While Region 8 officials are off to a sweet start in operatingthe crisis center, their arrangement and the facility itself couldcome to a nasty end if next year’s state budget is too slim.

Dave Van, executive director of Region 8 Mental Health Services,said his organization would not continue operating the BrookhavenCrisis Intervention Center if the state cuts the facility’s $1.5million funding amount. All seven of the state’s crisis centers -along with Brookhaven’s Mississippi Adolescent Center and otherfacilities – have been proposed for closure if the MississippiDepartment of Mental Health receives the additional 15 percentfunding cut Gov. Haley Barbour has requested all state agenciesprepare for.

“If the money goes away, the service goes away,” Van said. “That’snot a Region 8 deal. The state contracted with us to save the statemoney, and if the state takes the money away, there’s no Plan B.It’s a state facility – we just agreed to manage it forthem.”

Region 8 began operating the crisis center on Aug. 16 undercontract with the department of mental health. The departmentfarmed all seven centers out to the state’s 15 community mentalhealth organizations, providing the new managers with $1.5 millionto operate them as mental health emergency rooms. The fundingamount for Brookhaven’s center is about $800,000 less than thefacility’s former budget of $2.3 million. The center was fundedwith $2.5 million at its construction.

Van said the new arrangement saved the state around $7million.

Region 8 is already spending “a couple of hundred thousand dollars”of its own money to jump-start the crisis center’s operation thisyear, Van said. Paying for the center in its entirety is not theregion’s responsibility.

“There’s no avenue to recoup any funds on a fee-for-service basis,”he said. “It would be up to the state to fund it, and other thanthat, there’s no Plan B.”

Even if the crisis center were closed, Region 8 would continue tooperate its 24-hour crisis services, taking care of Lincoln Countycitizens’ mental health emergencies on the spot, Van said.

“We have crisis beds inside our mental health centers and we havecontracts with metro-area hospitals with full servicepsychiatrics,” he said. “We’ve never had anybody who went without abed.”

Regardless, Van doesn’t believe the crisis centers will be targetedfor budget cuts.

“They’re too much bang for the buck right now,” he said. “The dealsto manage them were just made last year. That’s the direction thegovernment wants to go – into the community and away frominstitutional-based services.”

Across the street at MAC, director Shirley Miller and her staff areworking on a plan to have the facility recertified to receiveMedicaid reimbursements, which would allow the department of mentalhealth to cut MAC’s budget by half down to around $2 million peryear.

But it may be too little, too late. Besides avoiding the 15 percentbudget cut, LeGrand said his department needs $37 million on top oflast year’s amount to maintain all its services.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we were approached to contract for somesort of service at MAC,” Van speculated.