GLIMPSE INTO WALLACE'S FUTURE?

Montana To Close Institution, Start Felon Drug Treatment Center

GLENDIVE, Mont. - With the state facing massive budget shortfalls this year,
residents of this small Montana city knew its state-run center for the disabled
would eventually close.

Now, it faces a situation similar to what may happen when the Lurleen B.
Wallace Developmental Center in Decatur closes and moves its clients to Partlow
Developmental Center in Tuscaloosa or group homes, or arrangements will be made
for families to keep relatives now at the center.

What Glendive residents didn't count on was the planned replacement: A drug
treatment center for convicted felons.

Alabama Gov. Bob Riley and state Mental Health and Mental Retardation
Commissioner Kathy Sawyer have recommended the Wallace Center also be used as a
drug and alcohol treatment center for convicted felons.

Montana's proposal has drawn mixed feelings in this rural community. Residents
know they can use every job Montana has to offer now that the Eastmont Human
Services Center is to close, but do they want work badly enough to invite a
drug rehab center into town?

"I don't feel good about having a corrections facility in my backyard," Shawna
Dorwart said as she looked out her back window - past her children playing in
the yard - at the sprawling center across the street. "But I know Glendive
needs the jobs."

With 100 locals on its payroll, Eastmont has been one of Glendive's biggest
employers and a pillar of the community for more than three decades.

During the 2003 legislative session, state lawmakers said shutting down the
center was a difficult but necessary decision to avoid deeper cuts in other
human service programs and to help erase a $232 million deficit.

The center has been home to 29 developmentally disabled residents. By year's
end, when the building is set to be turned over to the Department of
Corrections, the last of them will be in the Montana Developmental Center at
Boulder or in two group homes being established in Glendive.

Ironically, the plan to set up a drug treatment center in Glendive was largely
made out of consideration for town residents.

New center to help Glendive

Sen. John Cobb, a key player in setting budgets and policies for human service
programs, said he and others thought they were doing some good for Glendive by
letting it have first crack at the chemical dependency program and the 25 or so
jobs that would go with it.

"The issue was, 'We know we're wrecking the economy, but we have to make tough
choices and we want to give you something back,' " said Cobb, a Republican.

"But you can't force it on people if they don't want it," he said.

Residents need to decide soon if they want the short-term drug treatment
facility in the middle-class neighborhood that grew up around Eastmont.

The campus includes several buildings - including a cottage now leased to the
Boys and Girls Club - and resembles a nursing home.

Corrections officials say Eastmont is their first and most economical site for
a treatment program. But if the community doesn't want it, officials may look
elsewhere.

"The only reason we're even turning an eye to Glendive, other than the work
force, is the turnkey facility," said Joe Williams, an administrator with
Montana's Department of Corrections. "It's just cheapest for us with the
Eastmont building."

Glendive Mayor Jerry Jimison said he fears corrections officials may already be
looking elsewhere.

"Our biggest concern is that they are looking for an excuse not to have to
locate it in Glendive," he said.

But corrections officials, who want to set up the treatment facility by July,
say they haven't given up on Eastmont.

They've asked the community to put together a small group of residents to
consider the state's proposal, view the state's other community-based treatment
program in Butte and offer recommendations.

"We do have a chance to make this work," said Mike Ferriter, administrator of
the department's community corrections division.

"But if there continues to be this concern about people running loose and
residents are convinced it's going to be unsafe then, no. I'm not optimistic."