At a Thursday BART Board of Directors regular meeting,
agency officials acknowledged its struggles with people who don’t have
homes and seek shelter by sleeping in BART stations.
Ultimately, the board voted to not endorse the measure.
“There are a lot of groups I highly respect who are
opposing it,” said BART board director Rebecca Saltzman, at the meeting.
Saltzman represents Alameda and Contra Costa counties.
Senate Bill 1045, authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener,
would create a five-year pilot program in Los Angeles and San Francisco
counties to establish a new category of conservatorships for people
deemed incapable of caring for their own health and well-being due to
serious mental illness or substance use disorders.
Business groups such as the Bay Area Council, Hotel
Council of San Francisco, Golden Gate Restaurant Association and San
Francisco Chamber of Commerce are in support of the bill, along with the
California Hospital Association and California Psychiatric Association.
Groups in opposition include the American Civil Liberties Union,
California Association of Mental Health Patients’ Rights Advocates,
Public Conservators, Coalition on Homelessness San Francisco and Mental
Health America Los Angeles.
The bill is now pending action in the Assembly
Appropriations Committee, with a deadline of August 17 to pass it to the
Assembly floor.
Saltzman noted she was “concerned” about the long list of
opponents. She and Director Lateefah Simon abstained from the vote. BART
Board of Directors President Robert Raburn, who represents Alameda
County, voted against endorsing the bill. Directors Nick Josefowitz,
John McPartland, Thomas Blalock and Debora Allen voted to endorse the
bill.
Directors Joel Keller and Bevan Dufty were absent from the
vote. Dufty represents San Francisco and requested the vote to endorse
the bill.
The proposal to endorse the bill failed to net a majority
vote. Jim Lazarus, senior vice president of public policy at the San
Francisco Chamber of Commerce, noted it was an odd vote considering BART
has become a place “just like the streets where people seek shelter,”
including people that are “clearly mentally ill, conservatorship laws
are relevant to the mission of BART.”
He added, “the riding public should be concerned that BART directors did not weigh-in in a timely fashion.”
Notably, BART police would not be able to directly
recommend individuals for conservatorship evaluations, a power the bill
assigns to county sheriffs, director of county mental health departments
or public social services, among others.
Despite this legal barrier, BART Police Chief Carlos Rojas
told the board the agency would be comfortable in calling sheriffs and
other entities to recommend homeless people in BART stations to
conservatorship evaluations.
Josefowitz requested the board be allowed to take another
vote to endorse the bill at its next meeting, when the two absent
directors would likely return. However, he was told the state
legislative session would be over before the BART board’s next meeting —
too late to tell the state how BART feels its ever-growing homeless
population should be treated.
Full Article & Source:
BART board declines to endorse homeless conservatorship bill
1 comment:
Good. It's a horrible idea which could spread across the country like wildfire.
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