Slight holdup for mental health region merger

WASHINGTON — County and regional officials say they’ve hit a few snags with a plan to merge two mental health and disability service regions, but still expect to complete the change before their July 1 deadline. If the move goes through, it will combine the Southeast Iowa Link and South Central Behavioral Health regions under one banner, along with Monroe County.

At a meeting last week, Washington County Supervisor and Vice Chair of the SEIL Governing Board Jack Seward Jr. said intergovernmental agreement documents were contested by the Mahaska County Attorney’s office. That government body’s revisions are due by May 30, before a joint meeting of the regional boards to iron out any problems on June 1.

From there, the draft will return to all 13 counties’ supervisor boards for their own votes of approval on a tight timeline.

“The (agreement) needs to have a couple tweaks,” he said. “That revised (document) will come back to the counties for approval. And that approval … needs to happen before the 14th of June.”

Seward did not say what complaints the nearby county raised, and that the agreement had already been approved by another county attorney within the region, as well as a private law firm.

He added that state officials had seen the plan as well, and had not yet mentioned any concerns to the actors involved.

“We thought we were doing the vetting that needed to be done, but another attorney, a legal mind, saw some things that we didn’t see,” Seward said. “Now we’re back to working on the … document itself.”

While there’s no legislation mandating the change, regional officials have said they expect the state to require MHDS regions to better align with judicial district borders in the near future. The proposed combination in southeast Iowa accomplishes that goal for the Eighth Judicial District, with the exception of Poweshiek County, which has opted to remain in its current disability service network for now.

Seward, who is also a member of the statewide Mental Health & Disability Services Commission, said the Department of Health and Human Services was clearly signaling its intent.

“HHS plans to have a consultant group study all of the different maps that have to do with emergency management, public health, mental health, and who knows how many other maps,” he said. “The state is of the opinion that there are too many maps, so they need to reduce them. So that’s what’s coming down the pipe in the near future.”

Washington County Mental Health and Disability Services Coordinator Bobbie Wulf said the intergovernmental agreement was still on track for approval by the start of the coming fiscal year, despite the array of still-unfinished details.

“That allows us time to finish up things,” she said. “There’s still a lot of moving parts right now, which include getting a fiscal agent in place … we have a lot of other things we still have to get completed by July 1.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com