Delegates hope to slow training center's closure

RICHMOND

House budget writers voiced concerns Friday over a plan to close the Southeastern Virginia Training Center in Chesapeake by midyear and move its 165 mentally impaired residents.

Members of the House Appropriations Committee chided Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's advisers for rushing to close the center to save money without a detailed plan for the residents.

"I don't know how we're going to do it in five months," said Del. Phillip Hamilton, R-Newport News. "I'm going to work with members of this committee to do my best to delay the closing until July 1, 2010."

Del. Harvey Morgan, R-Gloucester, denounced Kaine's plan as "precipitous."

Secretary of Health and Human Resources Marilyn Tavenner said she would offer a more concrete plan in a week or two.

The administration says closing the center is consistent with a state policy to shut institutions so patients can live in smaller, more homelike settings. The closing also would save millions of dollars at a time when the state faces a growing $2.9 billion budget shortfall.

The 34-year-old center, a collection of cottage-style brick buildings on 100 acres, has an annual budget of $25 million and 472 employees. Kaine's plan would use $23.8 million that had been designated to renovate the facility to instead develop more community-based services across Hampton Roads, which tend to be less expensive.

Closing the facility would result in a net annual savings of about $8.4 million, according to James Reinhard, commissioner of the Department of Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services.

Reinhard said he has not yet developed a plan detailing where each of the patients would be transferred. He said about 110 patients are fit to go to small community homes and 55 would need to be sent to other centers in the state.

Families of many of the residents of the facility object to the closing, saying it would be disruptive to the patient's lives.

Warren Fiske, (804) 697-1565, warren.fiske@pilotonline.com