Updated at 6:20 p.m.: to note House bill also includes money for the Dallas project.
AUSTIN — Flower Mound Republican Sen. Jane Nelson’s proposal for spending Texas’ share of President Joe Biden’s March relief package would plow $237.8 million of the federal money toward completing construction of a new state psychiatric hospital in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
On Friday, Nelson introduced Senate Bill 8, her plan for spending $16.3 billion of federal funds designated for Texas in the American Rescue Plan Act. It’s SB 8 of the year’s third special session, not to be confused with the embryonic heartbeat bill on abortion from the regular session.
If she gets her way on the Dallas hospital, state lawmakers this year will have put forward $282.5 million, 84% of it federal money, for the long-sought project.
The state Health and Human Services Commission, which oversees state mental hospitals, will oversee the hospital, and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center will operate it.
“UT Southwestern is greatly appreciative of the recognition of the need to expedite funding for this important project in partnership with HHSC,” spokesman Russell Rian said in a written statement. “A Dallas State Psychiatric hospital is critical to improving our ability to provide care for those needing mental health services in North Texas.”
Late Friday, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Greg Bonnen, R-Friendswood, filed a similar measure, House Bill 2. It also would give $237.8 million of the federal funds to the Dallas project.
As expected, both bills would spend $7.2 billion, or 44%, of the federal stimulus money to replenish the state’s unemployment insurance trust fund.
With joblessness skyrocketing during the COVID-19 pandemic, the fund’s balance has disappeared. Texas employers are worried that an unprecedented unemployment tax increase is coming. After the 2007-2009 economic slowdown, Texas tax rates on employers doubled. All year, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Senate’s presiding officer, has been pledging to use federal relief money to help prevent an unemployment-fund tax hike.
Nelson also proposed spending $3.7 billion of the federal funds, in the name of pandemic response, to free up state discretionary dollars being used for state prison guards’ and troopers’ salaries and benefits. That would further pad a $6 billion state surplus for the current two-year budget cycle anticipated by Comptroller Glenn Hegar.
Nelson also would use $3 billion for medical surge staffing at hospitals slammed by COVID-19 and providing therapies for people infected with the virus; $500 million each on higher education construction projects and broadband expansion; $300 million for a “state operations center” to aid the state in disaster response; and $286 million to cover retired teachers’ COVID-related health claims.
But the next-biggest appropriation in SB 8 would be the nearly $240 million for completion of a state mental hospital in Dallas.
“COVID-19 impacted Texas on many fronts, and this bill takes a holistic approach to address a wide range of needs that emerged during the pandemic,” Nelson said in a written statement.
Referring to the Dallas psychiatric hospital and a program that provides mental health treatment for young people, which would get $113 million from her bill, Nelson said the measure “expands access to mental health care.”
For years, Parkland Memorial Hospital, citing a severe shortage of psychiatric beds, has pleaded for construction of a new state mental hospital.
“We are pleased that Senator Nelson included funding in her bill for a state-supported psychiatric hospital in Dallas,” said Katherine Yoder, vice president for government relations at the Parkland Health & Hospital System. “This is a critical need in our region and will truly benefit the lives of many Parkland patients.”
In a letter Thursday to Senate budget writers, Dallas Regional Chamber president Dale Petroskey, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins and Jon Roth, chief executive of the Dallas County Medical Society, noted that Dallas “remains the largest metropolitan service area in the state without a psychiatric health hospital.”
The project has broad support locally, and UT Southwestern has “one of the largest psychiatric residency programs in the country,” they noted.
In 2014, CannonDesign, an independent architecture and engineering design firm, found that Texas needed to wholly replace five aging state hospitals and add 1,100 inpatient psychiatric beds over the following 10 years.
In 2017, the Legislature began a multi-year effort to renovate, replace and build new state mental hospitals.
Since then, lawmakers have spent more than $1 billion for construction of a new UTHealth Behavioral Sciences Center in Houston; new psychiatric hospitals on existing campuses in San Antonio and Austin, which are replacing aging structures; and improvements at existing state hospitals in Rusk and Kerrville.
Much to the irritation of some Dallas civic leaders, though, the Dallas-Fort Worth area not only lacked an existing state hospital – the closest one is in Terrell – but was spurned by legislative budget writers, even for relatively tiny amounts of money requested for “preplanning.”
The CannonDesign study had pointed to “the Waco/Dallas/Arlington corridor” as one of the state’s “three potentially underserved areas.”
Business and civic leaders said they couldn’t understand the North Texas legislative delegation’s failure to wrest some of the funds to build a psychiatric hospital that would be more centrally located for the state’s largest urban center.
Last May, lawmakers passed a two-year budget that included $44.7 million for the planning, design, and purchase of land for the new state hospital in Dallas.
After the budget was signed, the Health and Human Services Commission said that advancing the Dallas hospital was a priority.
“There’s a critical need for additional inpatient mental health services in the Dallas area and we’re excited to be working with UT Southwestern on this project to design a state-of-the-art hospital that meets the mental health care needs of the community,” HHS Executive Commissioner Cecile Erwin Young said in a written statement. “A new hospital will have a major impact on our ability to provide care to the most vulnerable Texans living in the surrounding Metroplex.”
Nelson, who heads the budget-writing Finance Committee and is retiring from the Senate after serving nearly 30 years, also brimmed with optimism.
“A new state hospital will be a game changer for our region,” Nelson said.
