BREAKING: Hartman out at Mental Health

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Green Mountain Daily has learned from multiple sources that Michael Hartman will not be reappointed to serve as Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health.

At this time no information is available as to who will be chosen.

The Department of Mental Health has had a rocky path during Jim Douglas's term in office, moving from Waterbury to Burlington and back, moving from being an independent department to a division of the department of health and back, and constantly struggling to regain Medicare and Medicaid certification, lost after two patients committed suicide at the State Hospital in 2003.

Advocates have been critical of the Douglas administration's approach, pointing out that they have had no clear direction, no substantive plan to either fix the problems at the State Hospital or replace it, and have treated the patients at Waterbury in a way that no other chronically ill population would have been subjected to.

Despite a letter-writing campaign to keep him, Hartman's departure is no surprise. Earlier this year legislators were furious when the administration sat on the news that VSH had once again lost its certification, even though they knew it was going to cost the state millions of dollars in lost federal funding and the legislature was debating the final budget, which included the money from Medicare and Medicaid.

Back in March I made this observation about the State Hospital mess and the Douglas administration:

Second, when is this going to start costing Douglas? The Hospital has been decertified almost continuously since 2003, or almost the entire time that Douglas has been governor, and his administration has essentially done nothing about it. At least, nothing but waste time, come up with unrealistic and unfeasible plans, and we're no closer to a replacement for VSH than we were seven years ago. You walk around the State House and legislators of all parties are openly scornful of the idea that the administration has any kind of plan to do anything, anytime.

Could it be that Michael Hartman is the one Douglas administration official to pay any significant cost for the failures of the outgoing governor?

8 thoughts on “BREAKING: Hartman out at Mental Health”

  1. Jim = jobs was looking at moving the state hospital function to his campaign bankers in the hospital world for years…  

    Even now the discussion on the service level in the mental health world between the need for the emergency crisis resonse and the long term unstable community needs to be addressed.   The current 15 bed new facility plan will be constantly filled by the repeat med refusers and repeat offenders, while the folks who need immediate care who are just in need of short term help will be traveling all over the state as a bed becomes open in the private hospitals.  Finding a bed last week was a challenge.  Finding a bed with a significantly reduced state hospital resource will be much more of one.  Jim seemed to have a default policy of letting Corrections Corporation of America take care of all of our society based problems… out of sight out of mind….  

    Just another example of lipstick on a pig when it comes to his legacy.

  2. Jack,

    Appreciate the news, which is good news of course and I also hope there will be either a new deputy commissioner or — even better — none at all, since during these poor economic times I have been arguing how there does not need to be all these deputies given that we cannot afford them ( at least at the commissioner level anyway) and they are not as needed or justifiable compared to other direct care positions or having funds available to address the needs of those most in need.

    Just wanted to let you that the first two embedded links you provided do not function correctly, landing instead on an error page.

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