The Sacramento MHSOAC Oversight meeting was held May 29, 2011

The meeting was successful from a stakeholder turnout perspective, the room being mostly full of consumers and family membersfollowing the proceedings of the Commission. This is as it should be under Prop 63 guidelines, for although explicit directions weregiven to keep public comments brief and applicable to the items discussed, no one was censored and many lined up to speak.

The two most popular items were 1) Implementation of In-State Travel Freeze and 2) Assembly Bill AB 100 Workgroup. The Travel Freeze motion passed, despite many speaker's opposition, and the AB 100 findings went unresolved.

My impression of the Commission's attention to these items was they're sincere and cautious in moving in such  a way torestrict erosion of MHSA advancements yet still deal with harsh realities of state budget crisis, and their tendency being to not place emphasis on just how bad things are getting. Sherri Gauger, MHSOAC Executive Director,soft peddled in her characterization of the "one time transfer" of $862 Million MHSA funds into Managed Care, whenin reality it was outright theft, with no ballot measure and not subject to repay the "transfer" back into stakeholder accounts.