WILLMAR -- Area legislators, frustrated by a lack of communication with state human services officials, plan to clear the air at a public meeting next week.
The meeting will be from 4 to 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Willmar Public Library. It was spurred by a memo sent to employees of adult mental health programs operated by the state, who were notified they would no longer have state jobs at the end of the two-year budget cycle, on June 30, 2007.
Many of the employees formerly worked on the Willmar Regional Treatment Center campus and now work in teams providing services to mentally ill people living in area communities.
The Southwest Mental Health Initiative provides services in 22 counties in southwestern and central Minnesota.
Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson, DFL-Willmar, said he was not pleased that the employees first heard of the pending layoffs in a memo, rather than in face-to-face meetings.
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"I assumed (the Department of) Human Services was negotiating through the unions," he said. "Was I mistaken."
Rep. Al Juhnke, DFL-Willmar, said the memo surprised him, too, because it wasn't brought up when his and Johnson's staffs met with Human Services officials three weeks ago.
"This is new to everyone," he said.
Local officials in the area have spent the past two years planning a new community-based mental health system that includes the services of these teams of state employees, he said.
"As of Monday, (the state) pulled that option away," he said. "That throws out the entire system."
The meeting on Tuesday should shed some light on the reasons for the memo and the change in attitude from state officials, Juhnke said.
"We're trying to make some sense of what's being done," he said.
"It's been very secretive, behind the scenes," Johnson said. "It's frustrating folks and rightly so."
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Johnson said his office was looking at whether the department and its State Operated Services division have the legal authority to make this type of change.
The legislators said the situation for the employees is separate and should not affect the pending sale of a large portion of the treatment center campus to two local companies.
"This is more an issue of lack of communication and respect for the employees," he said.
