Dan Tierney, a spokesman for the governor’s office, told the Dayton Daily News that the project will be fully funded by the state.
“The capital budget signed (Friday) includes an allocation of $10 million for planning, land acquisition and initial design work to build a state-of-the-art psychiatric hospital in the Miami Valley, with a location yet to be determined,” Tierney said.
“Current capital budget funding will cover these initial expenditures, but architectural design and construction funding will be part of future capital budget negotiations.”
Local officials say a new facility is necessary, and has been needed since the old state mental health facility closed 16 years ago, but time constraints mean other solutions are needed in the meantime.
Montgomery County Probate Judge David Brannon said a group of leaders from law enforcement, medical, courts and mental health services have been meeting for some time to find ways to address the area’s pressing mental health issues.
“We all went into this thinking there wouldn’t be any beds available, so what is our plan?” he said.
He said those efforts need to continue while the region waits for the new hospital to open.
But some of these efforts are headed in the wrong direction: Montgomery County Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Services recently announced budget cuts that will affect mental health service agencies, and in May, the county’s crisis response provider announced it was ending its contract with Montgomery County.
DeWine said Friday that the Dayton-area hospital will be “very similar” to a central Ohio hospital that opened in May. Construction on that hospital began under former Gov. John Kasich in 2018 and took multiple two-year budget cycles to build.
The new Central Ohio Behavioral Healthcare in Columbus has 208 beds, and Tierney said 216 beds are planned for the Dayton facility.
State officials have said the Dayton-area facility is needed to ease pressure on facilities in Columbus and Summit Behavioral Healthcare in Cincinnati.
“As the Governor emphasized during the signing of the capital budget bill (Friday), creating a statewide system to support Ohioans experiencing mental health challenges is one of his top priorities,” Tierney said.
