In his high-priced bid for re-election, Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele is claiming that he’s put “health professionals” in charge of the county’s mental health services, and removed the influence of “political insiders.”
But like most of Abele’s boasts in his glossy mailers, this campaign claim isn’t quite true.
The “political insiders” Abele refers to is the democratically elected Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors, which unfortunately can no longer provide the proper oversight of the county’s mental health and substance abuse services, leaving county taxpayers without the proper “checks and balances.” That function was stripped by the Abele-backed Act 203 in 2014, which was pushed through the Legislature by Abele ally state Rep. Joe Sanfelippo (R-West Allis), a former supervisor.
Act 203 created the Milwaukee County Mental Health Board, which is made up of appointees with experience in mental health services. At this point in time, Abele has the sole power to appoint members of this board.
Sanfelippo’s legislation is very vague about the board’s duties. The board can craft a budget that can only be altered by Abele, and not the county supervisors as part of their budget deliberations. It must only meet six times a year and is required to allow public testimony during just one meeting a year. Unlike county board meetings, the Mental Health Board’s meetings are not videotaped and are not held at the Courthouse. Instead, meetings were held at the Mental Health Complex—they’ll be moved to the Sojourner Family Peace Center this year—and its audio recordings are poor and meeting minutes are brief and posted online after much delay.
So are mental health professionals truly in charge? Well, the Mental Health Board is made up of mental health professionals and advocates who are volunteering their time to public service. But are they truly calling the shots? As the Shepherd has documented for months, the Mental Health Board isn’t operating as an independent check on the Abele administration. The board has no staffers and therefore receives almost all of its information from Abele’s Director of Health Services Héctor Colón and soon-to-resign hospital administrator Patricia Schroeder. These are the very people who the board is charged with overseeing.
What Abele’s glossy mailers won’t tell voters is that he has put the kibosh on the board’s truly independent initiatives. The board approved just one amendment to the 2016 budget that Colón’s staff handed them—$346,000 to pay for the third shift at two community crisis centers so that those having a mental health crisis at night wouldn’t have to go to the hospital or jail. But Abele slashed that request to $150,000 and the board was told that it had no mechanism for overriding the county executive’s cut.
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Even worse, in a rare appearance before the board in August 2015, Abele lied to members when he had told them “you’re going to get what you asked for” in their 2016 budget. Kimberly Walker, the board chair who was appointed by Abele, explained to the board that Abele had “misspoke” during his testimony and “forgotten” about the budget cut. Obviously, if you are planning to cut the only amendment to the budget the board approved, you don’t misspeak and “forget” about this budget cut of more than 55%. It is not insignificant. So much for putting mental health professionals in charge. Abele appoints them, then ignores their recommendations.
But what about the public? Abele and Colón stress that the county’s mental health services are more “community based.” But the Mental Health Board doesn’t hear from the community, including advocates for those with mental illnesses and those who use the county’s services, including the very highly respected Disability Rights Wisconsin. These folks are only allowed to testify at Mental Health Board meetings when members invite them to do so. They can’t simply speak up during board deliberations and offer an independent view of the impact of the board’s decisions—as members of the public are allowed to do at every other meeting of a democratic public body in the United States, like the state legislatures, city councils and county boards. The Mental Health Board simply plays by its own rules.
Look at what happened at the board’s most recent meeting, when the board took the extraordinary step of having a speaker arrested. As the Shepherd reported last month, union rep Dennis Hughes was forcibly removed from the board’s Dec. 17, 2015, meeting and arrested for attempting to tell the board of hospital workers’ concerns about two patients who were scheduled to be transferred from the hospital’s long-term care unit to a group home on West Uncas Avenue after Abele’s administration swore that no sex offenders would be in the Uncas Avenue group home. Hughes stated that the patients, allegedly sex offenders, were making troubling statements to hospital staff and posed “an imminent threat to public safety” before security ushered him out of the room. So much for putting the “health professionals” in charge—Abele’s Mental Health Board won’t even listen to hospital workers who are concerned about protecting residents from the potential threat posed by Abele’s policies.
