Time to Stop Kicking the Can
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5 responses to “Time to Stop Kicking the Can”
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“…when they had over $300 million in higher ed capital projects, in addition to the Amazon deal, they wanted to authorize.” And the (LED, of course) light bulb comes on! Compare the political constituencies, the political rewards, on these three: a hospital for the indigent mentally ill, fat grants for a world’s richest man and owner of the dominant newspaper, and shiny new buildings on universities campuses. Hell, that decision didn’t even rise to the level of being conscious.
Thanks for the background.
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There are many activities the state engages in that it shouldn’t. But maintaining a facility of last resort for the mentally ill has long been considered a core function of state government. If there is nowhere else to deal with the hard cases, where else do they go? Can our mental health system accommodate them? How many end up homeless? How many end up committing crimes?
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Many of them do commit crimes, primarily minor, “nuisance” type crimes and end up in jails. That has become a major problem–a subject of a post I have in mind for the future.
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While many things have changed, Minnesota’s mental health hospitals used to be largely self-sustaining, at least for non-medical costs. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, my grandfather was chief engineer (stationary) at the then brand-new Moose Lake State Hospital. The hospital ran a large farm for food. Patients were assigned work based their physical and mental conditions. While many patients worked on the farm, other worked in and around the hospital.
Patients performed custodial services, worked in the kitchen and laundry. My grandfather said that a few worked for him on various projects in and around the boiler room.
Today, I suspect legislators and constitutional officers get campaign contributions from the labor unions and contractors performing these tasks. Not all change is good.
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In terms of infrastructure – Mr. Layne knows from his stint at VDOT that building projects in phases – almost never results in lower costs and almost always results in higher costs.
On top of that, when you keep putting off something that should have been done a long time ago – it costs more also.
I would also expect the folks at planning and budget to know that essential truth also.
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