Oregon Public Broadcasting

When Washington Governor Chris Gregoire kicked off the current legislative session in January, she urged lawmakers to put "sacred cows" out to pasture.

Translation: the state's current budget crisis is an opportunity to cancel programs that may have strong constituencies, but no longer make fiscal sense.

Two examples stand out in the Governor's budget: her proposal to shut down a juvenile offender youth camp and a nursing home for the developmentally disabled.

Olympia correspondent Austin Jenkins takes us to the Yakima Valley School in Selah.

It's too cold outside. So Juanita Needham is wheeling her son John through the hallways of Yakima Valley School. As they walk, she fills him in on some family news.

Juanita Needham: "You know that you're going to be a great uncle again? Ya, sometime this month. It's supposed to be another boy."

It's not clear if Johnny understands. But he tilts his head back and to the side and opens his mouth to reveal a broad, toothy smile.

Johnny was born healthy, but at 7-months contracted spinal meningitis. Today at age 39 he's an infant trapped in a man's body. Confined to an over-sized wheelchair, his mother says he can't do anything for himself.

Juanita Needham: "Johnny is quadro spastic cerebral palsy, he has seizures, he' total infant care, he's fed through a tube in his stomach and he has to be turned."

Johnny has lived here at Yakima Valley School for nearly 30 years  --  since he was 11. When he arrived, the patients were housed in an old tuberculosis hospital. Later they moved into nursing home cottages on the campus. Johnny's mother says this is her son's home.

Juanita Needham: "It was a hard decision to put him here, but it was the best thing we ever did for our son, the best thing we ever did. We just couldn't keep him at home any longer."

That's why Needham is devastated that Yakima Valley School is slated to close under Governor Chris Gregoire's proposed budget. Officially the reason for shuttering the institution is the state's yawning six billion dollar budget deficit. Residents would start moving out this fall, but the facility wouldn't actually close until 2011. And the state would only save a million dollars in the next budget cycle. Needham suspects the current crisis is a foil for the governor to put one of her  "sacred cows" out to pasture.

Juanita Needham: "She doesn't realize that the kids in this facility are more medically fragile than the kids in other ARCs."

ARC stands for Adult Residential Center. Washington State currently runs five institutions for the developmentally disabled. In the 1960s, some 4000 people lived in these kinds of facilities. Today that number is down to about a thousand.

That's because over that time there's been a shift to housing the developmentally disabled in the community.

Gregoire says the state now has more institutional beds than it needs  --  and that's why she wants to close Yakima Valley. She denies that her ultimate goal is to close down all of Washington's institutions  --  as some states have done.

Governor Gregoire: "Clearly the policy of the state, the policy of the country is to integrate folks into the community  --  that they can better be served in a family setting in the community. So we're doing all we can to make that happen. But we are not closing facilities under that policy. We still know there are those where the facility is a better option for the family and we want the family to have that choice."

In fact, Gregoire is not the biggest threat to families with loved ones at Yakima Valley School. It's other advocates for the developmentally disabled who are actively campaigning in favor of closing the school. These advocates believe institutions are a 1950s model that's outmoded  --  if not inhumane.

Diana Stadden: "Because it's not where people with developmental disabilities want to live. They don't want to live warehoused in institutions. They want to live in their community.

Diana Stadden is with ARC of Washington, a disability rights group. Recently she spoke to a roomful of advocates in a church basement near the Capitol in Olympia.

Diana Stadden: "And the other piece of this is the fact than an institution costs twice as much to support one person, you can support two people in the community for the amount we're pouring into these institutions."

And that matters because there are nearly a thousand Washington families on a waiting list for community-based services. The labor union that represents employees at Yakima Valley School disputes the cost-savings. The union is lobbying to save Yakima Valley School.

Steve Jones: "My name's Steve Jones. I've been here 18 years."

Jones is one of the caregivers here. On this day he's in a cottage living room tending to five clients. Jones worries about what will happen to them if Yakima Valley School closes. He also worries about what will happen to him.

Steve Jones: "I really don't know what else I could do. I have about seven years until I can retire. I'm a little bit too old to be doing construction or building or anything like that and I'm kind of scared."

Jones isn't alone. Yakima Valley School  --  with nearly 300 staff -- is a major employer in the town of Selah. If it closes, as institutions across the nation have, the staff and the parents of the patients who live here say this pocket of Washington State will suffer a painful economic and emotional blow.