Bedlam On Low Gap

Some call it a debacle, others a fiasco — pick your adjective — but the escalating disaster of the County’s privatized mental health serices is now so severe that two judges, Ann Moorman and John Behnke, have ordered Ortner Management to court to explain the clusterfuck at the jail.

In July of 2013 Mendocino County became the first county in California to outsource mental health services to a private company. The raffling off of governmental services  is ordinarily a specialty of Republicans, but how and why a Board of Supervisors, chaired by liberal herd bull Dan Hamburg, in an overwhelmingly liberal county like Mendo, blithely handed off a traditional government responsibility to an incompetent private Yuba City business is mystifying.

A preliminary word about Supervisor Hamburg's relationship to both Ortner and the Superior Court of this mutually back-rubbing county.

With mentally troubled persons stacked up at the County Jail last year, Hamburg's troubled son, represented free of charge by then-County Counsel Doug Losak, jumped the line, courtesy of Losak and Ortner, and was placed in Ortner's intensive care facility in Yuba City. Then, when it came time for Hamburg, a wealthy man, to pay his fair share of this expensive, tax-funded, County-sponsored sequestration, the Mendo Superior Court waived fees.

And that, dear reader, is the way this county works. The publicly-employed libs, including the libs sitting as judges, all know each other, look out for each other's personal interests, hire each other, constantly tell the rest of us how wonderful they are. They call the tune in Mendocino County.

And here we are with the unconnected mentally ill untreated and languishing in the non-therapeutic confines of the County Jail. (Supervisor Hamburg, of course, sits on the County's Mental Health Board where, with his own little service dog dozing in his lap, the Supervisor, who specializes in theatric anguish, always looks on very, very concerned.)

Whether all the wine and weed has caused an increase in local crazy people is not germane. The point is, Ortner, in return for $7-8 million public dollars annually, was supposed to handle the competency evaluations at the jail but has failed to fulfill his contract.

Let’s put a human face on the logjam and see what it looks like down at the jail:

Corey Allen Heine, Daniel Curtis Bettencourt, Robert Edward Verville, Shawn Carolyn Balictar, Brent Michael Haas, Pablo Benitez Mora, Diane Donna Zaccaria, John William Driggs, James Dalton Jenkins, Robert Garver Ficarra, Eric Roland Wright, Robert Ed Taylor, Jacob Eugene Sellmer…

These folks have been trapped at the jail, awaiting mental health services for so long they’re almost timed out, meaning back to the streets to begin another round of catch and release. Don't expect Ortner to provide interim mental health services.

Under 1368 of the Penal Code, Ortner is supposed to conduct examinations of the jailed mentally ill. These exams are called competency trainings. Are these people well enough to stand trial or, as is more likely, well enough to understand that they're in jail for having committed a crime, invariably of the misdemeanor type? (In living fact, any cop knows who's nuts and who isn't, but in our system liberal arts grads gotta get their share of the dough thrown at the mentally ill. Enter jackals like the Ortner Management Group.)

The required jail evals haven't been happening, and Judge Behnke, before he went on vacation last week, fired off a show cause order to Ortner that requires Ortner to explain why it hasn't been happening. Unfortunately, Ortner himself will be spared a court appearance. His surrogates, Tom Pinnizzotto and Stacy Crier, will do the talking for him.

A new hire at the County Counsel's office, but long-time Ukiah attorney, Katherine “Kit” Elliot, appeared in Judge Moorman's court Friday to make excuses for Ortner's dereliction. With an F sharp voice not far from finger nails and blackboards on the noise meter, Elliot assured the judge that there was indeed a competency restoration program in place at the jail, and there was nothing, nothing really, nothing to worry about, nothing at all and blah blah blah.

“Yes, we’ve had some setbacks, nothing serious, and Gay Holden is supervising that program now. There was only one little problem we had with Mr. Pablo Mora* in that we didn’t have a Spanish translator to translate some of the materials into Spanish. But that’s all taken care of now. We have Maggie Jones, and she’s been able to obtain a translator. So everything’s fine, just fine, only a matter of time, that’s all.”

On page five of Exhibit A, paragraph eight, of the County’s contract with Ortner, it says that Ortner “will provide cultural competence. The Contractor will provide an Ethnic Services Coordinator to manage all cultural competence requirements… will utilize industry experts to augment annual training for target populations in Mendocino County.”

Did it take the County two years to realize that Spanish was spoken by lots of people hereabouts?

The contract includes this Mendo-mandatory clause: “Areas of focus in the implementation of the cultural competence plan include, not limited to, eliminations of the disparities in service delivery to special populations (Latino and Native American clients.)”

