Editorial Roundup: Alabama

Recent editorials from Alabama newspapers:

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Jan. 28

The Florence TimesDaily on a possible increase in state mental health care funding:

Alabamians in need of mental health care are still slipping through the cracks because of a lack of funding, but that could change this year.

Alabama Department of Mental Health Commissioner Lynn Beshear plans to ask lawmakers for $18 million to create three crisis diversion centers around the state. And Gov. Kay Ivey in her State of the State address on Feb. 4 is expected to outline her goals for improving mental health care.

The pre-session push for change has garnered bipartisan support among lawmakers and leaders from several state agencies. House Majority Leader Nathaniel Ledbetter, R-Rainsville, acknowledged last week that legislators recognize “one thing we’ve failed at is mental health.”

Those failures span more than a decade. Between 2009 and 2012, state officials cut more than 30% from the mental health budget, according to a National Alliance on Mental Illness report, and closed several state-run psychiatric hospitals, including the 54-patient North Alabama Regional Hospital in Decatur.

The resulting shortages have shifted some of the burden of intervention and treatment onto the criminal justice system, which authorities are quick to point out is not equipped to handle properly.

In an attempt to deal with the growing number of mental health patients in city and county jails, officials at the Riverbend Center for Mental Health in Florence have held training for community health law enforcement officers in Colbert, Franklin and Lauderdale counties.

Sonny Brasfield, executive director of the Association of County Commissions of Alabama, said the lack of mental health beds “has put us (ACCA) in a position we weren’t in a few years ago.”

A top priority of his agency will be a push for some $4 million in additional funding for the “Stepping Up Initiative,” which requires counties to develop a referral system with local jails and emergency rooms.

Beshear believes the crisis centers are a logical starting point.

“These centers allow for the most intensive levels of care at a centralized location in a cost-effective manner,” she told lawmakers last week during General Fund agency budget hearings.

Emergency departments and law enforcement agencies would be able to transfer their mental health patients to the centers for crisis care.

“In this country, tragically, the largest mental health hospitals are the prisons,” Beshear said in July 2017 when Ivey appointed her mental health commissioner. “A person should not have to be arrested to get mental health care.”

She’s right, and it’s time legislators take the necessary steps to lift this burden from our jails and emergency rooms.

Online: https://www.timesdaily.com

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Jan. 28

The Gadsden Times on the response to coronavirus:

It’s more than 7,000 miles from Gadsden to Wuhan, China. That’s where health officials say a new strain of coronavirus that has killed at least 80 people in that country was detected on the final day of 2019.

However, we imagine folks here are eyeing the news warily, whether from concern about the bug spreading across the planet or anxiousness about their 401(k)’s and IRAs. (The outbreak has helped send the ever-sensitive stock market spiraling downward.)

That shouldn’t be surprising and actually is quite understandable. Even though China’s population is more than 1.38 billion, 80 deaths in such a compressed time period through something that seems so sinister and insidious is an attention-grabber. There also are fears that China - still a secretive and closed society in many ways even as its economy becomes more capitalistic - may not be telling the whole story there.

Scientists keep harping on how this particular virus has a unique genetic code and hasn’t been previously seen in people, meaning no one has any natural immunity to it, and about how it now can be transmitted between humans.

It also is spreading beyond China. According to CBS News, more than 2,700 patients in more than a dozen other countries have been infected by the bug, including five in the U.S. Given that antibiotics are as useless as water against viral infections, there are fears that there may be no stopping this thing should it really start rampaging.

Unsurprising and understandable doesn’t mean the apocalypse is nigh, however, although some folks seem to look for chances to panic.

Reality check: Coronaviruses cause nasty things like severe acute and Middle East respiratory syndromes that can kill bunches of people. They also cause the common cold. So the “corona” prefix shouldn’t be inherently treated as ominous.

Reality check No. 2: Most of those who have died in China have been at least 50 years old and had other, unrelated medical issues that had compromised their immune systems. In most cases, younger, healthier folks just get fever and a tight chest, or barely show any symptoms at all.

