Tommy Denton

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Sometimes chickens that come home to roost are malnourished and perhaps even lame. But they do come home to roost.

Quite a few flocks of Virginia's chickens are limping or stumbling back in their respective infirmities to remind the public that avoidance, omission and neglect take a toll on important aspects of life in the commonwealth.

Recent headlines have suggested how dire the consequences appear to be for what is rapidly developing into a transportation crisis. In a protracted legislative session in the spring, and with continued obstinacy by the leadership in the House of Delegates in a special session last month, Virginia lawmakers have failed to develop a comprehensive, financially sufficient legislative response to developing needed statewide transportation infrastructure.

Paralysis in the General Assembly has forced the state to retrench on critical projects for lack of money, consigning the Virginia Department of Transportation primarily to the tasks of maintaining highways, at the expense of moving forward on new arteries and expanded projects that almost everyone agrees are extremely important to Virginia's economic vitality.

Petitions to VDOT for initiating or even completing some existing projects encounter the grim reality that the state's legislative body, seized by a spasmodic refusal to levy the taxes to actually pay for such needs, has refused to get the job done.

Just last week, the Hampton Roads Metropolitan Planning Organization pulled the plug on three critical projects that could relieve the increased strangulation of commuters and commerce in the Tidewater region. In announcing his frustration with the unavoidable decision to cancel those infrastructure enhancements, Newport News Mayor Joe Frank said, "The failure of the legislature to take any action and meet its responsibilities is going to create problems for this region and the commonwealth for years to come."

That feeble, erratic fluttering sound you hear is the pained wing-flapping of wounded chickens making their way as best they can to the coop of public awareness.

But then, not all chickens are trying to cross the highway or find passage on a state-of-the-art intermodal system of transport. Some come home to roost as witnesses to the fundamental decency with which society, through its elected officials, provides care and sustenance for its most vulnerable people.

Among those unfortunate realms in which Virginia remains challenged is its grudging, inadequate services for the mentally ill.

In the last 30 years or so, research has revealed insights and led to considerable progress in the care and treatment of people with mental and emotional afflictions. Yet institutional responses to such conditions have often created strains and obstacles to justice within the legal system, particularly in matters of mental health crises requiring civil commitments.

"Mental health services have received growing attention in recent years because of a series of reports that document problems in the system, as well as a number of widely publicized tragic events that have been attributed to a lack of needed services," said University of Virginia law professor Thomas Hafemeister, director of legal studies at the Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy. "There is an emerging consensus that we need to reform mental health law both in Virginia and across the country."

From such observations about pervasive problems in the law, Virginia Chief Justice Leroy Rountree Hassell Sr. convened the Virginia Commission on Mental Health Law Reform, a stellar, 26-member panel representing all three branches of state government as well as other persons with relevant expertise.

When a Virginia Senate subcommittee last week heard a briefing on the commission's proposed examination of the system the General Assembly has not substantially addressed in 20 years, state Sen. Kenneth W. Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, questioned whether the presumptuous, turf-encroaching Hassell was presiding over a "very activist court."

The record shows Virginia courts are swamped with people in crisis, with often tragic individual and public consequences. Rather than responding in a spirit of collaboration, Stolle's first reaction was to harangue a citizen-official for taking public-spirited action on a serious, comprehensive examination of the problem.

Given the record of avoidance by the General Assembly on the topic, Stolle's senatorial bombast and jurisdictional jealousy are unbecoming.

But then, chickens coming home to roost have been known to cause such ruffling of feathers.

Denton's column appears in the Sunday and Tuesday editions of The Roanoke Times.