State Hospital plan
prompts lawsuit threat,
skepticism

By Mike Yuen
Star-Bulletin

Labor leader Gary Rodrigues is threatening a lawsuit if the Legislature adopts the Cayetano administration's plan to close Hawaii State Hospital and privatize services for its nearly 170 mentally disturbed patients.

But Rodrigues, whose United Public Workers represents 275 nurses, hospital aides and custodial workers at the hospital, and officials of the Hawaii Government Employees Association are not the only ones expressing doubts about the initiative.

House Finance Committee members last night were highly skeptical of many aspects of the recently formulated plan, such as its cost, timetable and whether the public might be in jeopardy with patients released to halfway houses and community-treatment programs.

The plan is meant to convince U.S. District Judge David Ezra that there is no need to appoint a special master to run the state's mental health system.

Ezra has concluded that the state is "grossly out of compliance" with a 1991 agreement with the federal government to improve conditions at the State Hospital. He has set deadlines of June 15 for having a plan in place and for Dec. 20 for the state to show that it has made progress in rectifying the problems.

A decade ago, the Justice Department found that treatment and staffing were inadequate at the hospital, which it described as mismanaged. Moreover, patients' constitutional rights were violated as they were overmedicated and improperly restrained to keep them under control, Justice Department officials discovered.

Rodrigues insisted that, for him, the issue is not protecting the jobs of the hospital's 650 workers, which include 550 who are unionized. They would be retrained and transferred under the administration's bill. Rather, Rodrigues said, it is the administration's effort to seek an exemption from the state's year-old privatization law, which allows government services to be privatized only if it can be shown that the private sector can do the job more efficiently and cost-effectively.

Cayetano's plan "will open the gates to allow other departments to 'dump' their statutory and constitutional duties and responsibilities to the private sector," Rodrigues said.

Rodrigues demanded that if lawmakers intend to pass the initiative, they should include a provision requiring the firing of Health Director Bruce Anderson and all administration officials touting the privatization plan if it fails.

"They intend to have a plan in effect and making progress by Dec. 20, yet they couldn't get one in place since 1991. It is amazing to me! It shows that they're not doing their job!" Rodrigues told the Star-Bulletin.