As a Harvard researcher told the Los Angeles Times, “We don’t have evidence yet to suggest this is any more virulent than the flu you see in the U.S. each year.” (You’ve certainly heard admonitions that those who are older and have medical problems are more at risk from that viral ailment, which at least from what we hear anecdotally is rather bad this year. It’s still not too late to get a flu shot, by the way.)

Still, don’t take this as channeling Kevin Bacon in “Animal House,” screaming for the onrushing crowd about to turn him into a pancake to “Remain calm! All is well!”

Health organizations both worldwide and in individual countries are rightfully concerned and properly reacting to this outbreak. However, average folks don’t need to be looking for hazmat or biologically secure suits, or stocking up on surgical masks.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises people to wash their hands, drink plenty of fluids, don’t touch their faces unless they have to, use plenty of sanitizer and cough into tissues or their arms.

Sound familiar? It’s Germ Avoidance 101, and it’s time tested.

Online: https://www.gadsdentimes.com/

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Jan. 26

Decatur Daily on a local proposal that would punish city council members who miss multiple meetings a month:

Apart from paid vacations and sick leave, few people expect to get paid even if they don’t show up for work. So, at first glance it seems like common sense that our elected officials shouldn’t be paid either if they don’t show up for work.

Sometimes, however, common sense requires more than just a glance, which is why we are skeptical of a proposal put forward last week by Decatur City Councilman Chuck Ard.

Ard proposed punishing council members who miss multiple meetings a month by docking their pay.

“It’s important that council members attend work sessions as well as City Council meetings,” Ard said, which elicited agreement from Council President Paige Bibbee.

“Our constituents elect us to represent them at those meetings,” Bibbee said. “We should be there.”

Councilman Billy Jackson, who is the only member of the council so far who has announced he is running for reelection, believes Ard’s proposal is targeting him, a charge Ard denies.

Jackson said he attends council work sessions only when there is an important issue on the agenda. For example, he was at the recent work session in which council members heard from the public about the fate of the city’s ice rink. But otherwise, Jackson says, the 5 p.m. work sessions conflict with his day job.

“I’m self-employed, and these meetings interfere with me trying to provide for my family,” Jackson said. “I can pick up the phone and call a department head and get the information I need.”

When he was council president, Jackson initiated the council’s current practice of holding work sessions separate from business meetings, so as to give council members a chance to further research and mull over issues discussed before having to vote on them. Since then, however, subsequent council leaders have moved the meeting times to earlier in the evening.

We don’t think 5 p.m. is an unreasonable time to hold meetings, but despite Ard’s denial we have to say Ard’s proposal certainly looks like it’s aimed at Jackson, who is a frequent critic of the council’s working majority of Ard, Bibbee and Kristi Hill.

Certainly, Jackson thinks it’s personal.

“They don’t want me here,” Jackson said. “These penalties are just punitive in nature.”

And Councilman Charles Kirby raises good points when he questions what would count as an excused absence.

“Do I have to be in the hospital or out recovering?” Kirby said. “What if I’m sick, like I have been for the last week, or what if I have a funeral? Will I need a doctor’s excuse?”

The idea of City Council members having to get a doctor’s excuse seems comical. To whom would they give it?

And that gets to the heart of the matter. Council members do not work for the council president. They do not work for the city’s human resources manager. And they don’t work for the mayor. City Council members work for their constituents in their home districts.

Council members also don’t work for the city as on-the-clock employees. They are always on duty.

If any council member’s constituents think they’re not getting sufficient representation, they can always vote that council member out and someone else in.

That Jackson’s constituents have reelected him time and again should be a hint that most of them, so far, have been satisfied with Jackson’s performance. With municipal elections coming up this Aug. 25, they will again have an opportunity to make their preferences known.

We don’t need council members policing each other. We have voters to do that.

Online: https://www.decaturdaily.com/