Center for Behavioral Medicine at 1000 E 24th St., seen on Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2023, in Kansas City. Emily Curiel ecuriel@kcstar.com
As Missouri’s deadline to pass next year’s budget approached earlier this month, House Republican lawmakers made a stunning decision to cut roughly $500 million that would have paid for construction projects across the state.
The move has put in jeopardy millions of dollars for education, health care and law enforcement projects. But arguably the most visible cut in the Kansas City area was $48.2 million to help build a new state-owned mental health hospital at the site of the former Belvidere Park.
Lawmakers of both parties have expressed intense anger over the hospital funding cut, saying that individuals with mental health issues are languishing in emergency rooms and jail cells due to a shortage of psychiatric hospital beds.
The $300 million project, initially approved in 2023, is intended to expand the number of hospital beds offered by the Center for Behavioral Health, Kansas City’s current state-owned facility, which is partly leased by University Health. Lawmakers have warned for years that the facility is in disrepair.
“Looks like something out of Shawshank Redemption,” Sen. Lincoln Hough, a Springfield Republican who chairs the Senate’s budget-writing committee, said, referring to the 1994 movie about a man sentenced to life a state penitentiary. “I wouldn’t even want my enemies, you know, housed there. That’s how bad it is.”
Hough, who toured the facility in Kansas City’s Hospital Hill neighborhood a few years ago, called it “an embarrassment to the state” and “deplorable.” He criticized House Republican leaders for cutting funding for the new project, which they did without first notifying hospital leaders or senators who pushed for the funding.
Still, hospital officials with University Health and the Missouri Department of Mental Health (DMH) expressed confidence that the funding will be restored and the project will move forward. That optimism comes as lawmakers want the $500 million budget bill included in an upcoming special session over the future of the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals.
“I have received assurance from, you know, folks at the state that they’re moving full steam ahead on this,” Charlie Shields, the president and CEO of University Health, said of the funding. “I have confidence that we’ll be able to move forward and actually not lose any ground or any time.”
Charlie Shields, president and CEO of University Health, is seen in his office on Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2023, in Kansas City. Emily Curiel ecuriel@kcstar.com
It remains unclear whether the hospital funding will be included in the upcoming special session, which Gov. Mike Kehoe will likely schedule for early June. While Kehoe has vowed to center the session around a funding package to keep the Chiefs and Royals in Missouri, he also told reporters that “everything is on the table of what that special session might look like.”
Kehoe spokesperson Gabby Picard, in an email to The Star, did not give any indication as to whether the Republican governor would include the hospital funding in his special session call.
Kehoe and his team, Picard said, were assessing the impacts of the bill “as well as potential future options for funding these types of projects across the state.”
Will funding be restored?
The upcoming special session is poised to be volatile, with several separate but interconnected issues that could spell doom for both the hospital and stadium funding plans.
In addition to those two issues, lawmakers left Jefferson City last week in bitter acrimony after Republican leaders shut down a Democratic filibuster to put an abortion ban on a statewide ballot and approve a bill to overturn a voter-approved paid sick leave law.
Some Democratic lawmakers have suggested that the only way they would vote for a stadium-funding plan is if lawmakers also restore the $500 million budget bill. The mental health hospital, which received one of the largest cuts in the overall bill, is likely to be at the center of discussions.
“We have hundreds of Missourians that are currently sitting in emergency rooms and in jail cells because they do not have access to psychiatric help in the state,” said Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Kansas City Democrat. “It’s imperative that we pass the funding for these projects…before any conversations begin on stadium funding.”
A plaque dedicated to individuals with mental illnesses is seen at the entrance of Center for Behavioral Medicine on Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2023, in Kansas City. Emily Curiel ecuriel@kcstar.com
The nearly $50 million was intended to help with construction of the planned 200-bed psychiatric hospital. The hospital will increase the number of short-term psychiatric hospital beds in the Kansas City area while also allowing the state to support longer-term patients at the current facility, said Debra Walker, a spokesperson for DMH.
When asked to respond to Hough’s criticism of the current facility, Shields with University Health acknowledged that the building was “value-engineered” when it was built in 2004. The state operates 65 of the beds and houses patients who have been deemed incompetent to stand trial while University Health operates the other remaining 50 hospital beds.
“We have consistent problems with, you know, water coming in from above, which means that we can’t use all 50 beds at any given time,” he said. “We’re, from a capacity standpoint, down to, really the high 30s on any given day.”
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, in an email, said that he was alarmed by the decision to cut the funding, adding that many Missourians in need of behavioral health care come to Kansas City.
“While Kansas City is cautiously optimistic that funding for the new state mental health facility in our city is safe, as Missouri’s largest city we are alarmed by any inaction that would defund mental health investments in towns and cities across the state,” Lucas said.
The need for more hospital beds is dire in both Kansas City and across Missouri. Reporting from The Star has revealed that hundreds of individuals with mental health issues are languishing in jails across the state due to a shortage of hospital beds.
Those people have been charged with crimes, often minor ones, but were found unfit to stand trial until they receive treatment. Due to the shortage of hospital beds, the individuals are often stuck in legal limbo in which their cases can’t progress until they get treated. And they can’t receive treatment until a hospital bed opens up.
For Lucas, city officials want Missourians in need of mental health treatment to receive care that helps them rebuild their lives “rather than languish with addiction and other challenges on the streets and in the jailhouses of western Missouri.”
“Anyone who claims to support public safety in our cities should ensure there is enhanced funding for behavioral health care in Missouri,” he said.
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A reporter for The Kansas City Star covering Missouri government and politics, Kacen Bayless is a native of St. Louis, Missouri. He graduated from the University of Missouri with an emphasis in investigative reporting. He previously covered projects and investigations in coastal South Carolina. In 2020, he was awarded South Carolina’s top honor for assertive journalism.