N&O Article: Hooker Odom aired concerns about legislation

http://www.newsobserver.com/2771/story/998697.html

Published: Mar 13, 2008 01:44 PM Modified: Mar 13, 2008 02:23 PM

Hooker Odom aired concerns about legislation

By Pat Stith, Staff Writer

Gov. Mike Easley has said repeatedly that Carmen Hooker Odom, former secretary of Health and Human Services, "vigorously" opposed mental health reform legislation when it was adopted in October 2001.

But that's not what Hooker Odom, who works for a nonprofit in New York City, said in an e-mail to The News & Observer in late February.

She said she had four "concerns" about the mental health reform legislation when it was being considered, but she said legislators amended the bill to eliminate two of those concerns, and she ignored a third directive.

Hooker Odom said early drafts of the bill guaranteed services to every citizen and she got that narrowed. And she said the bill originally limited ways people could enter the system; she got that changed, too.

A third concern, she said, was a requirement that she create a plan to reduce the number of county mental health organizations to 20.

"I told them I was not about to prepare a plan that dictated, even in consultation with everyone, who was going to consolidate with whom,"
Hooker Odom wrote.

The fourth concern related to what Hooker Odom said was the creation of a rule-making conflict between the secretary's office and "the Commission,"
apparently referring to the Mental Health Commission.

Hooker Odom has ignored numerous calls from an N&O reporter to her office in New York or to her home in Charlotte, dating back to to Jan.
1, asking for an interview. But she sent The N&O an e-mail message about her legislative "concerns" on Feb. 21 after talking with Debbie Crane, then the top public information office for the Department of Health and Human Services. The newspaper didn't include the e-mail in its initial stories because it didn't show that Hooker Odom had opposed the reform bill.

Twelve days later, Gov. Mike Easley fired Crane.

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