*Mayor Darrell Steinberg speaks at bill signing in Los Angeles for SB 326 and AB 531.*

Los Angeles, CA (Oct. 12, 2023) - Governor Gavin Newsom Thursday signed two pieces of legislation that will update and focus the Mental Health Services Act to ensure more funding goes to help those most in need of help.

Mayor Darrell Steinberg, the original author of the MHSA in 2004, joined Gov. Newsom in Los Angeles at the Los Angeles General Hospital for the bill signing.

Here are his remarks from the press conference:

“My heart is full.

Thanks to so many. Governor Newsom, Senator Eggman, Assemblymember Irwin, Dana Williamson, Secretary Mark Ghaly, Jason Elliot, Christy Bouma, Mayor Bass, all the big city mayors. County supervisors Hahn, Solis, and Mitchell, members and leaders of the Legislature, the late great Rusty Selix, the late great Richard Van Horn. All the advocates, including the institute humbly in my name, Karen Larsen, Maggie Merritt, national leader Dr. Tom Insel, our great board and staff. And great thanks to the providers and outreach workers and families who fought and cared when few others paid attention.

When we proposed and passed the Mental Health Services Act in 2004, our goal was ambitious and audacious. We aimed to uphold that failed promise made by prior generations of state leaders: to fully fund whatever it takes and ensure that people living with serious mental illness live with dignity, independence, and safety in our communities. The closure of those old hospitals in the 1970s and 80s was the right decision. The money saved was supposed to shift directly to the community. The failure of successive state governments until the current one to uphold the community funding promise is one of the main reasons people and our communities are suffering so badly today.

MHSA’s 20-year history and $31 billion of community-based services have saved many lives and moved us farther toward keeping our word. But the work is so incomplete.

Today’s historic signing of SB 326 and AB 531 moves us dramatically closer to making good on our 60-year promise and will ensure that the original intent of the MHSA is met.

*Mayor Darrell Steinberg and Governor Gavin Newsom holding the recently signed bills*

Governor Newsom is the first Governor in history to make mental health and substance abuse care a signature state priority. He has backed his commitment with billions of additional resources and bold policies to remove the many obstacles to people getting help. Thanks to his leadership and the leadership of Senator Eggman, and Assemblymember Irwin, these billions from the new BHSA plus the bond will now be focused and prioritized much more effectively for people who are the most vulnerable and help ensure that fewer people with serious illnesses live in conditions that no one should have to endure.

The original MHSA gave broad authority to local governments to determine their priorities. Local implementation and flexibility will always be an important principle. More important is the voters declaring loud and clear next March that these precious dollars, gifts from the people after all, must be dedicated to alleviating our state’s most urgent problems, the plight of the unsheltered suffering from serious mental illness and substance abuse, and preventing young people most at risk from experiencing the worst consequences of not getting the early help they need and deserve. That’s what the modernization of the MHSA and the billions from the new bond will appropriately require.

Every dollar, every program, every roof, every bed, every newly trained caring provider, means one more person off our streets, out of the hospital, out of jail, out of a lonely back bedroom and with the chance for a better life.

Like our nations work to form a more perfect union, that will never be complete, fulfilling our promise to fix the broken behavioral health system will never be finished. Thanks to the courage and will of the leaders standing next to me, we have a much better chance to get far closer to that day when no one has to suffer needlessly because they or their loved ones didn’t know where to turn to for help in the most difficult moments of their lives.”

— Mayor Darrell Steinberg