RALEIGH — The long-simmering fight over where North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services should build a new state psychiatric hospital broke out into the open on Wednesday, with partisans of the three alternatives — the current Dorothea Dix site in Wake, a Chatham proposal, and the Butner location favored by the Mike Easley administration — duking it out for the cameras. There were wire stories, pieces on the six o’clock news, and indications of additional news coverage to come over the next few days, with a possible vote in a House committee next week.
I have long advocated the construction of a new, smaller, more efficient hospital to take the place of our current facilities, including the aging Dix hospital. In fact, the John Locke Foundation published a report several years ago that examined the various options and presented a course for mental-health reforms based on competition and market forces that has, in large part, been mirrored in the Easley administration’s plan.
But I don’t agree with one of the apparent decision rules for the state’s choice of Butner, in Granville County, to house the new facility. HHS Secretary Carmen Hooker-Odom explained Wednesday that among the considerations was the potential “economic impact” of a new facility in and around Butner. Wake and Chatham counties, the argument goes, are less in need of job creation and economic development than Granville is.
Perhaps this is true. It is not, however, an appropriate justification for the possible loss of patient convenience or of maximum efficiency in state spending.
Frankly, Gov. Easley and state lawmakers should be moving more aggressively to aid the economic development of all North Carolina communities, by reducing state spending more and slicing our high and anti-competitive tax rates. Where they decide to site a single new government project isn’t going to matter that much one way or the other. I find it odd that so much effort has gone into trying to guide this project to this place or that, when far larger issues of economic consequence to the state are being ignored or, worse, mishandled by state officials.
Sound public policy means setting sound priorities. And when deciding where and how to construct government facilities that provide direct services to clients, pretty much the only thing that policymakers ought to consider is how best to serve their clients well at the lowest possible cost.
If that means siting the new hospital closer to urban centers, or closer to the center of the state, so be it. Let’s not work at cross-purposes, here.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.