Leaders of two House of Delegates committees expect an avalanche of legislation responding to the Virginia Tech massacre and plan to spend time in the coming months studying the commonwealth’s mental health laws.
Del. David B. Albo, R-Springfield, decided this week he will convene the House Courts of Justice Committee in Richmond, Va., on Sept. 10 to discuss Virginia’s complicated statutes governing the commitment of mentally ill individuals.
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Albo and the other attorneys on the committee do not deal with those complicated laws in their private practice, and they know they won’t have time to digest the thorny statutes when the hectic legislative session begins in January.
“This is very serious business,” Albo said. “If we rewrite the law and do not do it right, someone who has never committed a crime could be wrongly committed and someone who is mentally ill and is dangerous could be released. This is super-serious stuff.”
The courts committee, already one of the legislature’s busiest, will likely receive any introduced bills governing issues such as when a person can be involuntarily committed to a mental institution.
The April 16 rampage, in which gunman Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 Virginia Tech students and faculty before committing suicide, has raised many questions about care for the mentally ill in Virginia.
A court ordered Cho to receive outpatient counseling in 2005, but it is not clear if he ever received the required treatment.
“I know we are going to see a lot of legislation,” Albo said.
The House Welfare and Institutions Committee will begin a series of informational hearings Monday in Richmond about the state’s mental health system. Chairman Del. Phillip Hamilton, R-Newport News, expects that many of the bills that address mental health issues will be sent to his panel for evaluation from a health care perspective before or after going to the Courts of Justice Committee for a legal review.
Despite all the bills that will likely be filed, Hamilton said, the chances for the most improvement may sit inthe state budget.
“The biggest issue is funding,” Hamilton said. “If you want to provide the type of care and follow-up treatment that a person like Cho would require, that takes intensive human resources.”
