Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond and Gov. Kevin Stitt continue to disagree about the best plan of action for the state following a federal lawsuit. While Drummond is poised to settle, Stitt is set on intervening before the proposed settlement passes in front of a judge.
The lawsuit, Briggs v. Slatton-Hodges, was filed against the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services last year. It claims the department failed to provide necessary mental health services on time to certain pretrial inmates who were declared mentally unfit to stand trial.
Drummond and attorneys for the case’s plaintiffs drafted a proposal for a five-year consent decree that would establish a 21-day maximum wait time for the state to provide competency restoration services to a county jail detainee deemed incompetent by a court. Now, the settlement is pending approval from U.S. District Judge Gregory Frizzell.
This week, before the settlement could go in front of the judge, Gov. Stitt called together the Contingency Review Board – a group that will later have to consider the settlement if it does get approved by a judge.
In the meeting, Stitt and Commissioner for the Department of Mental Health Allie Freisen, agreed the settlement “as it was currently written” would not satisfy their expectations.
Stitt said the settlement is too costly, both for the department and for Oklahoma taxpayers.
“This really is a zero sum game. We can [and] we must care for those in our justice system who are struggling with mental health conditions, and also protect Oklahoma taxpayers,” he said.
Friesen agrees. She’d be charged with implementing the settlement and said it would interfere with changes the department is trying to make.
“We need to be given the chance to show these improvements and show up to the table with the data, not the feelings, not the politics, but with the data, around what we're improving and doing for Oklahomans,” Friesen said. This consent decree not only is an overburden to taxpayer dollars, but also interferes with our ability to do what is right and to make those changes.”
Additionally, Friesen argued the settlement would take away clinician’s power to make decisions about care placement and process and put that power in the hands of attorneys.
Following the information shared by Friesen, Stitt stated his defiance of the settlement.
“I will make very clear for the record that I have previously conveyed to the Attorney General that I would be a ‘no’ on the proposed settlement,” Stitt said. “If there is any record that would suggest otherwise, I want to make very clear at today’s meeting what my comments have been.”
No one from the Attorney General’s office was present for the meeting but in advance, the office sent out a press release.
“The Governor appears bound and determined to force Oklahomans to ultimately pay untold millions of dollars and ignore a years-long failure of the state Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. Rather than seizing an opportunity to deliver justice and save taxpayer dollars, Gov. Stitt would rather stage political theater. This is disappointing, if not entirely surprising,” Drummond said in the statement.
