and
Jones said it comes down to
a question of feasibility.