MENTAL HEALTH AND ALCOHOLISM 595

gram for the development of community mental health centers to
care for both the alcoholic and the emotionally disturbed. The pro-
gram also will include a significant expansion of presently limited
State efforts to combat alcoholism.

The apparent cost of this comprehensive program, if fully imple-
mented, could run as high as $20 million, but this must be offset by
the substantial savings in present institutional costs that the program
will bring about. It can be started almost immediately and without
a substantial drain on present State revenues with two affirmative
steps:

1. By requiring that local governments assume a more realistic
share of costs tor in-patient care at our State menial hospitals.

2. By requiring that the alcoholic beverage industry help shoulder
the burden for the major social problem of alcoholism.

At present, local governments pay only $125 a year toward the cost
of institutional care of indigent mentally ill patients. This figure was
set in 1920 — when it represented 50 percent of the annual cost of
such care. Today it represents only 5 percent of total in-patient costs.
Accordingly, I will recommend that the local share be increased to
20 percent of actual costs, which is the same percentage that local
governments now pay toward the cost of care for indigent patients
in general hospitals. This should be done as a matter of equity and
as part of a long overdue adjustment of fees and costs, which is occur-
ring throughout our State government.

However, as an incentive to develop community mental health
facilities — which would place the care of most mental patients in their
home communities where it properly belongs — I will recommend
further that the full 20 percent be returned to local governments for
the construction and operation of such facilities. The proviso will
be that the amount be matched by an equal effort. Third party re-
sources such as Medicare, Medicaid, insurance payments and other
patient resources will be available to local governments to assist in
meeting the matching obligation.

In recognition of the immediate need to start this program, and
the fact that subdivisions have already largely formulated their bud-
gets, I will recommend that the local matching obligation be deferred
for the first year of the program.

To finance the expanded treatment that would be given alcoholics
under the program — and many can be helped to recovery with