Lawmakers Look to Future With Plans to Avoid Tragedies

By MATTHEW BOWERS

By Matthew Bowers

The Virginian-Pilot

Some issues choose you, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine told an audience recently.

Reforming Virginia’s mental health services wasn’t high on the governor’s list when he looked ahead early this year to the 2008 General Assembly session. Then came April 16 in Blacksburg.

A Virginia Tech senior who repeatedly fell through gaps in the mental health system shot and killed 32 other students and professors and hurt another 27 before taking his own life.

In the eight months since, three university studies looked at school procedures, a panel appointed by Kaine investigated the shootings, a state commission already looking at mental health issues continued with new urgency, and General Assembly committees held hearings focusing on similar mental health issues that the shootings raised.

Not surprisingly, the governor, lawmakers and advocates predict dozens of bills will be filed to bolster mental health services and close those gaps. State Sen. Ken Cuccinelli, R-Fairfax County, said he’ll file 20.

While mental health-related bills likely will make up the largest number of what some call “April 16 bills” – to avoid the more stigmatizing “Virginia Tech bills” – efforts to change gun control laws and to allocate more money for campus security also are expected to be introduced.

And some parents of Virginia Tech victims pledged to make their voices heard in Richmond.

Mental health services already were being scrutinized by a state commission six months before the shootings. But the Virginia Tech horror was a “watershed event,” said Bill Farrington, president of the National Alliance on Mental Illness’ Virginia organization.

“I think there’s a consensus that we’re going to do something on these issues in particular,” said Del. Rob Bell, R-Charlottesville, who will play a key role in shaping mental health reform legislation. “What is the actual shape it will take? I’m hesitant to predict.”

Anticipating a flood, the House Courts of Justice Committee set up a subcommittee – led by Bell – to consider similar mental health bills together, rather than piecemeal. The panel and the House Health, Welfare and Institutions Committee already have held hearings in advance of the session on mental health.

Earlier this month, Kaine proposed a package of reforms – and $42 million to start paying for them – such as adding case managers and clinicians, including those for children, and more emergency services and 24-hour psychiatric consultation.

Other proposals include changing mental health policies and standards, especially lowering the bar for involuntary commitment from an “imminent danger” criteria to the less-stringent “substantial likelihood” someone might cause harm “in the near future.”

In his years at Virginia Tech, Seung-Hui Cho, who was responsible for the massacre, was evaluated several times by mental health professionals after threatening suicide and other disturbing acts but not deemed an immediate danger to himself or others.

“To me, it’s a clarification – it’s not a broadening or a loosening,” said Del. Phillip Hamilton, R-Newport News and chairman of Health, Welfare and Institutions.

Other proposals include creating a different standard for involuntary outpatient treatment, doubling the duration of emergency custody ordered by magistrates to eight hours pending treatment and setting a 24-hour minimum – some have suggested as long as five days – for temporary detention ordered by judges, “to do a more thorough evaluation,” Hamilton said. “So someone’s not just pulling the wool over your eyes for a couple of hours and you turn him loose.”

Gov. Kaine also wants more disclosures of patient information authorized among providers and the courts and the staffs of community services boards – the locally based mental health providers – participating in hearings. This could even be by speaker- phone, Hamilton said, “so they have some understanding of what sorts of services they will be required to provide.”

“And that is to directly address what happened at Virginia Tech,” said Del. Bell, a former prosecutor. “Mr. Cho was ordered to care, and he did not want to go. … There was no follow-through.”

Holly Adams Sherman of Springfield, whose daughter Leslie was killed in the shootings, said she’d rather see lawmakers focus resources on children and education, to identify and head off problems before troubled youngsters reach adulthood, as Cho did.

“I just think there’s so much more to this than a Band-Aid of an extra bed … and a shrink,” she said.

Virginia Tech officials talked with the governor’s review panel but don’t plan to ask for specific bills; they’re letting the governor’s office take the lead, said Larry Hincker, a university spokesman.

Colleges and universities across Virginia also will be asking the General Assembly for money to continue beefing up their security, for such things as extra police officers, more lighting, security cameras, door locks and sirens.

Lawmakers and educators predict they’ll see competing bills seeking to tighten or loosen campus restrictions on guns – but not much change in the law.

Virginia allows each campus to decide policies for its students and employees. Before and after the shootings, Virginia Tech and virtually all of the state’s public colleges prohibited students, faculty and most staff from carrying guns on campus. Only Blue Ridge Community College in west-central Virginia allows students with permits to carry concealed weapons, according to The Associated Press.

Kaine already has used his executive power to add mental health background checks before most gun purchases. He is pushing to close one loophole in that background check requirement: gun sales between private individuals at gun shows . Cho bought the two handguns he used at stores.

Further restrictions will be hard to achieve, predicted Sen. Cuccinelli – the recent election strengthened gun support in the state Senate, he said.

Virginia Tech victims’ families said they don’t want gun issues forgotten in a sea of mental health reforms.

“We’ve got to do something, for God’s sake,” said Andrew Goddard of Richmond, whose son Colin was wounded.

Lu Ann McNabb of Centre- ville, friend of another victim’s family, said they want background checks for all purchases – perhaps with exceptions for transactions within families – and no guns on campus.

“I just think these are reasonable things to do; we’re not talking about taking away people’s guns,” McNabb said. “We just want to make sure this doesn’t happen to any other families.”

Matthew Bowers, (757) 222-3893, matthew.bowers@pilotonline.com

the turning point

Seung-Hui Cho, above, who was responsible for the Virginia Tech massacre, was evaluated several times by mental health professionals after threatening suicide and other disturbing acts but not deemed an immediate danger to himself or others.

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