Del. Landes touts Commonwealth Center at meeting

By Bob Stuart, The News Virginian
Published: January 10, 2009

FISHERSVILLE — A proposal to close Staunton’s Commonwealth Center for Children and Adolescents moves too quickly and fails to provide sufficient alternatives, Del. Steve Landes told a crowd Saturday at a Fishersville town hall meeting.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has proposed closing the Commonwealth Center for mentally disturbed children and adolescents by the end of June and privatizing the services at hospitals across the commonwealth.

That timetable is hasty, Landes said. The Weyers Cave Republican also is bothered by the proposal’s lack of a plan to serve children who rely on the center.

Landes said he and his Shenandoah Valley colleagues will have to do a better selling job to convince other lawmakers to pull in the reins on Kaine’s proposal.

“There is a lot of work to educate other legislators about the Commonwealth Center services and how their constituents would be impacted,” Landes said.

People attending the town hall meeting peppered Landes with questions about the Commonwealth Center and proposed k-12 education cuts. Kaine and lawmakers are seeking to close a $2.9-billion budget gap.

Landes said he hopes legislators “can minimize the cuts to public education as much as possible.” Still, public education and mental health compose a large part of the budget, making cuts likely, Landes said.

Appearing at the second of three Saturday town halls across his 25th District, Landes said finding a way to balance declining revenues and the need for services will be difficult.

“The House and Senate will have to be as frugal as possible with state expenses,” Landes said.

A seven-term lawmaker, Landes told the crowd he opposes term limits for delegates and senators. If voters want to limit his term, Landes said, they can vote him out of office.

Seniority for lawmakers in a rural areas such as the Shenandoah Valley is important, Landes said, because of the large contingent of legislators representing Virginia’s most populated region, Northern Virginia.

“For rural areas, term limits are a disadvantage,” he said.

During his 13 years in the General Assembly, turnover in the state House has topped 60 percent, Landes said.