Kelley Arnold

Six Questions County Leaders Need to Ask
by Risë Haneberg, Dr. Tony Fabelo, Dr. Fred Osher, and Michael Thompson

Not long ago the observation that the Los Angeles County Jail serves more people with mental illnesses than any single mental health facility in the United States elicited gasps among elected officials. Today, most county leaders are quick to point out that the large number of people with mental illnesses in their jails is nothing short of a public health crisis, and doing something about it is a top priority.

Over the past decade, police, judges, corrections administrators, public defenders, prosecutors, community-based service providers, and advocates have mobilized to better respond to people with mental illnesses. Most large urban counties, and many smaller counties, have created specialized police response programs, established programs to divert people with mental illnesses charged with low-level crimes from the justice system, launched specialized courts to meet the unique needs of defendants with mental illnesses, and embedded mental health professionals in the jail to improve the likelihood that people with mental illnesses are connected to community-based services.

With this statement of principles, The Council of State Governments (CSG) calls on Congress to seek solutions to the long-term solvency of the Highway Trust Fund prior to the expiration of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act in 2020. CSG also expresses support for the efforts of states in their traditional role as the laboratories of democracy to experiment with transportation funding mechanisms. And CSG expresses its opposition to any federal legislation or executive action that would eliminate the federal tax exemption on municipal bonds.

WHEREAS, states and communities across the nation are overwhelmed by the current epidemic of opioid abuse and addiction and they are struggling to respond and to ameliorate the problem; and

WHEREAS, the number of drug overdose deaths in 2014 exceeded the number of deaths due to traffic accidents; and

WHEREAS, a secure, reliable and resilient power grid integrating generation resources serves as a foundation of a growing economy and is critical to our national security; and

WHEREAS, regulators, policymakers, and consumers expect generating resources and the grid to perform extremely reliably; and