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Governor talks mental health, education, climate change

By Bridget Mire, The Wenatchee World
Published: October 13, 2018, 6:26pm

WENATCHEE — One option for reforming Washington’s mental health care system is adding more community-based facilities.

But with the state facing $1.5 billion in debt, finding the funding is a major challenge.

“We have a great irony that we’ve got the best economy in the United States two out of the last three years,” Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday, “and yet, we’re going to be $1.5 billion underwater in our budget going into January — before we do any mental health improvements, before we do early childhood education, before we increase the need grant for colleges, before we have an increased budget to fight forest fires.”

Inslee visited Wenatchee on Friday to tour Parkside, a new mental health facility opening this month, visit Central Washington Hospital and participate in a roundtable focusing on mental health. He stopped by The Wenatchee World afterward to talk about goals.

He said difficulties include adding mental health-care workers, getting capital funding to build facilities, and Medicaid reimbursement rates.

“This doesn’t come cheap. These are very expensive propositions to provide 24-hour care to people who are critically in need,” he said. “These are folks who have extremely challenging lives, having a different view of reality and being in fear, and they need a lot of help. When they get it, good things could happen.”

The two state hospitals, Eastern and Western, can’t handle the number of patients in need of mental health care, the governor said.

“We cannot legally discharge people — even though they’re ready for discharge — unless there is some type of appropriate housing and services for them, and there is not,” he said. “Today at Western, there’s probably 150-200 people today ready for discharge, but there’s nowhere for them to go. As a result, they’re at Western unnecessarily, which means we can’t move people out of the county jails who are waiting to get treatment.”

The governor said several courts have ordered Washington to provide better mental health care, and because of noncompliance, the state is paying tens of millions of dollars in penalties. He said the need for reform has received bipartisan support and it’s a high priority for him.

Although he stopped short of making a proposal, Inslee said a carbon pollution fee or capital gains tax are options to consider to increase revenue.

“We have a revenue machine that is built for a Model T economy, and we’re in the internet age,” he said.

Inslee also touched on education and climate change.

He said he wants to make sure special-education students’ needs are met and expand early childhood education.

“Poverty should not be destiny. Your zip code should not be destiny,” he said. “Everybody should be ready for kindergarten and first grade. … In my mind, no better investment to make. No better way to change someone’s life trajectory than to reach them at age 3 and 4.”

In addition, he wants to expand apprenticeship programs to help businesses and deter students from dropping out of high school.

A summer of wildfires throughout the Wenatchee Valley highlighted a need to focus on climate change, Inslee said.

“The science is very clear that our forests will burn more intensely, with more frequent, intense mega fires, because of climate change,” he said. “The evidence is categorically established on this. We have hotter temperatures, we have drier conditions, and it’s going to just get worse. … We will not get another chance to arrest climate change, and if we don’t, these forests are pretty much cooked.”

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