Another gap has surfaced in how Florida screens applicants for gun carry permits: The state agency responsible can’t access a federal database containing 1.6 million records of people nationwide with mental illness, the Sun Sentinel found.

Because it is not a law enforcement agency, the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services cannot obtain information from the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, known as “NICS”, when considering whether to grant a concealed weapon license.

In addition to certain mental health records, the index has other potentially disqualifying information gathered nationwide, such as data on illegal immigrants, drug addicts, military personnel who have been dishonorably discharged, and people who have renounced U.S. citizenship.

Last month, the Sun Sentinel reported that Florida wasn’t completing background checks for gun carry permits on those applicants whose fingerprint card submissions repeatedly were illegible.

The latest development raises additional concerns about the thoroughness and reliability of the state’s concealed weapon screening process.

Efforts have intensified nationwide to pool information about potentially unstable firearm holders since the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, when 32 people were gunned down bySeung-Hui Cho,who had been ordered by a court two years earlier to undergo mental health treatment.

Since then, states and the federal government have been working to share information through the NICS system to prevent anyone from obtaining firearms if they have been ruled mentally incompetent or committed to a mental hospital.

Florida law enforcement does check the NICS system, and its nearly 8 million records in total, when screening gun purchases made through licensed firearm dealers. But Florida can’t use the NICS system for concealed carry permits because a criminal justice agency doesn’t administer the licensing program.

As a result, gun control advocates say, Florida could be missing potentially vital pieces of information for weeding out individuals with a history of mental illness.

“It seems incredibly silly and dangerous to public safety to let this information rest on the shelf,” said Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Washington-based Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “People with dangerous mental health histories should not be allowed to carry firearms in Florida.”

Most states do check the NICS system when considering whether to grant a gun permit, the Sun Sentinel found.

But Florida can’t because concealed weapon permits here are handled by the Agriculture Department.

Since the department is not a law enforcement agency, by federal regulation, it is prohibited from receiving information from NICS.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is involved in the permitting process, as the performer of background checks, but is barred by federal regulations from passing along NICS-acquired data to a non-criminal justice agency. So FDLE doesn’t consult the database.

“We are complying with all of the laws as they are,” said FDLE bureau chief Martha Wright, who oversees the screening process. “I’m not sure there is anything else we can do within the current regulatory structure.”

Horwitz, however, says there is no excuse for Florida not to make the administrative changes necessary to be able to view the data, particularly given that they can be retrieved instantly.

“I think the bottom line is that someone needs to check this information,” he said. “There should be an easy solution to this problem.”

Agriculture Department spokesman Sterling Ivey said Friday that the department is working with FDLE to determine what can be done.

“Unfortunately, there are restrictions in place on who can use and access the NICS data and until the results of a NICS check is allowed to be received by the department, the department has no other alternative but to continue to follow current law,” Ivey said.

The background screening gap is particularly significant because Florida is a go-to place nationwide for gun carry permits that then are valid in other states through so-called reciprocity agreements.

Florida has 952,000 active concealed weapon licenses. Nearly 12 percent are held by out-of-state residents, according to the Agriculture Department.

Applicants to the state for carry permits must submit their fingerprints, which are used for a background check.

FDLE runs applicants’ names through four databases. One contains Florida criminal histories. Another state database has information on Floridians with outstanding arrest warrants or domestic violence restraining orders.

Florida also cross checks applicants with the FBI’s index of nationwide criminal histories, and with another federal database of people that police officers should be on the lookout for, like fugitives, sexual offenders, convicts on probation and others.

Clerks of courts throughout the state also provide FDLE with cases in which people in Florida have been found mentally incompetent or

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Ukiah Daily Journal

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of articles about the county’s mental health system, and the county’s intention to contract out those services. See Sunday’s Ukiah Daily Journal for more.

The question of what will happen to the 46 county employees who work in the Mendocino County Health and Human Services Agency’s Mental Health Division is very much on the minds of their employer and union as the county works to privatize the county’s mental health services.

