inability to speak, Missy Perrott
used her computer to talk for
her as she testified before a
House of Delegates committee
yesterday in Annapolis.
If legislators vote to close the
Rosewood Center, an institution
for the developmentally disabled in Owings Mills, “there
will be dancing in the streets,”
said Perrott, who says she never
should have been in an institution. She went on to have a career in disability rights advocacy
and marry a nondisabled man
after moving into her own home.
At the same time, relatives of
Rosewood residents and Rosewood staff pleaded with delegates to leave the institution
open, saying that a move to
small group homes could kill the
people who have lived there for
decades.
“These are the most fragile of
the disabled,” said Harry Yost,
whose son Larry — deaf, blind
and profoundly retarded — has
lived at Rosewood for 42 years.
About 50 people, evenly divided from both sides of the debate, testified at a two-hour
hearing yesterday on legislation
that would close Rosewood by
June 30, 2006. Yost urged the
members of the house Health and Government Operations
Committee to visit the facility, to
see all it has to offer, including a
swimming pool, movie theater
and medical clinic.
He and others said residents
are comfortable there and deserve to be left alone.
“You have this great asset,”
Yost said. “Why destroy it?”
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But those on the other side of
the debate said people with disabilities should not be segregated from society under any
circumstances, arguing that
even the most complicated medical needs can be met in community settings.
With 209 residents, Rosewood
is the largest of the state’s four
remaining institutions for people with developmental disabilities. In January, the state Department of Health and Mental
Hygiene issued a report concluding that, if Maryland is to
close another of its institutions,
Rosewood, founded in 1888,
should be the one. But it noted a
$7.5 million first-year cost of closure in recommending a temporary reprieve for the facility founded in 1888 as the Asylum and Training School for the Feeble Minded, given the state’s current fiscal
climate.
Last month, Del. James W.
Hubbard, a Prince George’s
County Democrat, introduced
legislation to move ahead with
the closure. Then J. Lowell
Stoltzfus, the Senate minority
leader from the Eastern Shore,
introduced competing legislation that would reopen admissions to institutions for people
who want to live there.
Hubbard’s legislation, the
subject of yesterday’s hearing,
would use $2.5 million from a
state trust fund for services for
the disabled to help defray initial closing costs.
Hubbard previously sponsored legislation to close another institution, the Great
Oaks Center in Silver Spring,
which shut its doors in 1996.
There was heated debate yesterday about how well former
Great Oaks residents did in
group homes.
Proponents of shutting Rosewood gave examples of former
Great Oaks residents, including
Perrott, who are thriving. Proponents of keeping it open gave examples of former Great Oaks
residents who they said died
shortly after moving.
Rosewood’s fate has been uncertain for years. Residents’
families fended off an attempt
by the state to close the facility
in 1989. But Maryland’s goal is to
eventually move all institution
residents into community settings. Six of Maryland’s 10 institutions for the developmentally
disabled have closed during the
past two decades, and the total
population of Maryland’s institutions has dwindled to 404.
Baltimore County Del. Dan
Morhaim, whose district includes Rosewood, asked Hubbard yesterday how he planned
to dispose of Rosewood’s land, a
sprawling campus in the heart
of Owings Mills.
Hubbard responded that his
bill isn’t about land. “This is
about freedom,” he said.
Morhaim, along with Dels.
Robert A. Zirkin and Jon S. Cardin, has introduced legislation
that would prevent commercial
development at the Rosewood
site if the institution closes.