County supervisor decries shift in mental health funding

The Legislature’s passage of a bill that moves mental health funding from counties to the state could have a negative impact on counties, according to a Washington County supervisor.

Supervisor Jack Seward Jr. said Wednesday morning that the bill that passed Tuesday ends the funding of mental health services through county property taxes.

“Mental Health and Disability Services revenues will no longer be collected through property taxes,” Seward said. “If the state is going to take over, they’re going to have to fund that amount of money somehow.”

Seward said that it was his understanding that the legislation passed as a property tax relief bill.

“From my understanding is that their argument is that social programs — which they believe Mental Health and Disability Services is a social program — ought not to be paid for by property taxes,” he said.

Instead, the state will now fund Mental Health and Disability Services.

“Where’s the money going to come from?” Seward asked.

He pointed out that another part of the bill eliminates “backfill” to counties.

“Several years ago, there was an effort to equalize property tax rates between businesses, private homeowners and ag land,” Seward said. “The counties were going to lose revenue. Because of the loss in that revenue, the services that each county needed to provide to citizens were going to be cut. That didn’t go over too well, so the backfill was proposed and passed so that the counties were held harmless by what the Legislature did with equalizing property taxes.”

Since 2013, the state has paid the backfill to counties to make up for the loss in property taxes.

With the newly passed legislation, those backfill payments will end, leaving counties with less money.

Seward said that the state believes it will save $400 million by eliminating backfill payments.

“I suspect, that is probably where some of the money for Mental Health and Disability services is going to come from,” he said.

With less money coming in, counties will be faced with either raising taxes or cutting services.

“You’re going to lose services,” Seward said. “We’ll have to look at cutting back and saving money on other services that we provide.

“If we have to raise taxes to pay for it, maybe people won’t be so happy about that.”

Ultimately, the Legislature’s property tax relief could result in a rise in property taxes, Seward said.

“If you take mental health and disability services out of property taxes, it’s going to have a fallout somewhere else,” he said.

Another frustrating aspect of the bill, according to Seward, is the loss of local control.

“I think that government should be responsive to the needs of the people,” he said. “Decisions that affect the people should be made at the lowest level possible.

“In the particular case, we at the county level should take care of our most vulnerable population, which to me is the people in the mental health and disability classification.”

He said that making decisions at the local level is far better than the one-size-fits-all solution that is coming from Des Moines.

“We answer directly to the voters on how we take care of our people and how we’re good stewards of the taxing authority we have,” he said. “When the state takes over, we lose that focus. We in the counties and in the regions are better able to know what the people need and tailor the services that we can offer.”

Since 2014, counties have partnered with other counties to form regional authorities to provide Mental Health and Disability Services.

Washington County is part of an eight-county region called the Southeast Iowa Link (SEIL) region.

“When the state mandated regions, they put in guidelines for core services, core plus services and optional or excess services,” Seward explained. “You had to document what you weren’t providing and why.”

Two of the core plus services that SEIL provides are a jail transition program and drop-in services.

“Those are things that we found in Southeast Iowa to be very important to our citizens,” Seward said.

Now that the state will be providing the funding and guidelines, those types of services could be jeopardy.

“Because the state is going to take over, we’re going to lose our say in how that money is spent locally,” Seward said. “The property tax buy-in was our way of maintaining some control and determining what we need. That’s the basic part of it.”

His main concern is taking care of the people who need these services.

“They are our local citizens; they are our neighbors; they are our friends; they are our relatives,” Seward said. “We need to do what we can to take care of them the best way that we can.”