YOUTH CENTER'S FATE ARGUED IN HOUSE

Ford Says Community-Based Programs Can't Replace Residential Treatment

COLUMBUS - Employees of the Maumee Youth Center told a House subcommittee
yesterday the facility is the best at what it does.

"Fifty-nine of our population received their GEDs last year," said Maumee
training officer Terry Stiger. "You won't find that number at other
institutions. ... Don't close a facility that has done so much for so long."

But the director of the Ohio Department of Youth Services told the House
Subcommittee on Transportation and Public Safety that a fenceless,
medium-security facility for low-level felons next to federally protected
wetlands and a state forest no longer fits the department's long-term needs.

The department has proposed closing the 35-year-old, 120-bed juvenile
detention center in Henry County's Washington Township to save about $9.4
million a year. The center specializes in residential treatment for
juveniles with drug and alcohol problems.

Director Geno Natalucci-Persichetti told the committee the youth center
recently failed an accreditation audit for the first time, in part because
the camp-style facility is not designed to deal with the changing face of
juveniles being sent there.

The low-risk offenders Maumee was designed to handle are more often dealt
with in community programs, he said. Those being sent to the facility tend
to be older and greater security risks.

"I cannot fill these beds," he told the subcommittee. "There are currently
98 people in this facility. It would be better to expand substance abuse
treatment centers at the other facilities."

But the employees countered that Maumee had always operated at or near
capacity until the state made the decision to close it earlier this year.
They said the facility's accreditation failure was primarily due to
facility maintenance.

Maumee is the last unfenced facility in the DYS system. Its closing would
mean the reassignment, early retirement, or potential layoff of about 160
employees.

"There's a road on one side and a state forest on the other," Mr.
Natalucci-Persichetti said. "We would have to get permission from every
level of government to cut down hardwood forest and invade wetlands. We
were advised that wasn't going to happen."

After the hearing, Mr. Natalucci-Perscihetti said, "I don't want a
17-year-old who shouldn't have been there escaping and doing something in
the community."

The system as a whole is currently operating 19 percent over capacity. Half
of the 200 beds at a new maximum-security facility at Marion have yet to
come on line, and 120 beds at a southern Ohio facility are expected to open
soon.

House Minority Leader Jack Ford (D., Toledo), who once ran a substance
abuse treatment program, argued that community-based programs can't replace
residential drug and alcohol treatment.

"At the Maumee Youth Center, ... you can work with them in a 24-hour-a-day
atmosphere," he said. "You have them for months and you can really turn
them around.

"This is a net loss of 120 beds when, in fact, you need a lot more beds
than that," he said.

Employees and proponents of keeping the facility open plan to rally at the
site Saturday at 1 p.m.

The governor has proposed increasing the department's budget by just 0.8
percent in 2001-02 to $238 million. The budget would climb 4 percent in the
second year of the biennial budget.