A state senator is accusing Governor Terry Branstad of creating a “constitutional crisis” in Iowa with his decision to close the state-run Mental Health Institutes in Clarinda and Mount Pleasant without legislators’ approval.
Senator Rob Hogg , a Democrat from Cedar Rapids, says it’s time for the legislature “to stand up and assert itself.” Over three dozen employees at the Mount Pleasant M-H-I got layoff notices on Thursday.
“Thirty-seven Iowans told this morning they’ve lost their jobs at a Mental Health Institute that Iowa law requires to be open and operated and apparently the governor doesn’t understand we live in a state that is governed by the law,” Hogg said, his voice rising in anger.
Senator Brad Zaun, a Republican from Urbandale, says he wants to find a way to ensure acutely mentally ill Iowans are able to get adequate care, but he says anger isn’t the answer.
“I know that we, as a body, can come together and do the right thing,” Zaun says. “We’ve got to put politics aside and yelling aside and we need to come together.” Senator Rich Taylor, a Democrat, is from Mount Pleasant and his voice shook with emotion as he talked on the Senate floor Thursday Morning.
“I”m sad. I’m sad today,” Taylor said. “A friend of mine that works at the Mental Health (Institute) in Mount Pleasant texted me early this morning and said she’d received her layoff notice and I texted her back and I expressed my sympathy to her and she said she wasn’t worried about her. She was worried about all those people that needed her help.”
Layoff notices for workers at the Clarinda Mental Health Institute are expected to go out in April.
Governor Terry Branstad said in January that his administration won’t be violating state law if the Mental Health Institutes close, but “significant” prison operations and a military-style academy continue to operate on the M-H-I campuses in Mount Pleasant and Clarinda.
A spokesman for Branstad issued a written statement today, saying “more modern mental health treatment” is better than what can be offered at the two institutions in Mount Pleasant and Clarinda that were “designed for the 18-hundreds.”
