DaytonDailyNews.com

COLUMBUS — Here's a headline that Ohio's governor and his pals don't want to see:

"STRICKLAND TO DAYTON: DROP DEAD"

Gov. Ted Strickland has never told Dayton to drop dead, of course.

What a politician actually says doesn't always matter.

It's the sentiment – at least the perceived sentiment – that counts. President Gerald Ford never actually told New Yorkers to drop dead in 1975 but that's how the New York Daily News translated Ford's denial of federal aid to keep New York City from going bankrupt.

"FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD," blared a headline that belongs in the tabloid hall of fame, if there is one.

Republican Ford, by the way, lost New York and the presidential election the next year to Democrat Jimmy Carter. That loss probably had more to do with negative fallout from the full pardon that Ford granted to Richard M. Nixon for any crimes Nixon may have committed in the Watergate scandal.

Strickland hasn't committed any crimes and doesn't face the voters again until 2010. Right now, however, his name barely rises to the level of mud among opponents of his decision to close Twin Valley Behavioral Healthcare in Dayton by June 30.

Closing the hospital on Wayne Avenue and another mental hospital in Cambridge is part of Strickland's plan to plug a potential $733 million hole in the budget, announced on Jan. 31.

Patients now served in Dayton will have to be taken to hospitals in Cincinnati, Toledo or Columbus under the new arrangement, said Bryan Bucklew, president of the Greater Dayton Area Hospital Association.

Strickland, a former prison psychologist, and his aides promised to work with Dayton-area officials on ways to ease the pain, make sure patients get the care they need, and minimize the negative fallout to the community.

So far, the last part hasn't happened, said Bucklew.

"They've been great at attending meetings we've convened but at the end of the day we are just incrementally ahead of where we were on Jan. 31," said Bucklew, one of Strickland's fellow Democrats who sounds like he might shop around for a governor's candidate from a different party in 2010.

The best Strickland has come up with is an $8 million pot of money in the capital budget that would be spread statewide to help communities develop mental health crisis care centers.

Strickland says he would line-item veto a provision in the capital bill passed by the House on Thursday, May 22, that would delay closing Twin Valley for six months. He'd "probably" veto a second provision in the capital budget that earmarks $6.3 million of the $8 million for Dayton.

Bucklew and others in Dayton are irked that the same capital budget includes nearly $84 million for a new Cleveland-area psychiatric hospital to replace two older facilities.

"I think comparing what's being done in Cleveland and what's being done in Dayton is really not connected because Ohio's a big state with different population centers," said Strickland. The new Cleveland-area hospital will serve as a multi-county regional facility, said Keith Dailey, Strickland's spokesman.

A similar regional facility was built in southwestern Ohio several years ago to function as the regional mental health facility, Dailey said. Some patients from the Dayton-area will go there under the new plan.

"We are not abandoning the need for psychiatric services for those who live in the Dayton area," said Strickland.

Bucklew agreed that the Cleveland and Dayton situations are different.

"Cleveland's not losing beds, not losing any services and they're bringing in $84 million," said Bucklew. "We're losing all beds, all services and getting zero dollars."

"Dayton to Strickland: We're Mad."

Vote for this story!