WA cuts funding for new Vancouver behavioral health campus

VANCOUVER, Wash. — A brand-new behavioral health campus in Vancouver is nearly ready to open — with landscaping and signage in place — but will sit empty for the foreseeable future as lawmakers cut funding for the facility in the state budget.

The Brockmann Residential Treatment Facility is currently under construction and was supposed to serve 48 patients across three 16-bed facilities on the campus.

But the $42 million facility, which is scheduled to be completed in June, has no opening date. The Washington Legislature instead opted to fund a “warm closure,” paying staff to maintain the facility and property but not to open for patients.

It’s the latest in a series of brand-new Washington behavioral health facilities that haven’t been able to fully open in recent months, despite millions invested in their construction. While state lawmakers have spoken about the importance of building up smaller behavioral health treatment centers around Washington, bureaucratic hurdles and funding shortages frequently have forced them to delay or indefinitely halt admissions.

The cuts that led the state to halt admissions at the Brockmann facility stemmed from the state’s $16 billion budget shortfall, although lawmakers did not announce plans to remove funding for the treatment center earlier in the session.

Cynthia Shipley, a spokesperson from the Department of Social and Health Services, which would have operated the facility, said the agency did not know in advance about plans to cut the operating budget for the behavioral health campus.

Sen. Manka Dhingra, D-Redmond, said the cuts shouldn’t have any immediate effects, as projections from DSHS show that the state has enough beds for the next year or two.

“This was one of many difficult calls our budget writing team had to make,” Dhingra said in an email. “But delaying the project rather than cutting it will allow it to be completed when we are on stronger financial footing. Meanwhile, the available beds should provide some assurance for patients and the staff who do this important work.”

Sen. Adrian Cortes, D-Vancouver, said that he and other lawmakers plan to revisit the issue in a year or two to see if they can fund the center’s opening.

Cortes said his constituents were excited to have the facility open, as it “addressed a need in the district and beyond.”

He said he’s not worried that the delays will cause the state to lose momentum with its behavioral health goals.

“Mental health and all the components that touch it are such in need,” he said. “I think restarting (the funding process) would be a priority on any legislator’s plate, or at least it should be. It is certainly on mine.”

But the cuts illustrate the bigger challenges with trying to build out the state’s behavioral health system, particularly as it tries to shift the role of Western State Hospital and find placements for patients no longer served there.

In 2018, then-Gov. Jay Inslee announced a plan to revamp the state’s behavioral health system. Part of the plan included shifting all the patients committed through the civil court system — those not charged with crimes but found by a court to be ill enough to need long-term hospitalization and treatment — out of Western State Hospital and into smaller community treatment centers around the state.

But as the state has slowly constructed new buildings, and as local governments and other operators also build out elements of the system, they’ve run into a few consistent challenges — most related to funding and staffing.

The Brockmann facility is set back off a rural Vancouver road, in a field now blooming with spring flowers. A high school and some homes sit nearby.

It was supposed to take civil commitment patients from Western State Hospital, said Shipley.

But when the Legislature passed the budget last month, it included funds for a “warm closure” for the campus — $595,000 over the next two years to pay a few staff to maintain the facility and property. But the budget included cuts of more than $74.4 million in state funding for the facility.

Shipley said that means DSHS will be unable to hire staff or accept patients into the facility “for the foreseeable future, until operational funding is provided.”

Community leaders and lawmakers haven’t hidden their frustration in recent months about having brand-new behavioral health facilities sitting empty or largely empty.

Crisis centers around the state, meant to be walk-in facilities for people in need of immediate behavioral health care, are among those that have faced obstacles: Some centers, like one in Lynnwood, haven’t been able to open because local officials can’t find an operator who can make the financial model work.

“I have a finished, beautiful, done, painted, furnished behavioral health facility for crisis services in my district, and a behavioral health crisis raging outside, and it’s empty,” state Rep. Lauren Davis, D-Shoreline, said in February about the Lynnwood center.

One of the biggest new projects in the state also faced obstacles: Earlier this year, UW Medicine announced it had temporarily halted admission to its Center for Behavioral Health and Learning. The university said it was unable to bring new patients in because it couldn’t find adequate legal representation for patients in court. The King County Department of Public Defense said it was overwhelmed with cases and didn’t have enough funding to take on new ones.

Gov. Bob Ferguson stepped in and directed the state Office of Public Defense to begin assisting with cases immediately, and a bill sponsored by Dhingra passed this session to offer more options to county public defenders.

But a few months later, UW Medicine said it was laying off one-tenth of its staff at the new facility, due to low numbers of patients coming in.