With state officials facing contempt charges and fines, the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee agreed Friday to spend $1.6 million to move 82 criminal defendants languishing in local jails to the state hospital in Pueblo.
The action came after two special prosecutors had asked that Marva Livingston Hammons, executive director of the Colorado Department of Human Services, and Steve Schoenmakers, hospital superintendent, be held in contempt for not carrying out court-ordered mental health evaluations or treatment for the inmates.
Earlier this month, Gov. Bill Owens said he wanted the committee to pass the funding, which the JBC had originally declined to do.
But following pleas from Hammons and Assistant Attorney General Beverly Fulton, the JBC voted 5-1 to appropriate the money.
Rep. Bernie Buescher, D-Grand Junction, said the department will have to come back to legislators in March to request additional funding. If approved, the total amount given to relieve the backlog of criminal defendants awaiting evaluation or care at the state mental hospital will be $3.4 million.
Fulton, who represents Hammons and Schoenmakers, told the committee that the situation was dire. She said the state potentially faced fines of $1,000 a day for each inmate not moved to the hospital and possibly a civil-rights lawsuit.
“This is a crisis,” Fulton told the committee. “When we tell you we are in trouble, we really are in trouble.”
Hammons and her staff said that although an umbrella group of community health centers had suggested they might be able to help evaluate the inmates at a fraction of the cost, they had studied the option and found it unsatisfactory.
She said the types of patients that judges had ordered to the hospital were acutely ill and that the need to move them “is more urgent” than ever.
“We cannot allow the supplemental (appropriation) to be delayed,” she said.
The money will allow the backlog of 82 inmates to be cleared by mid-March, according to Liz McDonough, spokeswoman for the Department of Human Services.
State officials predicted that within a year anyone arrested who needs evaluation will get it without a delay – assuming all additional funding is approved.
Iris Eytan and Marcus Lock, the special prosecutors appointed by Denver District Judge Martin Egelhoff, said the appropriation was a “good start.”
But Eytan said that she believes the 82 inmates can be moved to the hospital within six weeks.
Eytan said that at mediation sessions scheduled to start Jan. 3, she will push for the criminal defendants to be admitted to the hospital as quickly as possible.
Staff writer Howard Pankratz can be reached at 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.
