Posted on 08/07/2006 10:37:09 PM PDT by John Semmens
U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton ordered the Schwarzenegger administration to ask state lawmakers for the money to hire hundreds of mental health workers to tend to the needs of the legislators. The order is the latest in a string of actions in which federal overseers are driving reforms in the state’s troubled assembly.
Separate lawsuits have placed federal courts in charge of much of the state’s legislative operations, including safety, employee discipline and health care and mental health systems. Last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Department of Finance estimated that California needed to hire an additional 552 mental health employees to deal with the unstable situation in the legislature, but never asked the Legislature to approve funding.
“Legislators in California’s overcrowded assembly are acting crazy,” Michael Keating, the special master appointed by Karlton to oversee mental health improvements, wrote in a report unsealed with the judge’s order. “They’re like rats in a cage—gnawing at each other, eating their own young. It’s sickening. They need help.”
A record number of legislators have experienced fits of incoherent babbling, many of them in full view of the public. That exceeded the previous record set in 2003. A 1991 class-action lawsuit led to the federal oversight of California’s mentally ill legislators.
Schwarzenegger says he will comply with the court order, but observed “It’s kind of a ‘catch-22’ type of situation. The very same persons who need help may be too insane to approve the appropriation. That’s why I was reluctant to ask them before.”
(Excerpt) Read more at azconservative.org ...
They finally listened to Savage, eh?
They definitely need them
Every Lib should have their own personal shrink.
Typical Leftist response....let the social elitists legislate themselves in mental, moral, and financial bankruptcy, then force the few remaining with some reason of sanity to bail them out with more money, pity, sorrow.
The 9th Circus court has been without a doubt in front of the lunatic stampede now for the last 30 years.
Hell, hire some illegal mental health workers....it'll save the taxpayers lots of money.
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