Inslee budget proposal seeks more money for mental health

OLYMPIA – While a bulk of Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee’s budget proposal focuses on education funding, he said Wednesday the state’s mental health system must also be on the forefront as lawmakers start work next month on passing a new two-year state budget.

On the second day of his multi-day budget rollout, Inslee called for spending an additional $300 million in the next two years to improve capacity and add staffing. The plan also seeks to move people hospitalized on civil commitments out of the state’s two psychiatric hospitals and into beds at facilities in the community. Western State Hospital – an 800-bed facility in Lakewood – has been plagued with problems, including staffing and bed shortages and is currently under scrutiny by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services over concerns involving patient safety.

Inslee said his plan would “modernize and fundamentally transform how we provide mental health services to Washingtonians.”

“It’s not just about adding funding to the current structure of our system,” Inslee said. “It is about structural changes that will allow us to build a patient-centered system where we’re better able to provide people the right treatment in the right setting.”

The budget also moves to implement recommendations from outside consultants, including adding three mobile crisis teams and two new community crisis walk-in centers where people suffering a mental health crisis can stay for up to 23 hours.

The $47 billion budget plan assumes more than $4 billion in new revenue, with a majority of it – about $3.9 billion – dedicated to education-related costs. The budget also includes $732 million dollar for state employee raises – $500 million of which are under collective bargaining agreements, and it seeks to freeze resident undergraduate tuition at the state’s universities and community and technical colleges.