Most of a $22 million infusion into Colorado’s stressed mental health system — a response by the governor to the Aurora movie theater massacre — is stranded in the courts as the state and disappointed bidders wrestle for the money.
The impasse is frustrating those seeking and providing mental health services in the state, as money approved for expenditure sits idle.
“We desperately need these resources in mental health,” said Rep. Beth McCann, D-Denver. “What I hear constantly from people is that there aren’t enough places to go for immediate help. They often end up calling the police.”
After the Aurora shooting in July 2012 that left 12 dead and 70 injured, Gov. John Hickenlooper pointed to systemic failures in the Colorado mental health system and began developing strategies with the Department of Human Services to prevent future violence and to improve care.
Pieces of his plan have moved forward, but the roughly $18 million centerpiece — a network of walk-in crisis centers and mobile-response teams across the state — is stymied by litigation.
In October, the state awarded grants to Crisis Access LLC to create up to 13 crisis centers, open around the clock and around the state. But, a few weeks later, the state canceled the awards, saying that a review of the bidding process found it was “fatally flawed.”
Crisis Access protested the cancellation to the state and eventually appealed to the courts. It alleges that the state ignored its own procedures and caved in to “inappropriate political pressure from disappointed bidders” and their supporters, including the Colorado Behavioral Healthcare Council.
In late February, Denver District Court Judge Herbert L. Stern III stopped the state from awarding new contracts. Stern called the circumstances surrounding the cancellation “highly suspect.”
“The public is served by a having a state procurement process and government that behaves openly, honestly, transparently and with integrity,” Stern wrote. “There is clear evidence the state has behaved otherwise in canceling the solicitation.”
Colorado Attorney General John Suthers filed an appeal with the state Supreme Court on March 21, asking the high court to clear the way for the state human services department to proceed with a second round of bids.
“The Denver District Court has no authority to enjoin the new RFP (request for proposals), nor does it have the authority to direct the state to contract with any particular vendor,” attorneys for the state argued in asking the court to free up the money.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court denied the state’s petition.
Crisis Access president and CEO David Covington said the partners can’t comment on the pending litigation.
Crisis Access is a Colorado-incorporated partnership that formed in response to events in Aurora and Newtown, Conn., site of a December 2012 mass murder at an elementary school. The partners are Behavioral Health Link, ProtoCall Services and Recovery Innovations, national mental-health service providers that are based in other states.
A member of the committee that evaluated the bids said Crisis Access’ proposals were “the most innovative, most progressive” and most focused on recovery, according to court documents.
Sen. Irene Aguilar, D-Denver, who sponsored legislation funding the governor’s mental health plan, said she asked state human-services director Reggie Bicha to review the bidding process after Crisis Access won.
“As one of the Senate sponsors of the original bill to create this grant RFP, I was dismayed to see that an out-of-state company had been chosen,” Aguilar said in an e-mail to The Denver Post late last week. “The parameters we took great care to put in the bill seemed to have been ignored, and so I made outreach to Director Bicha to express my concern. We were really looking for a partnership building on the infrastructure we have already in the various areas of our state.”
The holdup is frustrating those who provide mental health services in the state.
“It’s a mess right now,” said Tom Olbrich, director of emergency services for the Jefferson Center for Mental Health, which serves Jefferson, Clear Creek and Gilpin counties.
He said it was unfortunate that considerable resources, already approved for mental health emergencies, were tied up in litigation.
At a community meeting Wednesday in Wheat Ridge sponsored by the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Colorado, parents of mentally ill adult children were interested in information about interventions and the role of 24-hour crisis centers.
Maggie Torley, the mother of an adult son with past mental health issues, asked whether there was any way families could encourage state leaders to free up the funds.
“It’s just incredible to me this happened,” Torley told The Post. “When my son had his mental breakdown, we had no idea where to go or what to do.”
People urgently need these services, she said.
Some of the money tied up in court is dedicated to a public-awareness campaign, so clients know which services are available and how to access them.
Dr. Carl Clark, president and CEO of the Mental Health Center of Denver, said there have always been capacity issues in the state mental health system.
“This was one of the biggest infusions of money into the system ever,” Clark said. “I think everyone is feeling a bit frustrated this is tied up in the courts.”
Eric Brown, spokesman for the governor’s office, acknowledged there is frustration over delayed components of Colorado’s mental health overhaul, but there is also recognition that progress had been made on several fronts.
Hickenlooper’s vision has yielded some significant gains, said Dr. Patrick Fox, deputy director of Clinical Services with the Office of Behavioral Health in the human-services department.
A 24-hour statewide crisis hotline will be fully operational within the next 30 days, Fox said. And a 22-bed jail-based facility, where mentally incompetent prisoners from around the Denver metro area can regain competency for trial, opened at the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office on time, Nov. 4, and on budget, $2 million.
At state mental hospitals in Pueblo and Fort Logan, more than 1,300 staff members have been trained in “trauma-informed care,” and rooms have been renovated to provide calming or “de-escalating” environments to help clients cope with the stress of hospitalization.
Fox said a proposal to provide transitional or short-term residential facilities for people leaving psychiatric hospitals is still being developed in collaboration with community partners.
Rep. McCann had sponsored a bill in the House this session to clarify and consolidate the processes of civil commitment for people exhibiting potentially dangerous behavior resulting from drug or alcohol abuse or other mental health issues. The bill was returned to the drawing board Wednesday, McCann said.
One of the bill’s provisions rewrites the burden-of-proof requirement to hold a patient for mental health concerns as someone presenting “a substantial probability” of being a threat, rather than the harder-to-prove “imminent danger.”
Electa Draper: 303-954-1276, edraper@denverpost.com or twitter.com/electadraper
Staff writer Yesenia Robles contributed to this report.
