Douglas County government is asking the Kansas Legislature to be a partner in the county’s ongoing efforts to improve community mental health and to reform its criminal justice system.

The requests are included in Douglas County’s 2017 legislative report, which Douglas County commissioners developed with input for county department heads and the county administrator. The report, which was written before Michelle Derusseau was sworn in Monday to the County Commission, makes a number of requests for increased state funding for such things as local health departments and the expansion of Medicaid and calls for the Legislature to forego meddling in local control manners like easement management. But it also makes multiple requests for additional mental health funding and for measures that would help reduce the incarceration rate at the Douglas County Jail.

County Commissioner Mike Gaughan said a shakeup in the composition of the Legislature after recent elections influenced the county’s legislative agenda. The county’s top priority is that a now more moderate Legislature will address the state’s budget shortfall, he said.

“We’re hopeful this is a Legislature we can work with,” he said. “We have a long lists of requests, but at the top is for the Legislature to get its own house in order and truly address the state’s budget gaps.”

Some of the county’s requests were rewritten from past years’ legislative reports, but new this year is a request that the Legislature exempt community mental health spending from tax lid consideration, said Douglas County Administrator Craig Weinaug.

In the view of Douglas County Commissioner Nancy Thellman it’s only right that the Legislature give the county the ability to determine how much it should spend on community mental health because of the state’s drastic cuts to mental health spending and statements by state officials that mental health services were best provided at the local level.

In July, county commissioners approved an additional $158,000 in the 2017 budget for Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center. Commissioners will be hard pressed to take such an action when they craft the 2018 budget because of tax lid legislation the Legislature passed last year that prevents local governments, absent voter approval, from increasing spending in annual budgets by more than the rate of inflation, except for exempt items like law enforcement needs.

Thellman said the county would like to see the state solve its budgetary and fiscal problems so that it could restore mental health funding and beds at state hospitals.

“Short of that, we’re asking the state not to tie our hands,” she said. “The tax lid legislation understands law enforcement is a critical and necessary public need. We’re saying mental health should be looked at the same way.”

The legislative report also makes multiple requests that the state increase mental health spending, noting that the lack of support for crucial programs and beds in state hospitals contributes to those with mental health issues landing in jail.

Mandatory sentencing

Again this year, the county is asking the Legislature to revisit laws that establish mandatory sentences, which give judges little flexibility. The laws have lengthened sentence times and have contributed to increasing incarceration rates in Kansas prisons and county jails to rates higher than those in many other states, the report states.

The county is also requesting that the state better fund district courts. That, too, would decrease incarceration rates as inmates would serve less time in jail awaiting trials, the report states.

One pre-emptive item asks that the Legislature not look to the counties to help solve state prison overcrowding by sending state correctional inmates to county jails.

Also new to the 2017 report are requests specific to the western leg of Kansas Highway 10, which the county wants expanded to four lanes “as swiftly as possible.” The county requests that any new K-10/Interstate 70 interchange constructed with the west leg expansion provide a link to County Route 438 (Farmer’s Turnpike).

The county is also asking the state to build a new K-10 interchange near Wakarusa Drive before the west leg is expanded to four lanes. The reports state the county is ready to partner with the state in extending a road south of the interchange to County Route 458.

The complete legislative report can be found at douglascountyks.org.