Last week, Governor Terry Branstad vetoed a funding solution from the legislature to keep the Mount Pleasant and Clarinda state-run mental health facilities open.

Branstad said early in the legislative session that he wanted to close the two facilities because they were outdated and an inefficient use of taxpayer money.  Greene County Supervisor Guy Richardson is a representative on the Iowa Department of Human Services (DHS) and says while it’s not a perfect solution, he supports Branstad’s position.

“While I sympathize with those people that are going to lose their positions at those facilities.  Those facilities simply were outdated (and) they were to a point where they were costing the state way to much money to operate.”

Richardson describes a possible long-term solution that DHS may look at for mental health.

“It’s probably somewhere down the road going to require the building of at least one new facility somewhere in the state.  If you look at far-term possibilities for solutions, I think that’s probably what we’ll look at down the road.”

He adds that the services those facilities had are still available, but more on a local and private provider basis.  Richardson believes that this is a step in the right direction to making services more available now than they were before.