A foolish consistency

Guest Opinion by Troy Carico

I frankly do not understand my own state of Alabama sometimes, and nowhere is that more obvious than on the topic of mental health.  Just about everyone who looks into mental health programs run by the state–particularly those run by the Alabama Department of Mental Health (ADMH)–comes away with disbelief at how inefficient and ineffective their expenditures are.  Forbes magazine, hardly a radical/liberal rag that so many conservatives like me rightfully tend to blame for critical (and often wrong) analyses, has objectively looked at ADMH’s management of the state’s mental health system, with blistering results.  Other national studies continue to rank Alabama at or near the bottom among the states when it comes to mental health services.  The state government’s own Alabama Commission on the Evaluation of Services (ACES) recently issued a scathing report on ADHM’s running of the state’s expensive crisis centers, as I have previously analyzed.  Several media outlets have recently reported on the state’s antiquated certificate of need process (run by the state’s health planning agency) that makes it virtually impossible for many in the private sector to address critical mental health needs in Alabama.  Even independent commentators in the press have recently analyzed how the state and ADMH spends (read “wastes”) on mental health services via its monopolistic contractors.  Seemingly everyone who looks into this broad topic walks away in disbelief at the horrible results, waste, and mismanagement. 

The most egregious example of misdirected spending by the state and ADMH is in the arena of mental health for the state’s military veterans. Don’t even get me started on Governor Ivey and ADMH Commissioner Kim Boswell’s war on veterans and their sabotage of past efforts to fund existing veteran mental health programs via the private, non-profit sector.  Not to mention their illegal removal of the previous Commissioner of the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs (ADVA) for challenging those damaging efforts.  Beyond those travesties, the state had a golden opportunity to fund successful and efficient veteran mental health programs via the opioid settlement process.  As background, the Alabama Attorney General has succeeded in settling claims with opioid manufacturers and distributers to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.  Those funds were to be used for opioid addiction prevention and treatment programs.  A large portion of the money was also to be distributed by the Oversight Commission on Alabama Opioid Settlement Fund chaired by State Representative Rex Reynolds.  

In late 2023, the State Board of Veterans Affairs (SBVA)—before it was emasculated by Governor Ivey and her minions in the legislature last year in retaliation for its backing of the previous Commissioner—unanimously passed a resolution asking the Oversight Commission on Alabama Opioid Settlement Fund to designate 25% of the total opioid settlement to be allocated to the ADVA to work on behalf of Alabama’s service members, Veterans, and their families affected by the opioid crisis.  Reynolds, however, did not even have the courtesy to respond to the SBVA resolution and summarily rejected the request.   There are also indications that he promised several veterans affairs officials that significant portions of the opioid settlement money would indeed be earmarked for the veteran community, but he failed to follow through on those promises, apparently under pressure from the Commissioner of Mental Health.   Other efforts to effectively assist veterans were similarly shot down as well, but both Ivey and ADMH continue to back insignificant and even illegal efforts on veterans mental health issues that receive relatively little funding and merely duplicate existing programs.  Political theatre at its worst.  Moreover, for the past two years, Reynolds has simply continued funneling the vast majority of the opioid settlement money to ADMH while it continues to largely ignore the plight of veterans, who are significantly more likely to be addicted to opioids and to take their own lives via suicide.  As recently as two months ago, Reynolds arranged for funneling another $26+ million to ADMH, with no funds earmarked for the veteran community, as usual.  Is it any coincidence that Reynolds chose this funding path after he was named as “legislator of the year” by a group associated with the same ADMH system?  Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs just released its latest report on veteran suicides, and the statistics were again bleak.   

Repetitive, politically-motivated funding to horribly ineffective programs and agencies is not the answer to taking care of our veterans, nor for any taxpayer spending for that matter.  Ralph Waldo Emerson was correct: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”  Only this foolish consistency, and the petty politics played by folks such as Ivey, Boswell, and Reynolds, are literally killing our veterans.  They should be ashamed. 

Troy Carico is a decorated U.S. Army Veteran whose career spanned more than 22 years in uniform. He began as an infantryman and was later commissioned as an officer, earning additional branch qualifications in counterintelligence and military intelligence. His service record includes numerous awards for distinction, as well as recognition as a service-connected disabled Veteran. Following his military career, Carico continued serving the nation as a civilian intelligence officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency’s elite Great Skills Program, where he took part in multiple clandestine assignments across the globe.

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