My Bills

HB248 – MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES FOR ADULTS

About two years ago, a constituent reached out to me with genuine concerns about her severely mentally ill son. Since then, I have heard from other parents, first responders, and mental health professionals concerned about the huge gaps in our services for the long-term treatment of individuals with serious mental illnesses, like schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder.

One area Utah has invested in is still investing in are receiving centers and Mobile Crisis Outreach Teams, or MCOT, and these are vital services, but they are for when someone is in crisis. Receiving Centers help someone for 24 hours, and MCOTs stabilize and help someone for up to a couple of months. Unfortunately, these services are temporary, which means that once they are done, the person with a serious mental illness returns to the world with little to no support. They destabilize and start the cycle of hospitalization, law enforcement involvement, and homelessness over again. This cycle is extremely costly in terms of money, in individual lives and families, and opportunities lost.

Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) can help fill this massive gap in our system. ACT is an evidence-based practice to provide intensive services to people with serious mental illness (SMI) who struggle with overlapping daily functional issues for as long as they need. The model has been demonstrated as effective and cost-efficient when provided for individuals with SMI who are:

Repeatedly access inpatient psychiatric care
Justice involved
Experiencing homelessness

It uses a multidisciplinary team approach with assertive outreach in the community to wrap services around individuals wherever they are. It is like a hospital without walls.

My bill creates a grant program for entities to implement one or more ACT teams in their communities. Start-up costs are prohibitive, but experience has demonstrated that teams are sustainable after one year with Medicaid billing. It also creates a long-term state-wide ACT plan to be developed based on data collected from new and existing ACT teams, and requires the grant recipients to report back to the HHS Interim Committee with specific data about the effectiveness of the ACT teams so we can monitor success of the program while continuing to improve and innovate the programs to provide mental health services to our most vulnerable Utahns.

On February 7, I presented on the house floor and it received overwhelming support. I’m so thrilled. I am crossing my fingers (and lobbying hard) that it passes in the Senate and gets funded!

HB 309 County Recorder Amendments to Protect Your Personal Data

The idea for this bill was brought to me a couple of years ago by an FBI agent who works in IRS fraud. I was shocked when he showed me how much of our personal information is available online in recorded documents. Our current state law needs to be clarified on whether recorded documents can be amended, so some counties would redact certain information and others wouldn’t. I have worked with County Recorders and industries that need access to some personal information–like title companies–to get this bill drafted.

HB 309 provides a way and clarifies that an individual may request that a county recorder redact their signature, first five digits of their social security, and the month and day of their birth on any recorded document. You must tell the Clerk/Recorder which document and line these items are on. This bill will help protect individual data and privacy and is numbered and ready to go to committee.

Events

Water Week

Last week was declared water week to emphasize the importance of good water stewardship. Many of you have shared your concerns over water levels of the Great Salt Lake and water conservation in general and this is an issue I take very seriously. Here are some of this session’s bills to help manage Utah’s water through environmental improvement projects and incentives. I am still reading through them all, but I wanted to share.

Water Bills

S.B. 53 Groundwater Use Amendments
S.B. 76 Water Amendments

S.B. 118 Water Efficient Landscaping Incentives

S.B. 119 Per Capita Consumptive Use

S.B. 144 Water Instream Flow Amendments

H.B. 150 Emergency Water Shortages Amendments

H.B. 207 Compact Commission Amendments

H.B. 307 Utah Water Ways

Helping People with Disabilities in our Community

I was able to attend The Utah Coalition For People with Disabilities Event. This event was held to support SB106, which implements a program to reimburse a parent or guardian who provides extraordinary care to their severely disabled loved one. There are so many reasons this is a good idea. It allows the people who love and know their disabled child the best to be the ones to take care of him or her, it provides consistency and security for the child, and it enables the child to live at home instead of in a residential facility (which are very expensive), and it supports families staying together. I support this bill and will be voting yes when it comes to the house floor.

Ability 1st on 1455 West 820 North in Provo serves people with disabilities in Utah and Wasatch counties. Like many nonprofits, they operate on a very tight budget. They were able to buy this building about two years ago, but it was built in the 1970s and is not ADA-accessible. The building needs an elevator, an entrance ramp, and Ability 1st raised most of the money for these projects. I submitted a request for appropriation in our Social Services Committee for $148,000 to complete their funding. It was prioritized high on the list–we will see what the Executive Appropriations decides to do with it.

Facebook Fridays!

Every Friday I discuss the week’s highlights and talk more in-depth about exciting issues! I’d love to have you join! Unfortunately, I’m not sure when I will have time during the day to do the Live video–it is usually in the afternoon or early evening–but you can always watch them later on my page.

Click here for my page: https://www.facebook.com/marshajudkinsUT61/

How to Join Meetings, Participate in Public Comments, and Join on Zoom!

1. Go to https://le.utah.gov
2. Click Committees
3. Select the Committee you are interested in
4. This page gives information on where and when the meeting is.
5. Click the Electronic Participation Available “?” to join the live Zoom (public comment is available online or in person as long as the form is completed before 7:00 am the day of the committee )

Every legislative committee meeting and Floortime can be accessed live or watched/listened to later.