Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 5, 1995 TAG: 9504050060
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It's not so much the loss of the money - which would help people discharged from state mental health facilities - that bothers some who work with the state's 40 Community Services Boards.
It was Allen's rationale.
In explaining the cut, Allen cited the high salary and benefits packages of some of the boards' executive directors. And he said the boards reported spending more on travel to conferences than on travel to serve clients.
"It's very difficult to understand why for the last 10 years at least, the Community Services Board system has been put up as a model for efficiency and quality of services, and all of a sudden, this takes place," said Mary Ann Bergeron, executive director of the Virginia Association of Community Services Boards. "It doesn't follow."
But Ken Stroupe, Allen's press secretary, argues that it does follow, particularly when 13 of the 40 boards' executive directors get salary and benefits worth more than $100,000 a year - in some cases "more than what the governor makes."
"The major areas of their budgets should be on delivery of services rather than frivolous things such as travel" to places such as Wintergreen and Virginia Beach, he said. "There's no question that citizens are demanding that we reduce excessive and wasteful government spending. There's no better example of that than these excessive high salaries."
Fred Roessel, executive director of Blue Ridge Community Services in Roanoke, was paid about $86,000 during the 1993-94 fiscal year. His total compensation package - which includes salary, travel expenses and dues to professional organizations - was $125,422.
It's wrong for the Allen administration to justify budget cuts, in part, by targeting executive directors' salaries, said Roessel, who has been with the agency 25 years. The agency serves clients in Roanoke, Salem and Vinton and Roanoke, Botetourt and Craig counties.
"If you look at people in my position, the size board we are and the length of time I've been here, I'm right where I belong," he said. "Obviously, some people have a different opinion. But if you look at the market conditions and comparable positions, the salaries are in line."
The board of Blue Ridge Community Services gave Roessel a raise for the 1995-96 fiscal year, but only half of what he'd received in each of the past three years.
Allen's proposed budget cuts were a factor. Allen had proposed - unsuccessfully, it turned out - to cut $20.8 million from the Virginia Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services' $557.3 million budget. The cut would have meant a $6 million reduction for the Community Services Boards.
"I think we were wise enough to look at the political climate with the governor," said Onzlee Ware, Blue Ridge board chairman. "We believed with all of his major cuts and scaling down that we needed to look at the rate of increases. It wasn't that we thought Fred was overpaid. As a practical matter, we had to look at it."
The travel figures cited by Allen were "flat-out incorrect," said Michael Gilmore, executive director of the Rockbridge Area Community Services Board.
The state's 40 Community Services Boards spent an estimated $200,000 on travel to attend educational conferences during the 1993-94 fiscal year. By comparison, an estimated $20 million was spent on travel for clients, Bergeron said. Those figures were based on a sampling of 10 boards that reported $6 million in travel spending for client services.
"If that were 40 boards, I don't know what the total would be," she said. "But no way would they be spending more on administrative travel than they do for client travel."
Also misleading was Allen's implication that the $1.5 million was going directly to the Community Services Boards, Bergeron said. That is not the case, she said.
The funding would go wherever discharged patients from two state facilities - Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg and the Central Virginia Training Center in Lynchburg - chose to live, she said.
The money would be matched dollar for dollar with federal Medicaid funding.
While cutting the $1.5 million "absolutely has an impact on people with mental disabilities, it has less impact on Community Services Boards than it has on these clients," Bergeron said.
Bergeron said her association has encouraged Community Services Boards across the state to talk with legislators and explain actual spending, "so that legislators can say, `In my local area, this is what's true and what's not true.'''
The state's network of Community Services Boards was established 25 years ago to provide services in the community for substance abusers, the mentally ill and mentally retarded.
Memo: ***CORRECTION***