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. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake