Pubdate: Sat, 23 Apr 2005
Source: Blade, The (Toledo, OH)
Copyright: 2005 The Blade
Contact:  http://www.toledoblade.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/48
Author: Ronald Randall
Note: Ronald Randall is a professor of political science and public 
administration at the University of Toledo. In 1998, he coordinated a 
university study that examined funding alternatives for human services in 
Lucas County.

IT'S TIME FOR A NEW APPROACH TO ALCOHOL, DRUG-ADDICTION SERVICES

ETERNAL optimism must be a criterion for employment or membership on
the Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services Board of Lucas County. After
being rebuffed three times in a row by Lucas County voters, ADAS is
considering yet another levy effort. It is time to explore other
possibilities.

A step in the right direction was reported on March 28 when county
Commissioner Pete Gerken got ADAS and the Lucas County Mental Health
Board to agree to a feasibility study for merger.

Both he and Commissioner Tina Wozniak, who has long been working on
this issue, want a study before ADAS brings another levy to the
voters. ADAS is a planning agency for alcohol and drug-addiction
services, and it is responsible for distributing to 17 provider
agencies all state and federal dollars that come to the county from
the Ohio Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services.

Historically in Ohio, alcohol and drug-addiction services were
administered as part of the Ohio Department of Health and Department
of Mental Health.

In 1990, the state created a separate Ohio Department of Alcohol and
Drug Addiction Services and permitted the 10 largest counties to
establish an independent alcohol and drug-addiction agency. After a
major organizational battle that largely escaped public view, Lucas
County elected to establish an independent ADAS board. Without a levy,
ADAS relies almost exclusively on federal and state funding, which is
ever more difficult to garner.

Within the human-services system in the county, there is general
agreement on the need to increase funding for ADAS. Outside the
system, it is a different story.

Persuading voters to approve a levy for drug addicts and alcoholics
has proven impossible in Lucas County. In fact, no ADAS-type agency in
Ohio has ever succeeded with a levy at the polls.

Meanwhile, other human-services agencies in Lucas County are doing
very well. The Lucas County Children Services Board and the Lucas
County Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities
rarely lose levies. Moreover, through the years, they have received
more levy funding than they sometimes spend.

For example, with total revenues of $38.9 million, children services
had a 2003 fund balance of $31.2 million, enough money to have
operated in 2004 for more than nine months without any new revenues.
In stark contrast, ADAS had a negative fund balance at the end of 2003
of $81,000, with total revenues of $9.65 million.

There has to be a better way to fund human services in Lucas County.
It is hard to justify a system that is so generous to certain agencies
and so penurious to others.

Over the long run, serious consideration should be given to an
umbrella levy for all social services, which this writer has
previously advocated on this page.

This would significantly increase the role of the county
commissioners, from doing little more than approving agency requests
to put levies on the ballots to taking charge of these public monies.
In the short run, more modest steps should be considered, such as
Commissioner Gerken's interest in a possible merger of ADAS with the
mental health board.

Many of the clients of ADAS have mental-health problems and therefore
are also served by mental health agencies.

Merging ADAS and the mental health board would not provide an
automatic fix. Additional levy monies for the mental health board
would be necessary to provide adequate funding for alcohol and
drug-addiction services. With the greater credibility that mental
health has with Lucas County voters, that is a likely prospect.

The experience from other counties is instructive. A 1998
county-funded study of human services at the University of Toledo
found that ADAS in Lucas County had the smallest per capita budget of
any alcohol and drug addiction agency in the largest seven counties of
Ohio. The agencies with the largest per capita funding were in the
counties with merged operations.

Recent experience with the two boards demonstrates the importance of
an outside, independent, rather than internal, study.

In the fall of 2003, the Ohio General Assembly opened a window, until
Dec. 31, 2003, for merger of alcohol and/or drug-addiction boards with
mental health without further General Assembly involvement. The two
agencies responded in predictably bureaucratic fashion. ADAS displayed
a bureaucratic will to survive and lobbied hard to prevent serious
discussion of merger in Lucas County. The issue finally reached the
county commissioners' agenda on Dec. 16, barely two weeks before the
deadline.

Testimony was taken from only one speaker each from ADAS and the
mental health board. The ADAS spokesman raised many points supporting
an independent ADAS that deserved a robust discussion.

That robust discussion was not to come from the mental health
spokesman, who chose to say that the mental health board would do
whatever the commissioners decided. No outside comments from the
public were allowed and no action was taken.

A feasibility study for merger makes a lot of sense, but only if it is
an objective study. The record is clear: ADAS and the mental health
board cannot provide an objective analysis.

Whatever the facts for ADAS, it is expecting too much for top
employees in an organization or its board to recommend the end of its
independent existence and reduction in the status and salary of top
employees that accompany that independent status.

The bureaucratic will to survive takes precedence over the quality of
service to clients. And the mental health board has shown that it will
not engage in a serious examination of merger on its own, in order to
avoid accusations of a "hostile takeover."

A serious merger study must be done by analysts or a citizens' task
force with neither ties nor commitments to either agency. Merger
should be viewed as a possible first step in a larger plan to
rationalize the entire human services delivery system in Lucas County.
Eventually, that system should be brought under meaningful control of
the elected officials, namely, the Lucas County Board of
Commissioners.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake