County rehires Mountain Valley

Mountain Valley Mental Health Programs Inc. has earned another one-year contract to provide mental health services and services to people with developmental disabilities.

County commissioners voted unanimously Wednesday to extend the contract after hearing from the MVMH board of directors and the agency’s executive director, Vicki Levinger, the former Vicki Long, who married former longtime MVMH board chair Larry Levinger last month in a wedding ceremony officiated by yet another MVMH board member, former circuit court judge Milo Pope.

Commissioners praised not only the agency’s work but the oversight provided by the board and by the county’s advisory committee on mental health and developmental disabilities, now being chaired by Mary Jo Carpenter.

“This meeting is the culmination to a couple of years of tough times,” said County Commission Chair Fred Warner Jr., a reference to state scrutiny of Mountain Valley and criticism by an ad-hoc citizens committee. “We need to congratulate Vicki for turning this ship around and not having a roomful of angry people.”

The contract for the 2009-10 fiscal year, which began Wednesday, has two changes: it requires financial updates, which MVMH has been providing the past two years; and mandates the agency have comprehensive liability insurance coverage of $1 million, as well as proof of property coverage for building replacement and costs of business property.

The board will be actively recruiting for new members, Pope said, since it’s losing three people in the coming weeks: Bailey; Barbara Warner, and Brian Harvey, the former Baker City Police lieutenant who was recently named chief of police in La Grande.

“We’re going to miss all of them very much,” Pope said.

For the current fiscal year, MVMH expects revenues to rise about $118,000, from about $1.21 million to about $1.39 million. The developmental disability case management budget is up substantially, from about $127,000 to nearly $159,000.

That increase, Vicki Levinger told commissioners, has allowed the agency to hire more caseworkers to work with its developmentally disabled clients.

But a tight budget last year and a desire not to reduce the approximately $300,000 in carryover funds available to the agency has led it not to grant cost-of-living increases again this year.

“Their attitude is that (employees are) grateful to be employed and they understand the budget climate,” Vicki Levinger said. “They’ve been very gracious about that.”

It appears that MVMH will see no reduction in state funding and an 8- to 10-percent increase in funding from GOBHI, Greater Oregon Behavioral Health, Inc., an accrediting umbrella agency for about half of the state’s county health providers.

While the most recent financial statement shows a surplus of about $155,000 as of May 31, most of that money, Bailey said, will be paid by the agency to settle a lawsuit against MVMH brought on by former employees Gail Lemberger and Suzanne Moses.

The agency hopes to recover some or all of the settlement and legal fees from its insurance provider, The Chubb Group, which has to date turned the agency down.

Through May 31, during fiscal year 2008-09, MVMH spent $130,290.03 in legal fees, according to its statement presented to county commissioners Wednesday.