The county is working to develop a request for proposals, to be released in a month’s time, according to HHSA Director Stacey Cryer. The county hopes to sign over the remainder of its mental health services that aren’t already contracted out to 78 organizations, and possibly administration of those contracts.

“A third of those employees will likely continue in the county, monitoring the contracts, continuing quality assurance and quality improvement,” said HHSA Assistant Director Tom Pinizzotto, who also oversees the Mental Health and Public Health divisions.

Another third of the county’s Mental Health employees could potentially take other county jobs that are vacant but in the county’s budget, according to Pinizzotto, and the other third could be offered jobs by the contractor who steps up to take over mental health services.

One of the county’s difficulties in providing services is the cost of those employees, according to county administrators. Wages have been cut

recently across the board to help balance the county’s budget, including a 10-percent pay cut for the roughly 750 county employees represented by Service Employees International Union, Local 1021.

“When you reduce employees’ wages the way the county has, it makes it harder for people to stay to provide services,” SEIU Local 1021 field representative Paul Kaplan said.

Pinizzotto said he’s aware of the problem, and it isn’t a new one for the county of Mendocino as an employer.

“We’ve been a stepping stone for many of the private-sector folks,” he said, “people right out of college or grad school.”

Those people use their time employed with the county of Mendocino to get the required licenses for their professions, perform an internship and “move on to other jobs that pay better.”

Kaplan gave the example of a Mental Health employee who recently left to take the same job in a neighboring county that paid almost double the employee’s wage in Mendocino County.

Ben Anderson, executive director of Tapestry Family Services, one of the county’s contractors for children’s mental health services, said one of the advantages a contractor offers is less expense for employees. Tapestry offers a competitive wage, but doesn’t offer the same pension benefit that the county offers, he said.

But jobs and how much they pay isn’t the union’s primary concern, according to Kaplan.

“The concern with privatization is the arm’s-distance control you have over the services,” Kaplan said. “As public employees, our members have direct control over the services because they provide them. When you contract out to a private organization, the public loses a degree of control and oversight of those services.”

One concern, he said, is that there would be less accountability for the time a mental health client might have to wait to be assessed for routine, outpatient services.

“Who is looking at that, and where are the red flags being raised?” Kaplan said.

In addition to the question of how the county’s continued oversight of mental health services would play out, members have expressed concerns about not being able to see the RFP (request for proposals), and the accountability and cost for some of the county’s current contracts.

“What happens is contractors bid on providing certain services, and they have clauses in their contracts to allow for costs to increase because of things that happen that aren’t anticipated,” Kaplan said. “Those kinds of contracts end up costing more than they appear.”

Tiffany Revelle can be reached at udjtr@pacific.net, on Twitter @TiffanyRevelle or at 468-3523.

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In 2004, voters approved Proposition 63, which levied a 1 percent tax on millionaires to expand mental health services, and created a state plan to ensure progress toward providing them. Before we passed the law, the official ballot pamphlet told us “how the money would be spent.” New tax revenue would:

– Expand existing county mental health Systems of Care for children, adults and older adults, based upon a proven model of service; and

– Create prevention and early intervention programs within the model systems to help prevent mental illnesses from becoming more severe and disabling.

As one of several co-authors of the Mental Health Services Act, the official name of Prop. 63, I thought the purpose and intent provisions spelled out a clear path to implementation. The Systems of Care model that would receive 75 percent of the Prop. 63 revenue was fully explained in legal codes; government couldn’t screw this up.

I was wrong. Incompetence and politics led the state Department of Mental Health to change the law for private reasons and required counties to follow a different path altogether.

In 2007, the director of the department explained to me that we now were prioritizing services to “those most in need.” To do so, the department tossed the proven model to begin anew, with startups, and a new costly and endless stakeholder, planning and training process. This generated a bonanza for the consulting and contracting industry.

Mental health care in California is provided through a partnership of the state with each county. The new state regulations directed counties to spend the majority of Prop. 63 revenues on new programs for new clients. Counties were told to ignore the existing mental health programs, which, while underfunded and understaffed, are the primary source of treatment for mental illness.

