State Mental

After years of false starts, the county administration will introduce legislation tonight in the County Council that would create an agency to better coordinate mental health services.If the council approves the bill, it would allow the county executive to create an independent core service agency to allocate nearly $7 million annually from the state Mental Hygiene Administration. The private, nonprofit agency also would be able to seek new funds through state, federal or private grants and create new programs and services.

Maryland State Police are training 10 K-9 dogs and their handlers at a facility the department opened at Springfield Hospital Center about two months ago.Residents are concerned that they were not notified about the K-9 school. They also are worried about other potential uses for the hospital campus that have surfaced recently.Despite a year-old promise from the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to keep South Carroll residents informed of events at Springfield, residents say they learned of the K-9 school only a week ago -- from hospital employees.

State health officials reviewing the escape from Crownsville Hospital Center last week of a suspect in a carjacking say he would have been sent to a more secure facility for an evaluation had they known of allegations of recent violent crimes.Doctors at Crownsville, where Shawn A. Chowanetz, 30, was sent for a psychiatric evaluation, thought they were dealing with a man charged with felony theft and traffic violations, according to Oscar Morgan, interim director of the state Mental Hygiene Administration.

Columbia-based Magellan Behavioral Health and the state of Montana said yesterday that they had agreed to cancel a pioneering contract in which Magellan was managing mental health care in that state.Laurie Ekanger, director of the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, said the program, started by another company acquired last year by Magellan, suffered from "ill will, bad publicity and frustration" that led to a "concerted effort by a lot of interest groups" to have the contract canceled.

Tax breaks from city would help hotel and hurt taxpayersThe editorial supporting the PILOT bills in the General Assembly ("Tax breaks for developers," March 17) is badly misguided. Baltimore Circuit Judge Richard T. Rombro ruled last November that the proposed Wyndham hotel could not get the PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) that the city council had given it because the Wyndham would not be on city-owned land. This tax write-off would amount to between $70 million and $95 million over 25 years.

Davis deserves confirmation Professor Carl Tobias' article in Tuesday's paper ("Fill the 4th Circuit's vacancies now," Oct. 6) is right on the money. Judge Andre Davis is in limbo all because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will not push for a full floor vote to elevate Judge Davis to the 4th Circuit, thus leaving "only" four other vacancies. I used to believe the federal judiciary was the most efficient branch of government in the history of the world. But now Senator Reid is in effect telling the poor saps on the 4th Circuit, "Dig a hole six feet deep; just don't use a shovel."

An Eastern Shore jury's decision to sentence to death a mentally ill man who admitted killing two police officers sets the stage, some predict, for a debate over both capital punishment and a state mental health system that critics say has collapsed. Public defenders who will work to block the execution of Francis Mario Zito, 43, wondered yesterday how jurors could have ignored his well-documented history of schizophrenia, which dates back to his childhood. "A lot of mental health issues raised in this case ought to be of concern to people on both sides of the death penalty," said Katy C. O'Donnell, chief of the state's capital defense division.

A patient at the Clifton T. Perkins mental hospital in Jessup is being charged with murder after another patient was found dead in her room Sunday morning with a string tied around her neck, state police investigators said. Maryland State Police are expected to charge El Soundani El-Wahhabi, also known as Saladin Taylor, in the death of Susan Sachs, 45, also a patient at Perkins. Sachs was found face down in her bed about 8:30 a.m. by a nurse who went to check on her after she didn't show up for breakfast.

Thank you for your coverage of the increasing violence at the Clifton T. Perkins state mental hospital ("Perkins patients tough to treat: Shift from hospital care mean many have prison experience," Nov. 21). I have been watching a similar set of cases in the California state mental hospital system and these may point to where Perkins is going unless it resolves its staffing issues quickly. In October 2010, nurse Donna Gross was murdered at Napa State Hospital. She had taken a patient outside the building to another unit when she was strangled.