The Maryland Board of Public Works on Wednesday approved the sale of the Spring Grove Hospital Center’s 175-acre campus in Catonsville to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County for a nominal $1, despite concerns from mental health groups that the state lacks detailed plans to replace services provided by the centuries-old psychiatric facility.
该大学的退休校长Freeman A. Hrabowski III告诉州官员，收购邻近UMBC校园的庞大财产一直是他的三十年的野心。Hrabowski说，该大学目前尚无该物业的计划，该物业将在未来几年内将其租回该州。
The psychiatric hospital, the largest in the state’s system with 375 patient beds, will continue operating for the immediate future, but will be closed eventually under the deal and a master facilities plan released last year by the Maryland Department of Health, which owns and runs the facility. For now, though, the health department will lease the property back from UMBC for 10 years with options to extend it up to 10 years more.
Mental health advocacy groups and labor unions representing the hospital’s roughly 800 staffers objected to the sale at Wednesday’s Board of Public Works meeting in Annapolis, complaining that the state health department had not consulted with them and that the agency lacks detailed plans on how to replace Spring Grove’s much-needed beds and services.
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The state has struggled for years with a lack of psychiatric facilities and services, particularly for people facing criminal charges or held in state prisons, and courts have ruled repeatedly that lengthy delays and waitlists for court-ordered mental health evaluations or treatments violate the law.
马里兰州Health Secretary Dennis Schrader said plans to replace Spring Grove will be developed over the next decade or two, but that selling the property amounted to an “action-oriented plan” to move forward. The department’s 2021 facilities master plan calls for patients to be transferred out of Spring Grove beginning in 2032, but does not detail where they would go.
总体规划指出，Spring Grove医院中心综合大楼破旧不堪，有些建筑物可追溯到1800年代初，并且更换或翻新设施以满足适当的现代标准的建筑物将“成本过高”。
州长拉里·霍根（Larry Hogan）的政府提议出售，他投票赞成转让。国家财务主管德雷克·戴维斯（Dereck E. Davis）也是大会任命的民主党人。
民主党审计长彼得·弗朗乔特（Peter Franchot）试图推迟出售，并投票反对这一举动。州长候选人弗朗乔（Franchot）表示，即将离任的霍根政府突然急于转让该物业，并质疑政府对庞大的财产的评估感到困惑。这座占地175英亩的校园就在695号州际公路旁，包括大量未开发的土地，这些土地长期以来一直在开发商中令人垂涎。
州普通服务部副秘书尼尔森·雷哈特（Nelson Reichart）表示，工作人员评估师根据“该地区的可比销售”将土地价值定为2000万美元。但里查特（Reichart）表示，估计处理土地问题的费用 - 拆除大多数校园建筑物的7000万美元，另外4,800万美元用于对历史保护结构进行的必需翻新，约1400万美元来处理雨水问题 - 消除了任何实际价值。
Reichart说，该州没有寻求第二次外部评估，因为官员们感到有信心其他人会得出类似的结论。
Franchot also noted that transferring the property essentially locked in plans to shutter the hospital and said he didn’t understand why the Hogan administration couldn’t delay the transfer until meeting with mental health advocates and community groups or devise more specific plans for replacing Spring Grove’s services.
众议院议长Adrienne A. Jones在批准后的一份声明中表示支持。
“The future of the Spring Grove property has been debated for 20 years. I’m pleased to see this property finally being transferred to a trusted community partner like UMBC,” said Jones, a Baltimore County Democrat. “Our commitment to the Spring Grove Hospital and its employees remains strong and I’m confident in their shared future.”
Lori Doyle, director of public policy for the Community Behavioral Health Association of Maryland, agreed that Spring Grove Hospital has badly deteriorated and needs to be renovated or replaced. But Doyle said the Hogan administration plan for the property “kicks the decrepit can down the road for another 10 years” by leaving the hospital open indefinitely.
Dan Martin, senior director of public policy for the Mental Health Association of Maryland, said Spring Grove has been “crumbling for decades” and that the state should have gone to work years ago replacing or improving facilities instead of allowing conditions for patients and staff members to become “completely unacceptable.”
马里兰州政策与政治
But Martin said neither his group nor other mental health advocacy organizations were consulted on the decision to sell the campus and that they likewise objected to the sale without clear plans for how the state will provide the same services elsewhere.
“几十年来一直没有……空缺的床，也没有计划创建空缺的床，”工会代表医院医生和许多其他医疗保健专业人员的工会后，马里兰州的Rosemary Wertz说。
Wertz称出售为“过早决定”，而没有“详细的行动计划来照顾这些患者”。
公共部门联盟AFSCME委员会3代表Spring Grove的大部分工作人员也反对这笔出售，认为它“在功能上加快了马里兰州最大的州精神病医院的关闭。”
Critics of the move to approve Spring Grove’s sale to UMBC all stressed on Wednesday that they supported the university and saw it as a promising new steward for the sprawling property.
Schrader, the health secretary, repeatedly said that selling the Spring Grove Hospital property is “not the end of the process, but the very beginning” of a yearslong effort to replace the facility’s mental health services. Schrader acknowledged he likely will leave office by the beginning of next year — Hogan is term-limited and not running for reelection — but said “we can get a lot of work done in the next eight months.”
The Baltimore Sun’s Meredith Cohn contributed to this article。