In addition to the advocacy responsibilities of the Association's Executive Director, CMHDA has an Associate Director of Legislation and Public Policy and also contracts with a lobbyist to advocate on behalf of the Association.

Positions on legislative proposals are developed by the CMHDA Legislative Committee, chaired by the President-elect or his or her designee. Proposals are approved by the Governing Board and the full membership, within a legislative agenda developed annually.

The public mental health system in California has recently been given a tremendous new opportunity, through the passage of Proposition 63 - the Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) - to significantly improve and expand services. For the past few years there has been a tremendous and growing need for publicly funded mental health services for children with serious emotional disturbance (SED) and adults and older adults with serious mental illness, at the same time that resources at the state and county levels have remained stable or even decreased. The current unmet need for public mental health services is significant, and is growing daily. Proposition 63 will give counties a much-needed opportunity to address that unmet need, with a vision of recovery and healthy development for every individual served. CMHDA will be actively involved in the implementation of this Act in 2005. Other specific CMHDA policy priorities for 2005 are:

• Protect mental health funding from supplantation efforts at the state and local levels to ensure compliance with the intent of the MHSA.
• Monitor and collaborate with other stakeholders regarding necessary legislative clarification of the MHSA.
• Support full retroactive and prospective reimbursement of costs incurred by county mental health departments for providing eligible mental health treatment services to Special Education Program (SEP) pupils (AB 3632).
• If full funding is not realized, promote restructuring of AB 3632 mandate on counties to return financial responsibility of this special education program to education.
• Sponsor legislation to clarify language in SB 1895 (Burton) (Chapter 493, Statutes of 2004) and previous legislation to simplify the SB 90 mandate claims process for the AB 3632 program.
• Seek legislative/regulatory resolution to the billing problems related to payment for medications under the Healthy Families program for SED children.
• Support appropriate clean-up legislation to address issues related to IMDs in the recently-enacted AB 1629 (Frommer) (Chapter 875, Statutes of 2004).
• Seek legislative and/or regulatory clarification regarding SB 857 (Speier) (Chapter 601 Statutes, of 2004) to address issues related to Short/Doyle Medi-Cal providers.
• Monitor legislation related to the use of anti-depressants.
• Protect against legislative efforts to impose additional mandates on county mental health departments.
• Protect Realignment funding, including VLF resources, and analyze the impact of growth formulas on mental health funding.
• Monitor implementation of Therapeutic Behavioral Services.
• Continue to seek additional funding opportunities for supportive housing for individuals with mental illness.
• Advocate for administrative relief from unnecessary or duplicative state and federal regulations.
• Work collaboratively with the state Department of Mental Health and other state and local agencies to implement HIPAA.
• Seek appropriate state resources to offset the substantial cost of local HIPAA implementation and compliance.
• Protect existing state resources to offset the substantial costs to counties of compliance with new federal managed care regulations.
• Support state enforcement of private health plan mental health insurance parity laws.
• Support mental health and substance abuse treatment parity legislation at the federal level.
• Support efforts to increase the recruitment and training of the public mental health workforce.
• Support policies that make the mental health and alcohol and drug treatment systems better able to provide treatment to individuals with co-occurring disorders.
• Monitor and support state and federal legislation related to Medicare Part D coverage for persons with serious mental illness.
• Monitor and support legislation that allows counties to purchase psychotropic medications at lower costs.
• Monitor federal and state legislation related to Medicaid (Medi-Cal) redesign.
• Work collaboratively with other local and state agencies and organizations on issues of mutual concern (e.g. child welfare redesign).

• 2005-2006 Legislative Bill Matrix
• 2003-2004 Legislative Bill Matrix

• Legislative Bill Search
• California Statute Search

More on Public Policy/Legislative Highlights:

• State Budget Updates
• Legislative/Budget Process
• Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) of 2003