Twenty percent of Prop. 63 funds are to be spent for prevention and early intervention so as to keep mental illnesses from becoming “severe and disabling.” But few such programs exist because state regulations prohibit counties from spending this prevention money to serve those “diagnosed with a serious mental illness or serious emotional disturbance.”

Meanwhile, the tax revenue exceeded expectations – by June 30, $7 billion in Prop. 63 funds had been allocated to counties (despite a significant raid on the act’s trust fund during Gov. Jerry Brown’s first budget year) and the act is on track to generate $1.4 billion this fiscal year. In 2010-2011, the state spent $4.4 billion on mental health services. The percentage of revenue from each funding source for California mental health services was: 35 percent federal; 25 percent Prop. 63; 23 percent state realignment (a dedicated funding source created in 1991 and fed by sales taxes and vehicle license fees) funds; 17 percent state General Fund and other sources.

The Mental Health Services Act has funded 1,600 new programs throughout the state. The state Department of Mental Health has reported that 25,000 mental health services consumers were now “fully served.” The 600,000 other public mental health consumers remain in the old primary county systems. They are as poorly served after Prop. 63′s passage as before.

In every county, new Prop. 63 programs operate as an independent system alongside the old System of Care. Each is managed by the same county department, but with separate budgets and accountability.

When the state Department of Mental Health closed its doors this month under the governor’s realignment plan, the chief deputy director informed the Legislature’s health and budget committees that its oversight of Prop. 63 had ceased. Accountability is now gone.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, a sponsor of Prop. 63, endorses the current results. To make certain county plans continue in the same direction, the senator inserted amendments to the Mental Health Services Act into a budget bill, thus sanctioning regulations that defy the original purpose and intent of the law.

Steinberg’s substantive amendments were not subjected to any stakeholder process or intensive public review; after one Senate policy hearing, the provisions were transferred into the budget bill and passed within 48 hours. The state will now transfer more than 25 percent of Prop. 63′s revenue to county slush funds, inviting local officials and special interests to fund virtually any venture, including research, that claims to promote healthy outcomes for any constituency.

The issue is close to home for me: The state’s fraudulent regulations deny two grandsons access to prevention services that would fulfill the Prop. 63 promise to help prevent serious mental illnesses from becoming more severe and disabling.

“We were robbed” is the prevailing view from volunteers like me, who collected signatures and donations, and now share the deep disappointment of betrayal by our state government and by special interests, who claim to be our advocates for change but instead support the status quo while collecting generous grants.

The state regulations and the Steinberg amendments both warrant legal challenges. The options to clean this up and fund treatment of serious mental illnesses are:

– Lobbying for Brown administration corrections as the federal Affordable Care Act is implemented;

– Finding a legal team to challenge these new provisions in court and prove that these violate the initiative approved by voters; and

– Waiting for another legislator to take up the cause in a few years.

In the meantime, families and consumers will continue to speak out at state and local hearings. They will experience blank stares and sometimes a polite nod, but never any answers from the politicians.

Where the money goes

San Francisco: Some $127 million in Prop. 63 funds has been allocated to San Francisco. The prevention money portion funds 12 programs, one intervention/recovery service for youths experiencing early psychosis, while others focus on education, Healthy Families and access to the core mental health system. But what happens if your family, friends or neighbors seek actual help?

The Mental Health Association of San Francisco recently was awarded grants totaling $5.9 million for stigma reduction, that is, strategies to reduce stigma toward persons with mental illness. That is more than the city’s total budget for prevention services.

Sacramento: Some $222 million in Prop. 63 funds has gone to Sacramento County. These prevention services link people to care, but the wait for a first appointment can be more than six weeks. A Strengthening Families group manages five prevention programs, none of which addresses mental illnesses, yet receives Prop. 63 funds.

Rose King is one of the co-authors of the California Mental Health Services Act, which voters approved in 2004 as Proposition 63. She has filed a whistle-blower complaint after challenging the Department of Mental Health (see mitruestories.wordpress.com). Send your feedback to us through an online form at sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1

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