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Sen Schiavoni pushes closing inquiry panel bill over YDC plan
YOUNGSTOWN
State Sen. Joseph Schiavoni has proposed legislation that would establish a 13-member commission that would evaluate and make binding rulings concerning proposed closings of state institutions.
Schiavoni, of Boardman, D-33rd, said he has bipartisan support for the bill, known as Senate Bill 62, and that a similar bill will be introduced in the Ohio House of Representatives.
Even if the bill passes in both the House and Senate, however, Schiavoni said Gov. John Kasich might veto it. “We have to be realistic,” Schiavoni said.
The commission would include elected officials, advocates and professional experts and labor-union members at the facility targeted for closing.
The senator was one of several state legislators who spoke at a meeting called by the Mahoning County commissioners to discuss the planned closing of the Youngstown Developmental Center.
Friday’s meeting at Oakhill Renaissance Place was attended by YDC staff and representatives of local agencies serving people with developmental disabilities and county boards of developmental disabilities from around Northeast Ohio.
YDC, which is slated to close by June 30, 2017, has a staff of 272 serving 85 residents with developmental disabilities in seven homes on the campus in Mineral Ridge.
The majority of YDC residents have severe disabilities and need extensive supports in daily living, health care and social-skills development.
Besides YDC, the state plans to close its Montgomery County Developmental Center.
That will leave eight state developmental centers, including the Warrensville Developmental Center near Cleveland, where YDC residents could go.
“We have communities, families and residents that are going to be uprooted,” said state Sen. Capri Cafaro of Liberty, D-32nd, who is co-sponsoring SB 62 with Schiavoni.
YDC’s 14-county service area includes Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties.
The closings are planned because of a drop from 1,600 to 900 residents at the 10 state facilities over the past eight years, with that number expected to drop to 800 by June 2017, said John Martin, director of the Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities.
YDC residents may move to another state facility, a small intermediate-care facility or another community-based residential setting.
Residents’ families have protested the closing of the Mineral Ridge facility, saying their relatives receive excellent care there. YDC staff members have questioned why the center is slated for closing while the state plans to retain older ones that need repairs.
Members of Ohio Civil Service Employees Association Chapter 5040, which represents YDC workers, will conduct a rally to stop the closings of the Youngstown and Montgomery County developmental centers from noon to 5 p.m. today at the Ice House Inn, 5516 W. Webb Road, Mineral Ridge.
“We have people that have lived there [at YDC] for 30-some years. Their parents are elderly. They live in the area,” Margaret Bury, Chapter 5040 president, said in an interview.
Elderly parents of YDC residents may not be able to drive to a Cleveland-area facility to visit their offspring. YDC residents may not be able to adjust successfully to the move to the Warrensville institution or to a community-based group home, Bury said.
“Not every home and community-based setting is appropriate for every level of care,” Cafaro said. “The people that know best are the professionals and the families that are caring for these individuals.”
State Rep. Ron Gerberry of Austintown, D-59th, said what is happening in the developmental-disabilities field today reminds him of the de-institutionalization of people with mental illness during the 1980s.
“We have people that are living on the river. We have people that are living in the Mahoning County jail,” because of that decision, he said.