Both the District Attorney’s Office and the Office of the Public Defender have been negatively impacted by Ortner’s failures to evaluate the County's incarcerated mentally ill.  Most of the people pictured above are clients of the Public Defender. No surprise there. The lawyers in Public Defender Linda Thompson’s office are the lowest paid lawyers around. Understandably, they become highly irritated with the Ortner people who bill the County $4.82 per minute to “restore competency” (mainly dispense "antipsychotic" meds) to their clients, under the rubric of “Medication Management and Support.”

Ms. Elliot didn’t address the reason the other 12 defendants were not being restored to competency – only Mr. Mora. Judge Moorman, bullshit detector hitting on all cylinders, told Elliot that Her Honor wasn’t impressed with her excuse(s).

“I’m going to order you, Ms. Elliot – along with Mr. [Health and Human Services Assistant Director Tom] Pinizzotto to appear in this court on Tuesday”—

“Sorry, judge, but can’t we make it. Wednesday, instead? Ms. Crier would be a better choice to appear with Mr. Pinizzotto, so if we could make it the 21st I’d feel a lot better about it.”

“Alright, Wednesday, October the 21st at 1:30 or I’ll hold Mr. Pinizzotto in contempt. There has been a failure of due diligence and I will not tolerate this situation to continue.”

The judge read off the names of the defendants listed above then said, “And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You send this message back to Ms. Crier and Mr. Pinizzotto or whomever, but I’m going to start leveling fines. Have I made myself clear?”

An F-sharp squeak indicated message received, and Ms. Elliot blushed her way out of the courtroom.

Anthony Adams of the Office of the Public Defender has been Linda Thompson’s point man on the competency restoration issue. He sent me this email:

“Good afternoon, Bruce. You asked me to provide some additional information concerning the issues surrounding our County’s mental health providers and the competency training that is supposed to be taking place in our county jail.

“By way of background, once Defense counsel or the Court forms the belief that a criminal defendant is not capable of understanding the nature of the proceedings, the nature and/or consequences of the charges against them, and/or the client is unable, due to some diminished capacity, to assist their counsel in their own defense, a doubt concerning the criminal defendant's competency to stand trial is declared. Once that declaration is made, the Court will suspend the criminal proceedings in order to have a psychological evaluation done to determine whether competency to stand trial exists.

"Should the assigned psychologist determine that a criminal defendant lacks competency, and if the court adopts that finding, the question of how the defendant might be restored to competency is broached. In those instances where the defendant is facing felony charges, any restoration must occur at a State Hospital by operation of law (technically, non-violent felonies can receive outpatient treatment although this office has never seen it happen with our clientele).

"However, if the defendant's criminal charges are misdemeanors, the court has the option to assign County Mental Health Services to attempt restoration in the County Jail. In Mendocino County, the availability of local restoration training is a function of work done by local providers to develop and adopt protocols for restoration.

"Those protocols were developed, in some measure, to help stabilize a defendant's mental health as quickly as possible as well as to minimize the amount of time and resources it would otherwise take to restore a person to competency should that person have to be sent to an outside organization or agency for such services.

“Notwithstanding those goals, there have been a number of recurring problems that have frustrated the goals of expedited stabilization and restoration. Routinely taking between three to six months, the process for restoration has been lugubriously hindered by poor communication between all of the respective interested parties, by inefficiencies in the protocols (or sometimes the absence of protocols), and, arguably, general mismanagement by those assigned to the restoration process.

"Once a client's mental health has been substantively stabilized, the competency training itself can be accomplished in very little time (within a week or two in many instances).

“As you saw today in Court, Judge Moorman has grown increasingly frustrated by the delays in restoration and has subsequently ordered Mental Health and County Counsel to be present in court on Wednesday the 21st at 1:30 to provide an accounting for the seeming inefficiencies and delays.”

Judge Moorman also noted that the failures of due diligence on Ortner’s part had crippled the DA’s ability to protect the public. Ortner, for a buccaneer of free enterprise, isn't very good at it. Everyone directly effected by his alleged services is complaining that mental health services in this county have never been more faulty, if they exist at all.

Judge Moorman will cut through the fog sure to be run out in court by Pinnizzotto and Crier.

We'll be there.

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* Pablo Mora, whom I've known from years on the streets of Ukiah, was timed-out and released later the same day. He's something of a pest to downtown businesses. I've seen him in action: "Gimme a cup of coffee, fucker, or I'll bust your windows." His English is fluent, by the way, right down to current profanities.  And he spits like a camel! Mora can shoot one in your face from halfway across the street if you tell him to knock it off. I went around the downtown area and tried to warn some of the business owners that he'd been released, but they were way ahead of me on that bulletin, battening down the hatches, calling in bouncers, distributing latex gloves, Tyvek suits, and surgeon's masks. Pablo's loose!

Thank you, Mendocino County, thank you Tom Ortner of Yuba City for giving us the worst mental health services for the most money in California.